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International Journal of Research & Method in Education

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Fictional writing, educational research and professional learning

John Spindlera a York St John University, York, UK

To cite this Article Spindler, John(2008) 'Fictional writing, educational research and professional learning', International

Journal of Research & Method in Education, 31: 1, 19 30 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/17437270801919867 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17437270801919867

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International Journal of Research & Method in Education Vol. 31, No. 1, April 2008, 1930

Fictional writing, educational research and professional learning

John Spindler*
York St John University, York, UK (Received 17 October 2006; final version received 19 February 2007)
Taylor and Francis J.Spindler@yorksj.ac.uk JohnSpindler 0 100000April 2008 31 Taylor 2008 & Francis Original Article 1743-727X (print)/1743-7288 International Journal of 10.1080/17437270801919867 (online) CWSE_A_292152.sgm Research and Method in Education

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This article argues that fictional writing has the potential to make a distinctive contribution to educational scholarship but brings challenges to conventional ways in which educational research is judged. It focuses on the discipline required by fictional writing and on the interplay between reader and text. It is argued that the rigour and validity of fiction can be tested by an informed critical readership, rather than by assessing authorial claims about methodology and the significance of a text. This approach allows for ambiguity and spaces in fictional writing that may be necessary for its distinctive potential to be realized. There is emphasis on a professional readership for educational research and how fiction, through the quality of its engagement with practitioners, may inform professional learning and practice. Keywords: fiction; narrative; arts-based research; professional learning

Introduction
The postmodern artist or writer is in the position of a philosopher: the text he writes, the work he produces are not in principle governed by preestablished rules, and they cannot be judged according to a determining judgement, by applying familiar categories to the text or to the work. Those rules and categories are what the work of art itself is looking for. The artist and the writer, then, are working without rules in order to formulate rules of what will have been done. (Lyotard 1984, 81)

The legitimacy of fiction in educational research is still contested and there is continuing concern about how to evaluate it. This article explores how judgements can be made about the rigour and significance of fiction. I open the discussion by exploring some meanings of fiction. I avoid defining fiction, preferring the complexity that arises from sustaining rather than resolving its problematics. Second, I briefly discuss the distinctive contribution of fiction with particular reference to arts-based research. Through reflecting on the writing of a poem from my doctoral thesis, I explore fiction in relation to Stenhouses (1984) definition of research as: systematic enquiry made public. Third, I explore ways in which this contribution may be limited by pre-established rules. I argue that locating texts in a field of enquiry and making methodology explicit may frame them in ways that unhelpfully constrain meanings. Fourth, I propose informed criticism as an alternative to pre-determined criteria, as a means for judging rigour whilst preserving ambiguity. Finally, I link the contribution of fictional writing to educational practice and argue that open, writerly texts may contribute significantly to professional learning and practice. Fiction and fictionality The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (SOED) includes the following amongst its entries under fiction:
The action of feigning or inventing imaginary existences, events, states of things, etc. *Email: j.spindler@yorksj.ac.u
ISSN 1743-727X print/ISSN 1743-7288 online 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/17437270801919867 http://www.informaworld.com

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This perhaps matches most closely the common understanding of the concept and contrasts fiction with fact, and possibly even with truth. Feigning or inventing is often regarded as inconsistent with the objectives of research and, as in the case of Cyril Burt, can bring opprobrium from the academy. Research, nevertheless, needs to go beyond merely recording and collating facts so imagination and inventiveness are qualities often admired in researchers. Another of the entries under fiction in the SOED is:
The action or product of fashioning or imitating.

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This concept of fiction has been emphasized by Geertz (1993) in his argument that writing is crucial to the way that anthropologists develop understanding of meanings in cultures. He refers to the original concept of fiction: They [anthropological writings] are thus fictions; fictions in the sense that they are something made, something fashioned the original meaning of fictio not that they are unfactual or merely as if thought experiments (15). More recently Winter, Buck, and Sobiechowska draw attention to the original meaning of fiction:
oa m []c r

The word fiction also has a broader meaning, derived from its Latin origin fingere meaning to shape, to fashion, to mould So writing fictions refers generally to the process of exploring and reflecting on the meanings of experience by representing it in forms of writing which have been shaped by the writers imagination. (1999, 1)

From this perspective research texts are inevitably fictional since they have been fashioned and moulded by their writers and their quality depends at least in part on the skill and imagination with which they have been crafted. It follows that there is no absolute distinction between fiction and non-fiction. Fiction, though it may not refer to a specific event in time and space, needs to refer to some recognizable area of human experience if it is to have meaning for its readership. Fact and fiction within text are problematic and interdependent; fiction must have some basis in fact, and within text fact is always mediated by the writers craft. Crafting a text involves interplay between reading and writing; the emergent text is evaluated and refined as the writer moves constantly between reading what has already been drafted and writing/revising the developing text. The distinction between reading and writing, like that between fact and fiction, is not unproblematic. In this interplay between reading and writing new ideas, hypotheses and perspectives emerge. Woods observed that what often appear initially as useful interpretations of data fall away as the discipline of crafting a text shapes the analysis:
Thus we might find what we thought a particularly useful concept rather difficult to grasp; or a seemingly beautiful, but light and airy idea only wafted further away as we try to seize it; or an apparently imposing edifice, encapsulating our research and all others in a totally new discipline-shattering way, knocked over, like a castle of matchsticks by the touch of the keyboard or stroke of the pen. (1999, 11)

It is worth noting, in passing, that Woods not only makes his point explicitly but reveals it implicitly in the form of his writing. The metaphors he uses, for example, light and airy, imposing edifice, castle of matchsticks, bear witness to his craft as a writer and help readers to sense his struggle to encapsulate meaning in his writing. Similarly the length of this sentence, essentially a list of three potential frustrations, evokes the experience of a text falling away even as the writer grapples with it. Readers are offered an explicit message about writing as integral to data analysis but also a sense of what it means to write. The fictionality of this discursive text is revealed when attention is paid to its form. If there is no absolute distinction between fact and fiction then what counts as a sufficient connection between real events and representations of them is problematic. Rather than trying

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to resolve this question I have focused on exploring the fictionality of texts and the interplay between form, substance and meaning as a means for making judgements about their significance and their contribution to educational debate. The contribution of fiction to educational research Work by Bolton, Rowland and Winter emphasizes fictional writing by practitioners as a process for enquiry and professional development. In an early exploratory paper (Rowland, Rowland, and Winter 1990),1 they emphasized the value of groups of practitioners critically exploring each others writing. This, they argued, enabled practitioners to achieve new insights without threatening their on-going professional work:
The character who was initially the hero of our story, may emerge as the villain, once her or his actions have been the subject of the groups scrutiny. This process of trying out alternative value positions in relation to the fiction does not provide a direct threat to how we continue day to day professional lives, but does allow us to entertain new perspectives, tentatively at first, through the emerging writing and criticism. (Rowland, Rowland, and Winter 1990, 292)

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Subsequent papers by these authors extended and developed their arguments for the contribution of fiction to professional learning and development (Rowland 1991; Winter 1991; Bolton 1994, 2001; Winter, Buck, and Sobiechowska 1999). Although these scholars highlight the place of fiction in educational research, their main interest seems to be with how fiction can transform professional understanding and inform professional practice. Other writers have seemed more concerned to establish the legitimacy of fiction within the academy and the social sciences. Peter Clough (2002) provides stories about young people, their families and teachers which were embedded in research focused upon his interest in special educational needs. He links the contribution of fiction to social enquiry with the interplay between consciousness, language, meaning and knowledge, emphasizing knowledge as contextual and necessarily embedded in human intention. For Clough, the linguistic character of fiction draws attention to the linguistic foundation of knowledge and lives for the reader between the finite statements it presents lexically, and the infinite experience of the reader, which verifies them (99). This, Clough argues, challenges researchers and readers characterizations of educational settings and generates an unavoidable moral urgency. Richardson (1997) explores how the sociological imagination may be applied to the act of writing. She addresses two main questions: How do the specific circumstances in which we write affect what we write? How does what we write affect who we become? (1). Richardson draws upon essays, papers and stories she had written over a 10-year period to debate questions about representation and power in sociological writing. The sub-title of her book, Constructing an Academic Life, aptly summarizes a principal concern and Richardson links the construction of academic identities with the practice of academic writing. She argues for space within the academy for forms of writing that challenge the social scientific and academic establishment. In writing poetically she both violated conventions of sociological writing and drew attention to them as authorial choices rather than truths. She argued that the use of literary devices and connotative structures creates ambiguity and encourages open readings in a way that conventional sociology does not. Richardson summarized her argument:
Casting sociological interviews into poetry can make visible the underlying labor of sociological production and its sales pitch (conventional rhetoric) as well as its potential as human endeavour. A sociopoetics, then, at this postmodernist juncture, is both framework and method for representing the sociological. (1997, 144)

Barone also rejects the modernist assertion that researchers can achieve an objective reality. He argues for an epistemology of uncertainty (2001, 152) and for educational enquiry

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that aims to enhance meaning rather than reduce uncertainty. Whilst Richardson argues for the legitimacy of fiction as social science, Barone entertains the idea of educational research as radical practice in the arts. The literary approach to representation of stories told by the teacher in Barones project, and the inherent ambiguity, invites what Barone describes as polyvocal, conspiratorial conversations. Like Richardson he seeks to offer a text that entices its readers to wonder about what has previously been taken for granted. He particularly emphasizes attention to form and structure emphasizing dismantling textual illusion and drawing attention to texts fictionality. Barones intention is not to achieve a true representation and he acknowledges that his text is rife with exaggerations, distortions, inconsistencies, contradictions and imaginary constructions that disqualify it as a final factual rendition of people and events (178). He does, however, provide resources from which readers may construct meanings that lead them to question their understanding of a central concern of his book: What counts as educationally important? Whilst their emphases are different, these writers argue for the active participation of the reader in constructing meaning. Their emphasis on ambiguity, the use of the particular to illuminate the universal and the importance of form links their work with artistic approaches to research. Kiesinger (1998) provides a case study where fiction is the main structure of the methodology. Her paper is in three parts. The first combines verse and prose to create an evocative narrative that explores the journey toward anorexia of one of the project participants. The second briefly describes how resources for the text were drawn from interviews with one of the four participants, and indicates the aim of the project was to convey a sense of how anorexic and bulimic women themselves understand and make sense of their lives and condition (128). The third describes a discussion of the narrative presented in the first part of the paper between the writer and a group of her undergraduate students. The description does not, however, refer directly to a specific discussion. Kiesinger indicates that: The scene I create is a composite of many such discussions I have had with students about the use and value of evocative narration as a powerful form of research reporting (129). Kiesinger has crafted a text so as to engage its readership with particular situations that illuminate general issues (concerning anorexia and fiction as methodology in social research). Her evocative narrative has been shaped in such a way as to draw upon the feeling of its readers for the plight of its characters; in her narrative of particular situations she sheds light on universal questions. This interplay between form, content and meaning of the text is central to her methodology and can be seen as an arts-based approach to social research. Best (1992) provides a useful framework within which to conceptualize how the arts contribute to knowledge, persuasively arguing that both feeling and cognition are inextricably bound together and contribute to understanding. To illustrate the point Best refers to a speech by King Lear. Having given up his crown, Lear realizes that, as King, he paid insufficient attention to poor naked wretches with houseless heads and unfed sides. Best asks:
What does it amount to say that Lear learned from his experience? Clearly it is not a matter of acquiring facts. In that sense he knew it all when he was king. He knew the poor go hungry, have inadequate clothing and shelter, suffer various privations, and so on. These are mere truisms. His new understanding cannot be equated with the acquisition of facts. Thus he cries, Take physic, Pomp; expose thyself to feel what wretches feel. It is through feeling that Lear begins to understand the plight of the poor. That feeling arises from a particular experience and it brings him to see what he has never before realised. It has to be brought home to him in his feeling for a particular situation. Through an involvement with a particular work of art, such as King Lear, we can achieve a similar understanding. (1992, 194)

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Kiesingers narrative provides a resource which enables its readers to go beyond the mere truisms of anorexia and, through engaging both feeling and reason, to have understanding and

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appreciation of how anorexia has been experienced. Miller (1998) echoes Bests epistemology and refers to the limitations of some educational research in capturing lived experience:
Did I make it clear, I wondered, that 72 percent of the women in my study felt their fathers underestimated their achievements. But the feeling of those women is not reflected in the percentage. Perhaps I should have reported that 72 percent of women in my study felt hurt and undervalued by their fathers. Even then the feeling words hurt and undervalued seemed inadequate to express the sense of loss confusion and anger that women like Donna conveyed to me in their interviews. (Miller 1998, 67)

In this article, then, I am emphasizing fictional writing as arts practice in the context of educational enquiry. The contribution of fiction is conceptualized in relation to its capacity to link reason and feeling and thus to bring about a shift in readers understanding and appreciation of educational questions. Fiction as systematic enquiry Stenhouse (1984) defined research as: systematic enquiry made public. I have above indicated how writing is a process of enquiry that requires a disciplined approach to use of form in the construction of meaning. In this section I explore this a little further through an account of how I worked on a poem that was included in my doctoral thesis (Spindler 1999), focusing particularly on how the writing was both playful and disciplined.
On the Dalek infiltration of higher education Some registration documents are inaccurate. Please refer to students by number and make certain they are correct. This will assist the efficient operation of the recording system. Please remember Standardisation is paramount. Students must not be parked in the areas reserved for staff. Please clamp students when this regulation is infringed. This will assist the efficient operation of the parking system. Please remember Standardisation is paramount. Under unitisation, each unit should address a discrete unit of learning, Please restrict student learning to the area specified in the unit descriptor. This will assist the efficient operation of the academic system. Please remember Standardisation is paramount. Dining facilities must only be used by those making a purchase Please ensure students do not meet and talk unless they are customers. This will assist the efficient operation of the catering system. Please remember Standardisation is paramount. Students are making the new lecture rooms look untidy and messy. Please do not allow students to eat or drink in the new facilities. This will assist the efficient operation of the accommodation system. Please remember Standardisation is paramount.

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QIAS must not be confused with FQC which can only be accessed with a QA6; RAs use RDC1&2. Please do not breathe on HEFCE, OFSTED or HMI. This will assist the efficient operation of the system. Please remember Standardisation is paramount Standardis - ation is paramount Standardis - ation is para - mount Stand - ard - is - a - tion - is - pa - ra - mount. (Spindler 1999, 213)

The poem was written in the context of a project to explore the way in which student teachers experienced an undergraduate course of pre-service teacher education. Data were collected mainly through weekly meetings with a small group of participating student teachers over the four years of their course. The thesis in which the project was reported includes narrative accounts of the experiences of the individual participants juxtaposed with discussion of emergent themes and with fictional stories. I was prompted to write the poem by an emerging theme in the project about the status of student teachers. I had noticed that they were expected to be students, and to recognize the authority of the university staff and school teachers who were responsible for their course. At the same time, they were expected to act as teachers, and to take on the professional responsibilities this involved. There was a sense in which the student teachers were both the pupils and the colleagues of the teachers and academics who were teaching them, and I wanted to investigate the complexities of this relationship. I read through notes of my discussions with the project participants and notes I had made in a private diary. I was struck that there were separate parking areas for university staff and students, with large notices threatening clamping if the regulations were infringed. I was also struck by the notices on the door of every teaching room which said, in red letters about three inches high on a white background: No Food or Drink. I had recorded that on notice boards a Dean had asked staff to enforce this rule in recently re-furbished teaching spaces, and that the rule was frequently ignored when the rooms were used for meetings of staff. In short, each of the verses in the poem has a direct reference to resources I had been collecting as part of the project. To start with I simply jotted down some of the things I had noted that seemed relevant to the idea I wanted to explore. I started to play with the phrases and notes on the page, trying them in different orders and making some changes to the actual words, but nothing very interesting emerged and for a while I abandoned it. Around this time I had a discussion with one our facultys representatives on the Academic Board. He told me that in one of the debates, during which he had argued a point on my behalf, a pro vice-chancellor, Just kept saying standardization is paramount. This struck a chord with another theme that was emerging in my project. The participating students had talked about how they were required to fit into a standard view of how teachers should behave. One, for example, had talked about how she had to change her accent when she was on school placements and others had described the way they bought special clothes to wear while they were in schools. I returned to the poem and started inserting the phrase standardisation is paramount at different points in my notes. The idea of finishing each verse with this soon had an appeal and I started to use the different instances in the notes as a basis for each verse. It was at this point that the idea of the poem being a series of instructions emerged, which seemed to fit well with the constant demands made of the student teachers which were reflected in my notes. Quite where the idea came from I am not sure, but as I worked with the text I had an image of messages being relayed through loud speakers.

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Standardisation is paramount and the image of instructions over a speaker system provided a structure within which to work and the poem began to take shape. It was through playing within this structure that I hit on the idea of splitting a sentence across the second and third lines of each verse to highlight some of the absurdities that were emerging in the text. I first thought of this with the lines:
Please restrict student learning to the area specified in the unit descriptor.

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My diary included a note of a conversation I had overheard in our staff common room. Some colleagues were discussing progression in a new course and referred to restricting student learning to the unit descriptor. I feel sure they would have been horrified at the idea that learning should be restricted. Splitting the sentence across two lines in the poem was intended to highlight a possible meaning that had passed unnoticed amongst those involved in the discussion. This device was then applied to the other verses. When the poem was close to being finished the repetition of standardisation is paramount and the image of a message coming through a less than perfect speaker system brought to mind the Daleks that I had watched on television during childhood. I had found a title and I tried to emulate the mechanical speech of the Daleks in the final lines. Reading the poem now, I am not so convinced that this reference is apt. Daleks invade rather than infiltrate and they lack subtlety. This account shows that writing the poem was playful; ideas and possibilities, that reflected my own biography and interests, were tried out and were very often selected for their aesthetic appeal to me. There is an element of serendipity in this way of working and the poem is certainly not a reliable outcome of the methodical application of specific procedures. This playfulness, however, was combined with a disciplined approach to the use of literary devices. The repetition of the last line of each verse, for example, was not fortuitous but a considered decision to apply a device that has been used by poets many times before. The idea of splitting an apparently coherent idea across two separate lines was a considered and deliberate use of form in the exploration and communication of meaning. Although the aesthetic appeal for its writer of the developing text influenced these decisions, the scripting was not entirely whimsical and the discipline in crafting the fiction may be reasonably described as systematic enquiry. Making public: the interplay between text and reader Making public may appear straightforward; research, including fiction, can be published in books and journals and presented at conferences and seminars. Making public, however, also poses questions about the quality of readers engagement with a text, and about how research contributes to knowledge. Bathes, in proclaiming the death of the author, argued that any writer is obliged to draw upon a lexicon and literary practices that precede her/his text:
The writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with others, in such a way as never to rest on any of them. Should he wish to express himself, he ought at least to know that the inner thing he thinks to translate is itself only a ready formed dictionary, its words only explainable through other words, and so on indefinitely. (1994, 169)

Bathes also suggested that, since the writer is not the origin of a text, it is not appropriate to restrict its meanings by reference to the writers intentions, biography and identity and that it is the reader that brings unity to a text:
The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a texts unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. (170)

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Drawing on this argument, Sumara and Luce-Kapler (1993) have suggested that writerly texts, which leave spaces and demand the active participation of readers in shaping their meanings, are a legitimate and desirable outcome of action research. Although the clarity of research texts is to be valued, ambiguity is also important for encouraging readers to bring their own experience and understanding to the text. From this perspective the distinction between writing and reading becomes problematic since, in entering spaces in a text, readers become writers as they shape the texts meaning. This argument for privileging the reader recognizes that writers have no authority over the texts they have scripted. Others readings, which will be shaped by their own imaginations and identities, may be no less valid. Knowledge arising from any text is mediated by its readers and will be dependent on the quality of their interaction with it; resonance provides a helpful way to explore the interplay between text and readers. Usher and Edwards observed that:
Resonance refers to ways of seeing and thus of understanding where one is unsure of the exact meaning of what one has understood. Yet if something resonates one feels something important is happening and one can only feel this if what is happening has a certain purchase with ones concerns. In this sense resonance is to do with the familiar. But equally it is to do with the unfamiliar since that which resonates has a quality of strangeness or otherness about it which captures and captivates. There is a feeling that something important is being said without being quite sure what that exactly is, a feeling most clearly experienced in reading novels or watching films. (1994, 123)

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New meanings and understanding that emerge from fiction may be ambiguous rather than in the form of propositions or predictive generalizations. Evaluating fiction as educational research needs to address the resonance texts have for their readers, and to recognize the ambiguity of new insights that have both cognitive and affective dimensions. Making judgements about fiction as research I have argued that the distinctiveness of fictions contribution to research lies in its capacity to create knowledge that integrates feeling and cognition through the engagement of readers with particular narratives that illuminate educational questions. In this section I explore how judgements might be made about whether such research is sufficiently disciplined and appropriately made public. I start by arguing that traditional conventions and expectations of research sometimes get between readers and the text, and that this can constrain and frame their engagement with it. I then propose an approach based upon critical reading as an alternative to authorial claims about methodology and relevance. It is conventional for educational researchers to provide an account of the methodologies employed in their projects and to review their research with reference to other relevant published work. These rules provide a framework within which the research can be assessed. The description and justification of the methodology provides a means by which others can judge whether enquiry has been conducted in a disciplined way. It is also conventional for educational research to be located explicitly in the literature of the field of enquiry. This demonstrates that the work takes account of existing theory, highlights how it further develops and illuminates existing knowledge and assures readers of the relevance and significance of the research. Artists, however, do not routinely give an account of their methods nor do they normally set out explicitly how their work is located in a field of enquiry. Of course, artists may talk about their work, in books and articles, on chat shows and in interviews for example, but it is rare for an account of method or explicit discussion of others work to be integral to their work. Critics reflect and comment upon substance, form and the interplay between form and meaning. They may also draw attention to how a particular work is resonant of or draws upon other works, with respect to both form and substance. Whilst artists sometimes angrily dismiss critics reviews,

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particularly those written by journalists, there is a tradition of criticism which contributes to understanding and appreciation. Critical reviews can be seen as readings which encourage and promote reflection on both form and meaning and may be particularly insightful when artists become critics. Heaney (1995), for example, offers perceptive commentaries on the work of other poets, which illuminates both the writers use of form and how it has shaped meanings revealed to him through the texts. His lecture on the work of Elizabeth Bishop includes discussion of her autobiographical story, In the Village.
It is in the daylight clarity of Bishops writing that its unique virtue resides. Things as they are seem to be even more themselves once she has written them. In the above passage, for example, the slp of the river says in perfect riverspeak what Bishop then says in English: everything except the river holds it breath. And yet, of course, it is precisely Bishops linguistic virtuosity which creates the delightful illusion of access to a pristine, pre-linguistic state. As readers we had not known that we ached for this fulfilment in language until it was proffered; we had not known that the givens of experience could be raised to this sweet new power. (Heaney 1995, 168)

One does not need Elizabeth Bishop to provide an account of her methodology to be confident about its rigour. It is immanent in the work and evident to an informed and critical reader. A poet such as Heaney may reveal qualities that are not immediately apparent to other readers, and perhaps not even recognized by the writer herself. This does not preclude or invalidate other readings, which offer different and fresh perspectives. Indeed, critical dialogue may facilitate and enhance understanding and appreciation of the work. In the arts critical reading, independent of authorial claims, provides the principal mechanism through which questions of form (method) and allusion (reference to other work) are addressed and through which rigour, relevance and significance are assessed. Authorial accounts of how a fiction is constructed, and explicit, authoritative statements about its meaning and significance, run the risk of framing readers engagement with the text in ways that restrict the ambiguity that encourages critical engagement and debate about its meaning. Relying upon the readership, rather than an author, to give a critical account of fiction as educational research provides a mechanism by which rigour can be assessed whilst preserving spaces in the text that its readership may occupy and shape. Richardson organized a seminar at which she and five other leading academics focused specifically on criteria. Unsurprisingly the various contributors offered distinctive perspectives. Richardson (2000) identified five criteria: substantive contribution, aesthetic merit, reflexivity, impact and expression of a reality. Denzin (2000) argued for texts that imagine how the world could be different through presenting specific problems anchored in their historical, cultural and biographical contexts. Ellis (2000) focused on how text engages her cognitively and affectively, what she learns from it and the extent to which the chaos of experience is represented in a readable and understandable form. Patricia Clough (2000) argued for writing that privileges cultural criticism and theoretical reflection and encourages new parameters of the social. Bochner (2000) valued narratives that provide details that capture lived experience and reveal their authors transformational journeys in ways that provide emotional engagement for their readers. Two of the contributors, however, expressed unease about the seminars focus on criteria. Bochner described the obsession with criteria as tedious and unproductive whilst Patricia Clough was concerned about the danger that it might herald return to a methodological policing, putting an end to theorizing the future (209). It is inevitable that criteria are used in making judgements but determining criteria in advance, thus creating pre-established rules, can limit the scope and imagination of research texts. Working outside rules can help to preserve the ambiguity and openness on which the contribution of fiction to research depends. Criticism from an informed readership provides a means by which to make judgments and formulate rules of what will have been done (Lyotard 1984, 81).

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Fiction and professional knowledge Debate within an informed critical readership of fiction as educational research would, of course, include those within the educational research community. Such readers would bring their knowledge of research in their areas of interest to bear upon the texts that they read. Not only would fiction of quality provide these readers with new insights but their readings might provide interesting and illuminative perspectives for others, in just the way that Heaneys commentary on Elizabeth Bishops story offers fresh ways to look at it. Policy makers readings of fiction would be informed by their understanding of competing values, priorities and expectations embedded in social, economic and political context. Fiction may deepen their appreciation of how the educational issues they are grappling with are played out in the lives of those directly involved and their critiques might illuminate some of the possibilities and limitations of policy in relation to issues that have been highlighted. I wish to conclude this article, however, by discussing the value of fiction for a practitioner readership. A frequent criticism of educational research is that it so often fails to have a significant impact on educational practice. Much work on professional learning recognizes that the context for practice is messy and that practitioners cannot unproblematically apply the outcomes of research (e.g. Schn 1983, 1987; Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1986; Eraut 1994). This perspective recognizes the artistry of professional practice and the need for practitioners to feel the way forward, testing understandings through on-going evaluation of, and deliberation on, what are often intuitive actions in quickly changing and complex contexts. Eraut (1994) argues that professional practice involves not only the use of propositional knowledge and knowing how to conduct the various processes that contribute to professional action but also drawing upon personal knowledge. This is to recognize that situational understanding (Elliott 1993) and professional action are shaped, at least in part, by impressions derived from experience and social interaction. Eraut acknowledges a further kind of professional knowledge that he does not address:
There are some areas of knowledge that are more than impressions, yet different again from propositional knowledge or process knowledge. These include moral principles and knowledge embedded in literature and the arts. (1994, 103)

Kirklin and Richardson (2001), however, directly address the contribution of arts and humanities to the professional preparation of doctors. Their edited text takes as its starting point the need for doctors to appreciate how patients experience illness and to understand the implications, not only for communication with patients but also for professional issues that are at the heart of medical practice. Buchmann (1990) has argued for students to be an object of teachers contemplative attention since it may fundamentally change the way they feel about their students and, in consequence, influence their professional actions. Eisner (1998) has focused upon how the traditions of the arts and humanities provide ways of seeing and interpreting that enhance educational enquiry and improve educational practice. Particularly interesting is his application of connoisseurship to teaching, curriculum and schooling. Using the metaphor of a wine connoisseur, he demonstrates how appreciation of the qualities and nuances of educational practice promotes understanding of its subtleties and complexities. Drawing on practice in the arts, he argues for research to embrace criticism of educational practice that describes, interprets, evaluates and identifies its inherent general themes. Fiction, it is argued in this article, has the potential to resonate with practitioners so that they discover new ways of thinking and feeling about professional dilemmas that go beyond mere truisms to a deeper understanding of the significance of their professional actions. In this way it develops practitioners situational understanding, connoisseurship and capacity for educational criticism.

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Summary This article argues that fictional writing provides a form for systematic enquiry made public that has the potential to provide a distinctive contribution to educational research. The distinctiveness is linked to the capacity for well-crafted narratives to illuminate the universal by focusing on the particular, in ways that engage both feeling and intellect. The ambiguity of writerly texts allows for the kind of engagement between reader and text that unlocks this potential. Conventional approaches to making judgements about the rigour and validity of research risk limiting the potential of fiction by requiring specificity about methodology and the relationship to other research that frames fiction in ways that limits ambiguity and fills the spaces that readers might otherwise occupy and shape. Critiques from an informed readership, sensitized by attention to resonance, form, substance and the interplay between form and meaning, provide an alternative way to assess rigour and relevance. Critiques by practitioners may be particularly valuable by focussing attention on the extent to which a fiction contributes to professional learning and influences professional action.
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Note
1. In this article Gillie Bolton writes under the name of Gillie Rowland.

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