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At the beginning of 2000, I became engaged in a curriculum development and evaluation project at an environmental education centre that I have called ‘The Green Machine’. I was employed at the centre to write mathematics curriculum materials and to evaluate their effectiveness. I did not complete the materials or the evaluation.

A particular classroom incident, and the vignette I used to portray it, had a significant impact on the interpretative framework for my research into scientific literacy. In this chapter, I will trace the salient elements of this vignette including its construction, justification, and effects. I present the vignette, and then track back to the research methodology that I employed, which guided the writing of the vignette. I explain how this writing led to the emergence of a metaphorical framework for scientific literacy and conclude with a discussion of the criteria used to judge these forms of representation.

During 1996, in my role as a science teacher and researcher, I conducted an intensive participant observational study in an innovative Australian middle school. The activity involved team teaching with a group of five teachers attempting to implement curricular innovations such as portfolio assessment, integrated curriculum, and teacher collaborative planning. I chose a narrative methodology, including ‘impressionist tales of the field’ (Van Maanen, 1988), to both conduct and represent this research into my own and others’ teaching practices and values. A ‘novel’ woven from those narratives, entitled ‘School Stories’, formed a significant proportion of the research report.

I live in a quiet quintessential English village. In the centre of the village are the ‘green’ and duck pond, the bus stop, one pub, and the village shop. The church is also there with its rising damp and fallen grave stones. One morning I went to collect my newspaper from the shop on the way home from church. On entering the shop I was asked, ‘Did you see the punk?’ I had to reply in the negative, as I could not recollect seeing a punk. ‘He was waiting for the bus, you must have seen him, you couldn’t miss him so glad he got on the bus we don’t want the likes of him around here’, ‘you should have seen him Rev’d Georgie he was dreadful – purple spiky hair, black jeans and shirt, and a black leather jacket he had rings in his ears and even one in his eyebrow. I was scared he might come in the shop’.

In resolving issues such as research problems, my opinion is that one should try hard to ensure the robustness of the solution and its reasonable lifespan. My respect for the processes that underpin research projects emanates from this position. Whilst I do not necessarily agree with him completely, it is against the same background that I understand Mouly (as cited in Cohen and Manion, 1980) when he writes: ‘Research is best conceived as the process of arriving at dependable solutions to problems through the planned and systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of data’ (p. 29). Meanwhile, Schumacher and McMillan (1993) consider research as ‘a systematic process of collecting and logically analysing information (data) for some purpose’ (p. 8). The centrality of the need for systematisation in both cases cannot be overemphasised. However, the questions that arose for me were: what does it mean to be systematic? Is it planned or does it emerge? These questions sounded simplistic at first. However, it soon dawned on me that these questions are the core concerns of methods and methodologies. How one responds to them is largely dependent on one’s set of beliefs and values, or simply put, on one’s paradigm or an interpretative framework (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994).

Reflecting on ethical issues in science brings me back to the time when I was studying at the University of Salzburg in Austria for my master’s degree. I was enrolled in a science degree in genetics when I decided halfway through my studies to change over to science education. For me, the reason to study science in the first place, had been to ‘contribute to creating a better world’. So what had changed? What were the reasons for changing from science to science education? Two disturbing memories emerged that might explain my motivation:

Perhaps the place to start, in this discussion between you and my written word, would be to ask with what assumptions you approach the academic world of research. Would you argue that qualitative research is concerned with the generation of deeper and richer understandings of human experience? Do you approach your research with the belief that you will be able to identify a generalisable truth that will serve the interests of others? Do you believe both of these or neither? How you answer these questions will impact greatly on how you make sense of what is now in your hands.

‘Have you thought how you are going to represent this?’ John asked me the dreaded question again. I think this was the third time, and I was beginning to wonder why it was a grave concern of his. After some consideration, I realised at the heart of his questioning is some fundamental reasoning in qualitative research – when I know, or think I know how I am going to represent something, it is far easier to work out when I am finished collecting data and begin the writing process!

‘A flower garland for the storyteller and a gold garland for the story listeners’ is a famous Nepali adage spoken at the end of each storytelling ritual. It indicates the value of telling stories in our cultural context. It also indicates the value of reading and interpreting others’ stories, as the listener is supposed to be awarded a gold garland. With this inspiration, my initial narrative journey starts with a story about my experience of primary school mathematics. Gradually, I create an impressionistic plot with a special focus on my theme – foreign mathematics – that emerges from my experience. Perhaps, it depicts my predisposition towards the way I had been taught mathematics in my school education. In the very beginning of my exploration, I wish to raise a number of questions: Why did I raise this issue? Why did I write this particular story?