Abstract

MELIN, Valérie. School dropouts tell themselves: How can the research interview contribute to the deconstruction of negative identities?. Rev. Port. de Educação [online]. 2020, vol.33, n.2, pp.310-328.  Epub Dec 31, 2020. ISSN 0871-9187.  https://doi.org/10.21814/rpe.19753.

This article questions the research interview as a way to promote and support the emancipation process of social actors experiencing stigmatization, in the context of a research on biographical trajectories of former dropouts coming back to school. By developing an interview methodology based on the theoretical principles of biographical research in education, several conditions favourable to this emancipation process were identified. Taking these conditions into account makes possible, particularly, to avoid the pitfall of reducing the interviewee to an object used to know in order to consider him or her as a person responsible of his or her possible transformation through the interactions with the researcher. As another result, it appeared that the research interview is not without impact on the researcher who experiences, in contact with the interviewees, a kind of reciprocity, initiating also a change of position and a modification of his personal narrative.

Keywords : School dropout; Negative identity; Research interview; Biographical research in education.

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