Theft and ethics in life portrayal: Lolly—the final story

‘One goal [of educational research] must be to produce accounts which deny the reader [the] comfort of a shared ground with the author, foreground ambivalence and undermine the authority of their own assertions’ (Stronach & MacLure, 1998, p. 57). In this paper the author seeks to do two things. First, he relates the meaning and value of stories in educational settings to some current disquiets about educational research generally. Second he articulates, through a story, the morality of taking from the lives of others in order to expose an ethical dilemma. The argument throughout is essentially one about the nature and role of language in the creation of research processes and findings.