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As part of a course on changing attitudes developed by KREM, a Norwegian service user organization, narratives are used to explore and understand identity formation. The process is based on the role of shame in the lives of those whose life experiences lead to a reliance on government social benefits to sustain themselves. Shame is identified as an obstacle that affects everyday life and undermines one's capacity to take actions that can lead to and support self-sufficiency. Exploring oneself through the construction of the fairy tale can provide service users with a renewed sense of empowerment. Using identity formation and the concept of shame as the conceptual framework, this analysis focuses on the use of narratives to construct and interpret stories. It concludes with both practice and research implications of using narratives to acquire an understanding and sensitivity to service user perspectives. ; This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Natland, S., & Celik, H. D. (2015). Service Users' Self-Narratives on Their Journey from Shame to Pride: Tales of Transition. Journal of Evidence-Informed Social Work, (ahead-of-print), 1-14.[copyright Taylor & Francis], available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/15433714.2014.954943.

The King of Thailand's Sufficiency Economy (SE) has been heralded and influential in Thailand. It was also featured in the United Nations Development Programme Thailand Human Development Report 2007. Reports and personal stories of applying the SE are widely available. A striking remark is that many of these claims were backdated. Projects, activities, and practice claimed to be its implementation predated the SE in its present form. As the SE is caught in political struggles, this is perceived to reveal propaganda. In this article, through a case of Phooyai Wiboon's agroforestry, the act of backdating the claims is analyzed and re-interpreted with help of Ricoeur's concept of narrative time.

Ego-documents let us hear the voices of those who have been little heard in historiography. Such documents, especially when narrative in nature, provide insight into historical events and periods by illustrating how individuals—in correspondence with their own (in)actions, (in)decisions, and (mis)convictions as well as emotions, fears, aspirations, and frustrations—experienced and perceived these historical phenomena from a contemporary personal viewpoint. Since the revival of narrative historiography in the 1980s, partly in response to the Annales school, such documents have been increasingly recognized and employed as important historical sources. Nonetheless, the terminology for designating the generic nature and encompassing the diversity of such sources, as well as the methodology for historicizing them, remain under debate.

The various elements of the adoption story are examined in light of narrative theory, and three components that constitute the self-narrative of the adoptee—the birth, the placement, and the adoption stories—are identified. The differences between these stories are highlighted, as are the difficulties of the adoptee in finding coherence and meaning in narratives that are inherently contradictory. Therapeutic implications of this analysis are illustrated with a case example describing therapy with a 12-year-old girl adopted at the age of seven after having been in multiple placements.

While there has been a surge of studies on English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' emotions and identities in research engagement, limited attention has been paid to how they integrate teacher and researcher identities and negotiate different emotions in research practice over time. Drawing on data from a variety of sources over a decade, this longitudinal self-narrative study investigated how an EFL academic (the author) negotiated and navigated conflicting identities and emotions in the process of becoming a teacher-researcher in a changing context. The findings unfolded the changes in her emotions and professional identity development over the course of her 10-year research journey, beginning as a discontented and perplexed performer with weak emotional resilience, progressing to a pressured and strenuous follower with moderate emotional resilience, and finally becoming a relentless and resolute integrator with strong emotional resilience. Her final integration of teacher and researcher identities represented her redemption on this bumpy journey. Implications for EFL teachers, school leaders, and education policymakers on how to help EFL academics integrate professional identities were also discussed.

Abstract When the self is thought of as a narrative or story, rather than a substance or thing, the temporal and dramatic dimension of human existence is emphasized. The operation of narrative "emplotment" (Ricoeur, 1983/1984) can configure the diverse events and actions of one's life into a meaningful whole. One's self-concept or self-identity is fashioned by adaptation of plots from one's cul-tural stock of stories and myths. Stories of personal identity differ from literary productions in that they are constructed within an unfolding autobiography and incorporate the accidental events and unintended consequences of actions. Under stressful conditions, a self-narrative may decompose, producing the anxiety and depression of meaninglessness. One function of psychotherapy is to assist in the reconstruction of a meaning-giving narrative of self-identity.(Psychology)