Certainty, chaos and becoming

Abstract

Identifying how we become researchers can appear to be as straight forward as a narrative with a beginning, middle and an end. Yet, in life with all its complexities and chaos, extracting a single thread is not at all easy. In this narrative, I used the idea of “writing-stories” (Richardson, 1990) built around the identification of four “moments” in my life to explore strands of teacher/researcher/writer identities. I elicited the moments by drawing memory-maps (Creates, 1990; 1998) of places/images that came to mind when I thought of what might have influenced my identities. From the “writing-stories”, the memory-maps and the moments, I was able to detect enduring contours of influence. While this narrative and these contours may look coherent and certain, the experience of writing this paper has revealed exactly how identities are always partial, uncertain and in process.