Families and their learning: an auto/biographical imagination

This chapter summarises West's work, over many years, among families living in marginalised communities. Using auto/biographical narrative research, it illuminates the complex particularities of families' engagement with professionals, in diverse settings, and the deep ambiguities and ambivalence that may be involved. West chronicles, in fine grained detail, how individual but also collective transformations can be possible, given good enough relationships and opportunities for learning. Collective democratic learning is, perhaps, a surprising outcome of particular projects: space was created for experiments in collective action, as parents were encouraged to shape the development of programmes and to question authority; in effect, to talk back to power.