Collaborative writing with young people with disabilities: raising new questions of authorship and agency

Abstract

How an author communicates with a reader is a central consideration in the critical examination of any text. When considering the communication of ideas from young people whose voices are seldom heard, the journey from author to audience has particular significance. The construction of children and young people as ‘authors’ is important, especially for those with learning difficulties or who struggle to comply with the current emphasis on spelling, punctuation and grammar. This article relates to a UK Research Council-funded 3-year collaborative research project involving the co-creation of fictional stories with young people with disabilities to represent aspects of their lives. Drawing on frameworks from narratology, I analyse the co-creation of one of the stories and present an interpretation and elaboration of the discourse structure of narrative fiction to illustrate the complexities of the relationship between the multifaceted ‘author’ and community ‘reader’ of these stories. The combination of qualitative research and fictional prose has particular characteristics and implications for the dissemination and communication of research findings. An extension of feminist critique of Barthes' claim for the death of the author provides new insights for engaging children in writing with their own voice.