RESEARCH PAPER
Storytelling for Learning and Healing: Parallel
Narrative Inquiries in Language Counselling
Leena Karlsson & Fergal Bradley, University of Helsinki Language Centre
In the Autonomous Language Learning Modules (ALMS) programme at the University of Helsinki Language Centre,
language counselling is the primary pedagogical medium in a self-directed degree-required English course. Storytelling and sharing stories is central to the practice of counseling: students tell stories in counselling to make senseof their language learning pasts and presents and take charge of their futures. Correspondingly, much researchin ALMS has been narrative inquiry (Karlsson, 2013, 2015; Bradley & Karlsson, 2017) with counsellors engaging with
their own stories and those of their students and peers in order to develop their professional practice. In this article, two ALMS counsellors—Leena Karlsson and Fergal Bradley—present parallel practitioner inquiries which explore the narrative nature of counselling and the learning that occurs on ALMS courses. The inquiries both explore
ideas of learning and healing and the role storytelling plays in these processes. Fergal’s inquiry takes inspirationfrom the practice and research of narrative-based medicine, and he uses this as a starting point for examining thedifferent narratives of learning that students recount in counselling. Leena’s inquiry focuses on the narrative of
one particular student, wounded by language anxiety, and how telling his story in counselling and through reflective writing has helped him begin the process of healing. Both inquiries emphasise the power of narrative knowing
in the practice and research of language counselling and language learning.
ヘルシンキ大学のランゲージセンターの自律学習モジュール（ALMS）
プログラムではカウンセリングが主たる教授法である。ここでは学習者がカウンセラーと自身の過去や現在の言語学習経験を通して、将来の言語学習者(language
learner)としての自分について語る。
従って、必然的にALMSで行われる研究の大半はナラティブ手法が中心となっている（Karlsson, 2013 & 2015; Bradley & Karlsson,2017) 。自身のプロフェッショナル ディベロップメントに繋げていくため、カウンセラーは自分のナラティブ、また、同僚や学習者のストーリーに取り組んでいる。本稿では二人のカウンセラー（Leena Karlsson とFergal Bradley）がそれぞれのナラティブから通してみられる
ALMSプログラムにおいての学習とカウンセリングの実態を考察する。特に「学習」と「ヒーリング(healing)」の二つのテーマを中心に、本研究での「語り」(narrative)が果たす役割りを探究する。Fergalは医療学の観点からヒントを得て、narrative based medicine(NBM)に着目し、学習者のナラティブを分析する。一方で、Leenaは第二言語不安を訴える一人の学習者に焦点をあて、カウンセリングで行われた語
りや省察を通じて彼が立ち直っていく過程を追う。いずれもnarrative knowingが実践、及び、カウンセリングや言語学習の研究においていかに意義のあるものであるかを物語っている。

Keywords
autoethnography, autonomy, language counselling, narrative, writing as inquiry

キーワード
オートエスノグラフィー、オートノミー、語学カウンセリング、ナラティブ、

Our Context and Commitments
Much research in education has highlighted the importance of educators sharing stories ofpractice as a means of fostering professional growth and wellbeing (e.g., Barfield & Delgado,
2013; Conle, 2000; Connelly & Clandinin, 1999; Elbaz-Luwisch, 2002). These stories—storiesof who we are as professionals, “our stories to live by” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999)— “sustain, shift, and freeze” (Estefan, Caine & Clandinin, 2016, para 5) our practice over time. For
practitioner-researchers, attending to lived, felt, remembered, and told experiences throughstories is both an ontological and epistemological commitment Estefan, Caine, and Clandinin(2016) argue for experience as a valuable source of knowledge and understanding for practice Central to the study, and indeed the creation, of experiential and embodied knowledge is
one’s context of practice and one’s commitment to it Through this inquiry, a narrative study
in language counselling, we—Leena Karlsson and Fergal Bradley—seek to add to our professional growth and wellbeing in our work context, the Autonomous Language Learning Mo-

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dules (ALMS) programme at the University of Helsinki And by doing this, we aim to improve
the quality of life and learning for our students
We work as language counsellors (advisers is a more frequently used and analogous term,see Mynard & Carson, 2012) in the ALMS programme, a type of English course that fulfils theforeign-language study requirements for undergraduates at our university Language counselling is the primary means to support learner development and autonomy; the counsellor’srole is to inspire and encourage lifewide experiential learning, to safeguard emotional learning, and to help create spaces for reflection. Detailed accounts of the programme can be foundelsewhere (e.g., Karlsson, Kjisik, & Nordlund, 1997, 2007) but in a nutshell, the key featuresof the ALMS programme can be seen in Figure 1•

Two initial learner awareness sessions (4 hours plus 2 hours) in groups of 20, led by
one of the ALMS team of teachers and counsellors•

Learning histories discussed and written as free-form texts or using Kaleidoscope(www.helsinki.fi/kksc/alms).

•

Personally meaningful goals and learning programmes•

Learning logs and diaries, with a focus on reflection on learning.

•

Skills Support Groups on a wide range of academic, professional, and lifewide skills;
teacher-facilitated to a greater or lesser extent•

Counselling: 3 individual 15–20-minute meetings per module:•

1st counselling focus on concept of autonomy, reflection, learning history, and study
plan•

2nd counselling focus on work/learning progress and reflection•

3rd counselling focus on learning outcomes, learner identity, portfolio discussion,and visualizing the future

Figure 1. Key Features of a 14-week ALMS programme
Practitioner research, arising out of a shared inquiry-orientation in the programme, iscentral to our work We believe in its cyclic nature: “as one work ends, another work begins”(Choi, 2016, p 41) Our dual role as counsellors and researchers demands a continuous criticaland ethical re-appraisal of our work, our words, and actions Counselling skills as actions, as“the words we use, the body language we radiate, the talk and silences we create” (Karlsson &Kjisik, 2015, p 7) are crucial in supporting learner development and autonomy; they are also
skills that we need to keep developing to make (better) sense of our own counselling We feelthat cultivating a curiosity about experience, the diverse unique experiences of our students,
is important and best done through narrative inquiry We have previously written educational stories emerging out of our practice both collaboratively (Bradley, Karlsson & et al., 2015;
Bradley & Karlsson, 2017) and individually (Karlsson, 2013, 2015, 2017).

Setting the Scene
Storytelling, a phenomenon and a method (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), is an establishedresearch praxis and a recognized form of communication on the ALMS landscape (Karlsson,
2008, 2013, 2015) In this project, we wanted to extend a previous inquiry, a narrative autoethnographic project (Bradley & Karlsson, 2017), and continue exploring language counselling dialogues and reflective writing practices (free writing, diary/journal writing, and collabLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 2 • December 2018

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orative scholarly writing from experience) in our own unique context using novel narrativeinquiry approaches This inquiry involves telling, sharing, co-constructing, and re-constructing experiential and empowering stories with our learners and each other We want to further
deepen our understanding of writing as a method of data collection, creation, and analysis
and collaborative writing as narrative inquiry in itself (Li, Conle, & Elbaz Luwisch, 2009).
Through engaging with literature, we learned from narrative inquiry approaches and researchtechniques and, in our two parallel inquiries, we explored how we could improve the pedagogical dialogue of counselling using our deepened narrative understandings and skills
In the previous project (Bradley & Karlsson, 2017), we aimed at bridging the gap between
experience and reflection in our writing, and we were interested in experimenting further
with autoethnography We feel that it can generate “thick description” (Geertz, 1973) andmore creative accounts than data gained through using only interview-based qualitative
methods. In another research account (written concurrently with Bradley & Karlsson, 2017),
Leena attempted to give a glimpse of the strong emotions and reactions affecting her counseling at the time, and how they “shifted” her practice (Karlsson, 2017) Listening to therecorded research discussion with her student Kaisa, Leena felt that it had not been dialogic
enough because, in her counsellor-researcher role, she had dominated the discussion Consequently, she considered adapting Horsdal’s narrative interviewing technique (Horsdal, 2012)
for her context in a future inquiry In her interviews, Horsdal listens attentively, without
interrupting, to the person telling her life story but she also writes attentively, that is, records
the teller’s words verbatim pen on paper This means that the writer needs to be fully present
in the moment of telling, which felt like a potential solution to the “counsellor-researcher
talking too much” that was evident in the recorded interview
When planning this inquiry, however, the writing and recording process suggested by Horsdal
felt too distanced from our pedagogical idea of sharing stories and storytelling in the counselling
dialogue (Karlsson, 2008, 2013, 2015) and the principles of exploratory research (see for example Allwright, 2003), that is, research as non-invasive and fully integrated into our counselling
pedagogy At that point, our reading was taking us to narrative-based medicine (Fergal) andtherapeutic writing (Leena), and to the ideas of growth and healing as part of our pedagogies
for autonomy For both of us, the process of ongoing narrative inquiry was pointing towards a
re-consideration of our pedagogies, and on reflecting more on the meaning and realization ofstorytelling as part of the counselling dialogue (Karlsson, 2013, 2015) In particular, we wanted
to make the idea of telling more explicit and meaningful to our students
What follows are accounts of two parallel inquiries, Fergal’s and Leena’s, which both explore ideas from narrative research to enrich their counselling and their understanding of it
The text then closes with a coda, which draws together ideas from both texts, reflecting on
the writing and research process and back to counselling

Fergal: Towards a Narrative-based Counselling
Finding Inspiration in Narrative-based Medicine
The writer, researcher, and oncologist, Siddhartha Mukherjee (2015), argues for new metaphors within the field of medicine. He talks of changing the metaphor from one of “have disease, take pill, kill something”—a metaphor of lock and key—to one of growth. He is talking
here about a new type of medicine—using the body’s own cells rather than antibiotics. However, he is also talking about a different way of thinking about and practicing medicine, as
metaphors structure “how we perceive, how we think, and what we do” (Lakoff & Johnson,
1980, p. 4). In language learning, the field of learner autonomy has long espoused a view oflanguage learning based not on deficiency within an imperfect learner, but on person-centred

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growth, which is “grounded in language use, engages learner’s identities and agency, andexploits their existing repertoires while extending them” (Little, 2017) This view of language
learning underpins the ALMS programme, where I work as a language counsellor In realizing
this view of language learning, much of the research and practice within the programme has
been narrative, focusing on the experiences of learners and counsellors and viewing growth
and transformation as central to learning (see, for example, Karlsson & Kjisik, 2009; Kjisik,
Karlsson, & von Boehm, 2012; Karlsson, 2013).
In ALMS, stories are everywhere We ask students to write their language learning histories at the beginning of the course to make their English story explicit We use this narrative
to co-construct a plan of study with the student As the course develops, we ask students toextend and develop that story through writing, in their logs/diaries, and through discussion,in counselling As counsellors, we tell stories to guide students and to share our experiences
and learn from each other We also tell stories to ourselves, to make sense of our practices and deal with the emotions that teaching and counselling confronts us with This concern
with stories is reflected in previous research in ALMS, as mentioned above, and it inspires
this project on how narrative research approaches can be used in ALMS counselling, both as amethod of inquiry and a pedagogical approach
Early in this project, my reading took me to narrative-based medicine (NBM) Here, I was
struck by how many of the concerns resonated with my own work as a language counsellor
Firstly, there was explicit concern for the whole person There was also a parallel between
the relationship of healthcare professionals and patients with that of ALMS counsellor andstudent, particularly in the interaction between both parties, who both bring knowledge toencounters and co-create it during them. In addition, NBM embraces the benefits that stories
can bring to our ways of knowing and being Most importantly, perhaps, it emphasises theimportance of telling and sharing stories in order to heal and to learn Consider, for example,
the similarity between Frank (1995, p 1) on ill people:
They learn [to deal with illness] by hearing themselves tell stories, absorbing others’ reactions,and experiencing their stories being shared.
And Aoki (2010, p 1) on teachers:
It is by living, telling, retelling and reliving secret stories that teachers make meaning of theirclassroom experience and reflect on it.
In NBM, the idea is not to replace traditional evidence-based medicine with one based
solely on stories, but that stories and storytelling can complement and develop traditional
approaches to curing illness In the same way, narrative research suggests tools for and approaches to counselling and the study of counselling, adding to rather than replacing existing pedagogical and linguistic knowledge, understanding and practice NBM includes several
strands: narratives of patients, narratives of physicians, narratives of patient-physician interactions and grand medical narratives (Kalitskus & Mathiessen, 2009). In this inquiry into
narrative in counselling, I refer to student stories, my own counsellor story, and the story of
the interaction between the two In doing so, I contribute to the existing body of ALMS research, as well as literature on learner autonomy and language advising/counselling
By referring to NBM, I do not wish to pathologise ALMS students It is true that some cometo ALMS wounded by previous experiences of language learning and language use (Karlsson
2015, 2016 and see Leena’s text below), but the parallel I want to make is that of NBM’s useof narrative in the healing process with the role of narratives in ALMS as part of the learning
process Leena and I decided on a project which would make narrative explicit in our counselling sessions To me, this has developed into what I could call narrative-based counselling,
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Storytelling for Learning and Healing: Parallel Narrative Inquiries in Language Counsellingwhich is, to paraphrase Kalitzkus and Mathiessen (2009) on NBM, a specific pedagogical tool,a special form of student-counsellor communication, a qualitative research tool, and a particular attitude towards students, teaching, and learning

Researching and Practicing a Narrative-based Counselling
My venture into narrative-based counselling began with an email to students In this message, written by both Leena and me, we asked students to think about their ALMS courses as
stories for the third and final counselling session.
In this meeting, I invite you to tell the story of your ALMS course. For example, how did you
complete your ALMS hours? How did you reflect on your work? What did you learn? And what
successes/failures/feelings did you experience during the course? Finally, how will the story of
your English continue after the ALMS course? (Extract from our email to the students before
the final counselling session)
I used these questions and prompts to scaffold the final counselling sessions: asking, allowing and helping the students to tell the stories of their ALMS courses Through the students’ stories, I was able to fulfil some basic counsellor duties, such as checking that theplan of study had been completed I was also able to enact a pedagogy for autonomy, with thestorytelling transferring agency and ownership to the students and serving as a medium forreflection. By connecting these ALMS stories to the language learning histories that students
wrote at the beginning of the course, students were placing their course into the context of
their other language learning and language use experiences. And the final questions extended
the discussion of learning beyond the ALMS course, evoking ideas of life-long, life-wide andlife-deep learning (Karlsson & Kjisik, 2011).
My method of reflecting on the counselling sessions was one of free writing. After eachgroup of counselling sessions, usually three or four at a time, I sat down to write about thestudents’ narratives, particularly how they positioned the ALMS course in relation to theirlearning and their lives. Thus, the free writing became a reflective diary for my counselling,mirroring what the learners are asked to do during their course I have previously used freewriting as a research method (Bradley & Karlsson, 2017). In doing so, I use Richardson’s ideaof “writing as a method of inquiry” (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005): using writing to collectand create data—the free-writing diary—as well as to analyse data—the stories my students
told me I was recording my experience of the students’ stories and, at the same time, making
sense of and theorising them

Figure 2. Fergal’s free-writing diary104

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One theory I brought to this project was the idea of transformation from language learner to language user The growth into being a language user is a narrative familiar to ALMS
counsellors, in that we have often heard it in counselling and observed it taking place during
ALMS courses It is also a narrative we value: we discuss language learning and language
use in ALMS opening sessions and it has been discussed in previous ALMS research, such as
Karlsson and Kjisik’s article on life-wide and life-deep learning (2011) This idea is also referred to in the wider literature on learner autonomy (see for example Benson, 1994 and there
are echoes in the quote from David Little cited above)
I understand this transformation primarily as an identity shift, based on an individual’s
subjective criteria for what constitutes the change Thus, in this project, I listened to the students’ narratives, wrote about them and re-read my writing with the idea of transformationfrom language learner to user in mind I was interested to see if and how it manifested itself
in the students’ stories of their ALMS course and if there were other contrasting or complimentary narratives, which would emerge from my free-writing diary

Four Types of Narrative
While I was listening to and free writing about the students’ stories of their ALMS courses, I
did indeed encounter the narrative of transformation or growth from being a language learner to being a language user However, I also picked out three other narratives in the stories
Identifying these four narratives is my attempt to understand the student stories told to me
and co-constructed with me in counselling In recounting them, both immediately in thefree-writing diary and here in this text, I want to remain faithful to what the students told
me However, I recognise too that they are, perhaps primarily, my narratives of how I experienced the student stories The quotations I use to illustrate these narratives are not direct
quotations from students, but rather they are quotations from the students written down in
my free writing
The narrative of transformation or growth from learner to user was present in the stories
several students told to me It was characterised by a change in the students’ language practices, particularly changes involving agency, engagement and participation Students consciously decided to use English in communicative situations and reported feelings of confidence in their ability to succeed in doing so•

Now, I actually say something in English, instead of just saying “yeah, yeah”.

•

I joined a Facebook group, posted replies and even started discussions (Student’s emphasis)(Comments from two students who became users, rather than learners, during their ALMS
course)The second type of narrative was one of looking to the future Several students talked of
becoming a user of English but, unlike the previous students, they talked of it in a less immediate sense; it was something that was going to happen This sense or knowledge shaped thework they did on the course, which for many of these students focused on academic reading
and vocabulary. For some students, the future orientation was specific, while for others it wasmore general. While writing about the first narrative, I was struck by the agency, engagement, and participation of the students In this second narrative, the emphasis was placed
more on necessity or obligation, recognising the importance of and the need to be able to use
English I did not note the same sense of investment or identity shift with these students and,
although the work they had done seemed valuable to both them and me, they did not talkabout it in the same way; they told a different story.
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We will have to read and write more at the MA level.

•

I will have to use English at work

(Comments from two students who looked a future where they used English more)In the third narrative type, I also did not note a feeling of identity shift from learner touser These students appeared to remain learners and they emphasised learning, continuing to learn, and indeed learning better Here I was struck particularly by the students’
self-awareness of learning, what to study and how to learn In their stories, however, English
was still something to learn or to study, rather than a language to use throughout their lives•

I’m on my way.

•

I know now what I need to do.

•

I’ll continue with more specialised English.

(Comments from three students who continued to see themselves as leaners by the end of thecourse)Finally, the fourth narrative was one of revisiting learning These students tended to be
ones who already identified as users of the language at the beginning of the course. For them,the story was of learning more deeply, learning aspects of the language they had not considered before and relearning aspects of the language they had in new ways They all pointed tothe importance of reflection and noticing to develop learning further Here there was, in myreading, a reinhabiting or reinvigoration of the idea of being a learner, without losing any
sense of them being users of the language•

I really noticed what I was doing when I was speaking English.

•

You have to use English all the time anyway, but reflection made me think about what I could learn.

•

You can use English without really learning, but you can also really learn by using English.

(Comments from three students who (re)embraced the idea of being learners during thecourse)Making Sense of the Narratives
I do not want to suggest that these are the only possible ALMS narratives; they are simply
what I found counselling one group of students I went looking for narratives of growth andtransformation from learner into user of English, and along with these I found three other,related but sometimes contrasting types of story
What I see from this inquiry is a more nuanced picture of the transformation from language
learner to language user This narrative does seem valid in that it is a story some students tell
about their ALMS courses and an experience some have on the course Thus, it can serve as atool for understanding my work as a language counsellor and for understanding how to support students in their learning However, I also see that it was, for me, becoming somethingof a sacred story (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995), that is, something I was beginning to take for
granted as the principal goal or most valuable outcome of an ALMS course My free writing inthis project reminded me that students view the valuable work they do in ALMS in many different ways and tell different types of story to make sense of their learning experiences. For
example, the second type showed me that transformation into being a user of the language

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is dependent on many factors in a person’s life and is not something a course or a counsellor
can necessarily effect. Indeed, it is for the individual, the learner, to realise a change like this,and for a counsellor or teacher to listen and support The third and fourth narratives show
there is room for growth within the identity of a learner and that it is not simply a stage topass through They also showed students (re)embracing language learner identities and becoming autonomous agents taking charge of their learning (Dam, Eriksson, Little, Miliander& Trebi, 1990, p. 102). The role of learner could also coexist with that of a user of English.
This project has also encouraged me to rethink my own vocabulary, especially in relation
to words such as transformation, change, and growth. While the first and the fourth narratives
matched my initial idea of transformation as something dramatic and dynamic, the learners whose stories fit the second or third narrative had less obviously transformative ALMS
courses To me, many of these students had made dramatic changes in the way they learned
or used English or in their attitudes towards the language However, their stories emphasised
the continuity with what they had done before and how their English learning and use would
continue. These differences in perspective are a warning to me not to push any one idea oftransformation on the students Instead, allowing students to tell their own stories and listening to them seems to better support their autonomy in evaluating and making sense of
their own learning experiences
Making the storytelling explicit in the final counselling session has been a useful tool inlearning about my students It has also been a practical pedagogical tool, positioning thestudents as agents and narrators of their own language course However, writing about medicine, Frank (1998, p 199) warns against seeing the telling of and listening to stories as “another professional technique”, arguing that the benefits are lost when it becomes formulaic
and routine Therefore, my narrative-based counselling must be more than a pedagogical andresearch tool; it should also be a way of being in counselling, most of all, of listening—actively, critically and empathetically—to the students as people as they tell the story of their
ALMS course and its role in their lives

Leena: Writing in the Dark
In the following story, nested within our umbrella story, I want to show how, again, “it’s allin the writing” (Bochner, 2012) in narrative autoethnography, my chosen inquiry approach
A big part of this work has meant “writing in the dark” (van Manen, 2002, p 2), and theresulting text remains a writing “exercise”, only an approximation of the unpredictable andunexpected reality, always open to another interpretation
My previous published texts (e g Karlsson, 2008, 2013, 2015) can be seen as small ethnographies of the ALMS landscape They are accounts of being out there, to be read from theposition of being firmly rooted in the here and now of each current writing. More recently(Karlsson, 2017), I have been drawn to autoethnography because it combines autobiography
and ethnography: research becomes a braiding of personal memories, experiences and feelings on the one hand, and being in the field, as part of the landscape, always alert and sensitive to contextual influences on the other. I understand these writing exercises (van Manen,
2002) as nested tellings, as nested ecologies of practice and research, a “sequence of tales”(Pinkola Estes, 1992, p 1, quoted in Speedy, 2004, p 25) In the ALMS programme, I havebeen answering questions with stories for nearly two decades; stories have evoked other stories and my answers have thus become several stories long I would like to name this methodology a “storytelling” (Carteret, 2008; Karlsson, 2013, 2015)
In this inquiry, one of a series of stories from ALMS counselling (Karlsson, 2015, 2017;
Bradley & Karlsson, 2017), I ponder on a way forward at this moment in time: I ask myself
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what a facilitator of therapeutically oriented writing in my context can learn from her reading and writing in order to fully appreciate students’ unique telling, and what kind of understandings can support her work with students In my inquiry I listen to and write about
the inaudible, silent stories or voiceless telling of university students with English language(classroom) anxiety. The student voice in my account is Juhanai, who was a student in my
special peer-group in ALMS in spring 2017 His words, mostly unedited, come from two texts
in his ALMS portfolio, his learning history and a final reflective essay, which were both discussed in our counselling meetings. Juhana’s story is told and written from the experience ofsomeone whose identity as a university student, with a need to study in and through English,
is “wounded” I am also committed to our, mine and Fergal’s, common goal to make storytelling in the context of counselling more explicit to our students There is always a dangerof inadvertently controlling students’ experiences in the counselling discussion; a dangerof keeping them away from the “best” answers, that is, the stories that belong to them We
share a concern for potentially stopping students from telling their story or starting a questioning game (van Manen, 2002) This concern has been one of the tensions leading into thisjoint project and its focus on respecting students’ unique ways of telling
In my account, I am attempting to write about Juhana’s experience with curiosity and respect, always remaining aware of the openness of my interpretation and my limits as a writer His words punctuate my practitioner-researcher’s ponderings; my account is partly a
response story, my reaction to his telling infiltrated with insights from my reading, but also aparallel story emerging from the shared experiential context of ALMS programme counsellingwhere storytelling permeates communication, written and spoken Writing has been the medium of thinking, reflection, knowing and, this time particularly, experimentally, of “playful but serious authoring” (Hamilton, 2014, p 46); it has also been therapeutic But writers
always start as readers: I understand the writer, myself, to be a curious reader who willingly
enters into textual dialogues with other writers both in and through her reading, writing anddiscussions She is also an active reader of her own texts and of herself; ideally, writing begins from “genuine self-reading” (van Manen, 2002) So my practitioner-researcher story
starts from reading

Reading as “Rewriting”
Early in this inquiry, I read van Manen’s wonderful book (2002), which is about reading as
much as it is about writing; his ideas echo in my inquiry and in my thinking about storytelling as a method and a practice In his interpretation, reading means rewriting the text being
read, and interpretive reflective texts invite the reader to “write what the author forgot, overlooked, could not see or hear or remember” (van Manen, 2002, p 8)
I read with van Manen’s words in mind: qualitative inquiry needs to ask what is required ofwriting and language; it needs to query what the possibilities and limits of writing are (vanManen, 2002) I mainly explored literature on narrative inquiry in education (e g , Estefan,
Caine, & Clandinin, 2016; Hunt, 2013; van Manen, 2002) as well as texts on reflective personal(such as exploratory, expressive and/or therapeutic writing) and texts on reflective academic writing (for example, creative, different, or playful). Two particularly inspiring texts were
those by Fiona Hamilton (2014) and Siri Hustvedt (2016) whose words addressed me and invited me “to dwell in [this] interpretative reflective space” (van Manen, 2002, p. 8) they had
managed to create in their texts
Siri Hustvedt’s essay is a personal account of working as a facilitator of therapeutic writingfor psychiatric inpatients in a New York clinic Fiona Hamilton’s article is a beautifully writ1i

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Juhana gave me permission to use his story and words in this paper. He read the draft and approved of my restorying.
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Leena Karlsson & Fergal Bradleyten academic text growing out of her own experiences as a writer and facilitator Hamilton
reflects on what collaborative therapeutic writing is and can be. Both writers make it easy forthe reader to read with the stories told and to vicariously experience the lived and remembered, because there is a strong quality of telling, of writing, from experience in their texts
They call attention on individual experience as a source of knowledge for practice (Estefan,
Caine, & Clandinin, 2016) and let their narrative understandings speak in the texts. I feel thatthey both reach out to finding and using sensitive interpretative tools of life lived and felt,
in and through their very writing For both, writing is a method of thinking, of discovering
what they think, and a method of knowing (Hamilton, 2014; Hustvedt, 2016) It is in Laurel
Richardson’s revolutionary idea of “writing as a method of inquiry” (Richardson & St. Pierre,2005) that my path crosses Hustvedt’s and Hamilton’s and, as a reader, I get to meet them
Likewise, when I read Juhana’s learning history, in which he uses his own experience as asource of knowing and learning from it, his text immediately drew me into his story His telling from experience had me “dwell in the interpretive reflective space” that he, like Hustvedt
and Hamilton, had created His story begins when he meets “a ghost from the past” at the
beginning of his ALMS course:
Juhana: … when I got through the entrance exams… A whole universe of my life moved forward. A few years earlier I had found a subject called sociology. My life, all tattered, unclear andstrange, now pieces came together. The world had received an explanation. The only but was
one ghost from my past: my own view of my English learning capabilities was completely lost. I
used the time to study where I was good and try to forget whole of the English language which
was very painful, regrettable and frustrating. One of the worst development was the social aspect. I had begun to feel ashamed and to avoid every situation which English language might beinvolved one way or another.
Juhana told his story in a massive portfolio—still unfinished in the final counselling—ascrapbook-like narrative, a hand-written portfolio of all his ALMS programme work It depicted
both his intellectual and emotional learning during the term; it reported on integrating his academic reading of texts in sociology and his lifewide cultural interests with his learning English;
it was full of pictures and visual representations of his extensive academic reading and diary
entries pondering on his English self and skills, his history, present and future; it was a true
narrative portfolio (Karlsson, 2016, 2017) and a writing ecology, an idea and a metaphor I haveused in earlier inquiries (Karlsson, 2016, 2017) In a writing ecology, a practitioner-researcher’sor a student’s, all the psychological, emotional, socio-cultural, even such mundane contextual
influences as sleeping, the weather or one’s health have their place (cf. Casanave, 2012).
Hamilton and Hustvedt share an interest in and a passion for “writing cures” (Bolton,
Howlett, Lago & Wright, 2004); I too am drawn to explore the power of expressive, exploratory writing that might have effects on individuals’ inner lives and their wellbeing. Both see
facilitating of therapeutic writing as helping to bring out authoring experiences in writers thatare experimental and playful, yet serious For many who have never considered themselves tobe “writers,” and who have written only in contexts where the focus is on the written product, therapeutic expressive writing, the freedom and inattention to grammar and style, canopen up new worlds Hamilton and Hustvedt talk about texts as partial, unedited, incomplete,and in flux, and writing texts as ways of engaging in a dialogue with oneself as other. Theyboth write about writing as a process and therapeutic writing as a particular way of “staying with the process” (Hamilton, 2014, p 39), that is, being in unhurried contact with boththe personal and the social narratives and being able to see the interplay of the two: looking
inwards (exploring the self) and outwards (being alert to the surrounding environment), andappreciating the fact that possibilities for alternative views on the self, one’s learning and
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being, and relations with others exist. Juhana looks inwards and outwards and plays with thelanguage, in the language, English, his nightmare from the past:Juhana: Where am I? Who am I? What are my possibilities, abilities, skills? What is my placein universe...there are too many questions when your only real task should be to think about
learning a language. All this questions have been with me and my ALMS… I have no answers
yet…I feel very strongly to be like in a wheelchair with my English…I’m a lost boy in postmodern
society. My language history was unpleasant in many ways. ALMS started to direct me in a different way. I reconsider my past, I rearrange my memories, rewrite my stories again and again.
That’s all magic…
In the counselling, I understood how therapeutic writing was helping Juhana to “generate,
capture and embrace” (Speedy, 2004, p. 27) the many different stories that he, a multi-storied human being, had the need and ability to tell and re-tell Telling became a process ofco-researching alternative stories, telling and re-telling (Speedy, 2004) Juhana’s telling in
English, however, only happened through writing; speaking in English in the counselling was
too emotionally challenging We spoke Finnish but the starting point was always in Juhana’s
texts in English:
Juhana: Speaking a foreign language and communication in that is still absolutely impossible
for me. But maybe this [written] reflection brings some little confidence. For if I’ve learnt anything about hermeneutics it is that, at the end there is always a new beginning.
All the way through the inquiry, I felt more attentive than ever before to the chaos that so
often follows troubling experiences, the knotted entanglements of life that can freeze ourhearts, minds and bodies Celia Hunt (2013) has used creative life writing for personal andprofessional development in higher education She suggests that a dialogue, a building of acreative bridge, between reflective and experiential work through writing can lead to transformative learning Transformative learning is an emotional and intellectual exercise, notonly conscious reason but also a bodily-felt and emotional experience (Hunt, 2013, p 15) andshould not be thought about too narrowly The relationship between teacher and student is
the key part of the student’s emotional learning and necessitates that the two “travel similarroads and speak from [our] own experiences” (Boyd & Myers, 1988 quoted in Hunt, 2013, p.
156) In this inquiry, like in the one before (Karlsson, 2017), my curiosity, the wondering, wasabout the emotional learning of my students. Juhana writes about his emotional “practicesof self” (de Carteret, 2008), bodily-felt and imaginal, his ways of thinking and feeling which
therapeutic writing was influencing:Juhana: … people have their public image, persona, identity ... But there is always other way
to look at it. That is a kind of alley behind the market. That is where they are lurking, all thosefears, anxiety, bad feelings, thoughts that you are stupid or unable to express your identity… Your
imagination could be different than reality. But if you dare step into, look at your background,
other side of you, reflection and shade, maybe you can manage all that stuff, organize to a category. I believe that is possible, to take fears with you and be with the past, but it takes time.
Juhana had managed to find a reflective space and a rhythm (Hamilton, 2016) of therapeutic, explorative and expressive writing and thus found a place for the imaginal Celia Hunt(2013) quotes Dirkx (2012, p 127) on a holistic approach to transformation in learning:
The imaginal is not intended to take the place of more analytic, reflective, and rational
processes that have been associated with transformative learning Rather, it is intended toprovide a more holistic and integrated way of framing the meaning-making that occurs incontemporary contexts for adult learning (Dirkx, 2012, p 127)

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Hamilton writes about the “reflective spaces” and “reflective rhythms” of therapeutic
writing; these can offer opportunities for “exploring personal meanings and sense of self andsituation” (Hamilton, 2014, p 36), which is exactly what anxious learners of English, in myexperience, have managed to do when gently persuaded to try out different forms of private
reflective writing, writing that is not rule-regulated and not necessarily meant for the teacher’s eyes (Karlsson, 2017). This happened with Juhana:
Juhana: I am not ready. I am completely unfinished. My ALMS program continue, it is not stopat all. This text [portfolio] is unfinished. It has started and ended already many times. I can’t
stop it anymore. Perpetual motion has been invented! My ALMS continues all the time, maybe
the rest of my life.
As Juhana’s counsellor, I travelled through what turned out to be a transformative learning
experience for him. Juhana’s words, I hope, address the readers and help them to think withhis story, a true example of writing from experience, an example of a “writing cure” happening in English for an anxious learner of the language His are words that give the reader anidea how reflective, expressive and exploratory, therapeutic writing can become a process of
self-discovery

Writing (different?) Academic Texts“Even in academic writing we can have an existential engagement with our project, thefeeling of mystery that has to be unraveled Sometimes it is a matter of life and death”(Lie, 2014, p 123)
I have been interested in (reflective) creative academic writing for a number of years andnow turned to van Manen when experiencing the challenge and difficulty of my writing effort, vividly described by van Manen as “writing in the dark” (van Manen, 2002, p 2): a qualitative researcher, a practitioner, is trying to write but “words just do not come”, and “thetext of writing seems so trite” This feeling comes from the fact that a research text, written
to be published, is always a retrospective, second, third or even fourth take on an experienceor episode in one’s practice and thus, very concretely, re-told and re-storied To situate myself at the moment of writing this current text, to position myself as deeply and exactly as I
could, I read and re-read myself in two now published, audience-oriented texts (Karlsson,
2017; Bradley & Karlsson, 2017) I (co)authored before this one. When trying to thus enter the
textual worlds I had created in them, I started the process of becoming the author for this new
text
There is “a reliance on process, changingness rather than on static knowledge” (Rogers,
1969, p 152) in my work with educational storytelling I am fully aware how previous stories always matter for a practitioner, how when one inquiry finishes, another one has already started Re-reading is a way of seeing what has happened and what these past writing
processes have been contributing to my practice In my text in Bradley and Karlsson (2017),
I refer to Wright and Bolton (2012) who describe a three-phase reflective writing process
for practitioners: the exploratory and expressive first writing, re+cording, (re=again andcord=heart) as in “getting closer to the heart”), re-reading to the Self (which becomes a wayof listening to oneself and can only happen after the writing), and finally a deep emotional
reading of one’s Self and a potential sharing with a confidential other. I have felt the powerof this three-phase process even more when authoring this story and feel very strongly thata practitioner-researcher, a writer, should always aim at genuine self-reading (van Manen,
2002), at being the first reader of her own text, reading and re-reading her Self in it (Wright& Bolton, 2012, p. 26).
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The idea of a writing ecology (Karlsson, 2015, 2016, 2017) has been with me for a few years
now. For one thing, it helps to build an organic whole out of different bits of data out there
in the counselling and research documents, personal and research diaries, and previous (published) texts Importantly, it helps letting this diverse storied data grow into an organic wholewith theory, the dialogues I have had with literature The idea of an ecology matches the wayof writing in autoethnographic work: the process is unpredictable, writing cannot be separated from research, data collection (and creation) overlaps analysis and interpretation, different
strands are connected through the reflective writing in the diaries and the ecology becomes away of being “existentially engaged” with the project
In my inquiry, through engaging with literature, re-reading myself and writing my way
feelingly through the inquiry, I have deepened my narrative understanding and skills for research and practice and of facilitating therapeutic writing practices; for example, how to listen appraisingly and attentively; how to be, and help students to be, more aware of experienceand the telling arising out of it; how to be curious and wonder; how to inspire (therapeutic)
writing in my students and keep engaging in writing exercises myself have deepened Traversing between the texts in the writing ecology has been a way of “sustaining” my (personaland) professional story to live by:What is the gain in reflective writing exercises in and for research, what is it good for? It’s learning, not outcomes but a feeling, a sensation whilst practising, of being more prepared, of listening better, of being more focussed, of making sense of life lived, of coping. It’s about wellbeing,
searching for and finding well words for coping! [An entry in my research diary in July 2017]

Closing (and Beginning Anew)
What if ethical academic writing should be re+cording all the way through, writing from theheart? What if academic writing should be a process full of spaces for reflection, for reckoning, and what if silent stories emerging in research should be allowed to keep a bit of theirmystery? What if it is re-cording that is necessary if we practitioners want to be pedagogicallytactful and thoughtful and even retrospectively respectful of the unique in our students (vanManen, 1997)? What if re+cording is the only way for a practitioner to write, and what if all
her published texts should only be considered writing exercises for the readers to re-write?
Writing and telling, the talking and writing, in this inquiry has been important; more important, however, has been listening to theirs, the students’ If the readers wonder why I
present only one ALMS programme student’s writing as a mirror to my own ponderings on
the writing and counselling, my answer comes in Siri Hustvedt’s words (2016, p 111): “…wemust be careful not to treat one person’s story as evidence of nothing” (Hustvedt, 2016, p 111,
my bolding). The last words in this restorying will be Juhana’s:
Juhana: Birds which cannot perhaps fly all, but in my counsellor’s mind, it makes no difference.
There are perhaps birds which have never started to fly but they can jump and bounce very well
too. And maybe someday some of them can fly, some still hopping, but that is enough.

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Leena Karlsson & Fergal Bradley

Coda

Figure 3. Leena and Fergal meeting to discuss the project
Comprising two parallel inquiries into narrative research in language counselling, thisarticle has grown out of several sources We both work as counsellors together in the ALMS
programme and have a shared interest in developing our counselling through practitioner
research (Bradley & Karlsson et al., 2015; Bradley & Karlsson, 2017). Most immediately, however, this article came into being through regular meetings we held during the spring of 2017(see Figure 3) We began, as mentioned above, from Leena’s idea to use a research techniqueoutlined by Horsdal (2012) to develop and inquire into our counselling practice This idea
evolved during our discussions, which touched on our professional and personal reading, as
well as our counselling practice and indeed our life experiences over these few months
While we began the project together, writing individual texts for our parallel inquiries overthe summer of 2017 took us away from one another, and our inquiries took new turns, following our reading and the data we collected in our individual counselling encounters Thus,
the inquiries are both independent and integrally linked We show our individual counsellor/
researcher voices yet, at the same time, present a crystallisation (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005,
p 963) of the stories and the telling that makes up the messy ecology of ALMS: the voices ofcounsellors and students, shared trajectories and individual journeys
Alongside our shared interest in narrative and storytelling, two key concerns emerge fromboth our inquiries: learning and healing Our approaches and understandings, however, clearly differ. Fergal’s inquiry takes ideas from narrative-based medicine, using them to inspire
his counselling practice and as a lens through which to view it The relationship between
learning and healing is an analogy In Leena’s inquiry, this relationship is much closer, more
palpable and visceral. This is embodied in Juhana’s learning journey, which in part involves
healing wounds from previous language learning and use experiences While narrative-based
medicine inspired Fergal’s inquiry and practice, Leena’s use of therapeutic writing in her special peer group in ALMS is of direct relevance to such wounded learners
Leena describes Juhana’s ALMS course as a process of self-discovery, and this idea links
with Fergal’s students’ narratives of their ALMS course While few of his students seemed
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Storytelling for Learning and Healing: Parallel Narrative Inquiries in Language Counsellingwounded in any comparable way, all of them were engaged in some form of self-discovery,
identifying themselves in relation to English and its role in their lives The self-discovery
is also important for counsellors And we, like our students, learn and even heal, actually or
metaphorically, through writing and telling our stories

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Review ProcessThis paper was peer-reviewed by the following contributor to Issue 2, Nicole Gallagher It wasalso blind peer-reviewed by members of the Learner Development Journal Review Network.

Author Bio
Leena Karlsson is University Lecturer in English at the University of Helsinki Language Centre, Finland Her research and publications focus on language advising/counselling, learner/
teacher autonomy, learner diversity, and narrative inquiry and stories in educational settings
She coordinates the ALMS Programme at the Language Centre Pedagogy for autonomy is thedriving force in her practiceFergal Bradley is University Instructor in English at the University of Helsinki Language
Centre, Finland His teaching and research interests include language advising/counselling,learner/teacher autonomy, academic writing, identity in second language learning and teaching, and practitioner research as a means of learning and professional development

Endnotes
1

2

Modules refer to the constitutive elements of a course or programme of study Undergraduates
students typically study 6 x 20 credit modules a year or a total of 18 (360 credits) for a three-year
undergraduate degree
Common European Framework for Languages

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