LINEAMIENTOS DE JUSTICIA RESTAURATIVA ADOPTADOS

My first assumption was that Polish people graduating in Ireland do suffer from a high level of language anxiety, and time spent in the university setting helps them to adjust to the new culture and improve their command of the language, their appropriate use of it, and their self-perceived competence. Another assumption was that the motives for studying abroad are highly economic, with smaller percentage being for self-development and other kinds of purposes. The next one concerned the growing importance of Ireland on the labour market as being the major trait attracting people to choose Irish universities. The fourth assumption was that studying abroad is strongly connected with gaining self confidence, self worth and self esteem, as well as greater confidence within the job market. The fifth one was that studying in a foreign country changes the perspective into a more mature and positive one and also adds to life stability.

The economy driven choices, like the desire to feel secure in the employment market, might be the possible explanation for moving abroad in order work and study. The other motives might be strongly connected with a deeper need for security in life and a fear of the future, in all its aspects. We can also notice some globalizing tendencies; there is a contemporary Nomad generation, which does not feel connected with one particular place in the world. How far are people conscious of the motives of their choices? How much does it depend on their self awareness?

Linden West’s research provides an in-depth analysis in learning, dealing with what motivates adults in higher education and what ‘keeps them keeping on’. He concludes it is often the struggle for more authentic selfhood. (West, 2007, p.71). I want to frame my research in terms of narrative because I hope to notice different layers of meaning in the dialogue with my participants, and to understand more about individual and social change. Clandinin introduces the idea of a metaphorical three-dimensional narrative inquiry space. The terms are: personal and social (interaction), past, present and future (continuity); combined with the notion of place (situation).

Though the idea may put constraining boundaries on inquiry, it can also help to open up imaginative possibilities for inquirers, which could not so easily be seen without the idea. It is because the inquiry space, and the ambiguity implied, remind us to be aware of where we and our participants are placed at any particular moment - temporally, spatially, and in terms of the personal and the social. Researcher is always in the midst – located somewhere along the dimensions of time, place, the personal, and the social. But he is also in the midst

in another sense as well; that is in the middle of a nested set of stories – ours and theirs. (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000, p.89)

Narrative inquiry has identifiable features. For Clandinin and Connelly (2000) it is the best way of representing and understanding experience. They describe four directions of a narrative inquiry; inward and outward, backward and forward.

• By inward they mean towards internal conditions, feelings, hopes, aesthetic reactions and moral dispositions

• By outward they mean towards the existential conditions, that is the environment

• By backward and forward they refer to temporality, past, present and future.

Narrative inquiries are always strongly autobiographical. Our research interests come out of our own narratives of experience and shape our narrative inquiry plotlines.

(Clandinin, 2000 p.121). For me is my own experiences of immigration and continuing education in a foreign country. For narrative inquirers, it is crucial to be able to articulate a relationship between one’s personal interests and sense of significance and larger social concerns expressed in the works and lives of others. The narrative inquiry will allow me to create a research text that illuminates the experiences, not only of the students, but also of how the discourse of social and theoretical contexts shape their engagement in the learning process.

The narrated life story represents the biographer’s overall construction of his or her past and anticipated life… The stories that are selected by the biographer to represent his/her life history cannot be regarded as a series of isolated experiences, laid down in chronological order… individual experiences are always embedded in a coherent, meaningful context, a biographical construct…

The present perspective determines what the subject considers biographically relevant, how she or he develops thematic and temporal links between various experiences, and how past, present or anticipated future realities influence the personal interpretation of the meaning of life (Rosenthal, 1993, pp. 62-63).

Auto-biographical narratives of learning, unfolding in the interaction examined in qualitative interviews, are emergent, evolving accounts of motives, motivations, of choices, renunciations, blockages and liberation, even (Alheit & Dausien, 2002: 574).

They are stories of the self, and they record the challenging process of reflexive construction of a (potentially) more secure, coherent and cohesive self.

In these auto-biographical stories which are being ‘collected’, the context of the research interview is a learning space in which the many stories of experience can be tested and explored and new endeavours for consistency and security can be made.

Narrative inquiry is a very suitable method for discovering different understandings and perspectives of participants. It leaves the place for themes that the researcher did not anticipate to emerge. Narrative can also address the diversity of participants’

experiences.

Narrative inquiry is set in human stories of experience. It provides researchers with a rich framework through which they can investigate the ways humans experience the world through their stories….Narrative is well suited to addressing the complexities and subtleties of human experience in teaching and learning’

(Webster and Mertova , 2007, p.1).

A central characteristic to the narrative inquiry is reflexivity:

Effective reflective practice is focusing upon detailed stories of practice and life, and upon the thoughts and feelings associated with the actions in them. These stories are imaginative creations drawn from experience. (Bolton, 2001, p.7).

Phillion highlights three essential qualities of a narrative inquiry (2002):

• Thinking narratively - seeing experience as fluid rather than as fixed, as contextualized in time, place and society. This means knowing about one’s biases and assumptions and how they can impede understanding.

• Being in the midst of lives - seeing research as living in the daily experiences of participants. This can be intense, emotionally draining and time consuming, life and research are viewed as inseparable.

• And making meaning of experience in relationships – developing understanding in relationships with participants.

Linden West in his writing has suggested that the participants of the research experiences are always intervened with the personal experience of the researcher himself and those two influence each other:

In our work, we keep in the foreground of our writing a narrative view of experience, with the participants’ and researchers’ narratives of experience situated and lived out on storied landscapes as our theoretical methodological frame. As we make the transition from field texts to research texts, we try to interweave our researcher experience of the experience under study with narrative ways of going about and inquiring into that phenomenon (West, 2007, p.132).

The most exciting part of narrative is that the research may have different, and sometimes surprising, twists and turns, as life itself does. The researcher can not entirely predict the outcomes, as it is up to participants to decide what side of themselves they want to show.

The only way to get anywhere in reflective practice is to do it – trusting the journey be interesting and useful, having faith in and respect for yourself and your abilities to reflect as well as practise. But you do not know where you are going…We don’t travel far in reflective practice: just make a great deal more sense of where we are. (Bolton, 2001, pp. 200-201)

The transcript of the interview may be more or less interpretive, and may be also researcher influenced. (West, 2007, p.94). I am aware of the fact that, as a researcher, I have decided the moment to turn the voice recorder on, I have decided which questions to ask, and also that I may have influenced some participant responses by simple things like smiling, asking for clarification, nodding my head, or by asking a new question that seemed relevant at that moment. My body responses could have also influenced the story being told. In addition, I am aware of the fact that the stories are also shaped by the relationship between researcher and participant.