Conclusion

In this book I have offered a particular extrapolation and consolidation of the thinking of Jerome Bruner to develop a toolkit, which enables deep analysis of individual meaning-making in terms of their intellectual representations of the world and their storied self-understanding in light of those representations. I have considered how these representations are informed and shaped by the influence of social environment and how they might change over time. I have offered a scheme that facilities identification of an individual's stance towards challenge and exploration of how difference and ‘other’ are encountered. I have developed a Brunerian adaptation of Labovian textual analysis that might be used to encourage different ‘imaginings’ of personal meaning-making, which might be used creatively to engage Bruner's knowing with the left hand. I have then brought these ideas and the toolkit into dialogue with three related but different disciplines.

I do not assert that my interpretation of Bruner is the only one possible and there is very much more we can learn from him. However, I do hope that this book has in some small way brought him deservedly back into contemporary debate. His approach, which is both scientifically credible and takes seriously the real-lived experience of the individual, has so much rich potential for interpreting the complex and dynamic tensions involved in meaning-making and for encouraging ways of thinking about self, other and a creatively better future.