Text or testament? A comparison of educational and literary critical approaches to research

This paper argues that a wholehearted acknowledgement of the fictionality of the research process creates scope for the development of different and challenging perspectives on experience. It is a reflective account of undertaking research which combined a qualitative analysis of women's learning experiences with textual analyses of the popular romantic fictions they studied on their course. The many parallels between literary critical research and educational research are acknowledged, but major differences between the two approaches are also identified. It concludes that the existence of these differences may restrict the construction of unusual and eccentric, but challenging and insightful analyses of fieldwork data.