This paper is a contribution from the study: “Young people’s relationship and experiences with savoir”, developed in Spain from 2009 to 2011. The main objective of this research is to explore counter-narratives that challenge the dominant discourse about school dropout and young people’s disinterest in school, which simplifies this occurrence as the result of either a personal lack of interest, social class determination, or deficiency of intellectual capacities. The aim of this paper is to explore the strategies we developed for writing and analyzing 18 biographical narratives about both successful and unsuccessful students that centred on their experiences of savoir during their time at secondary school. Charlot (1992:80) has defined the savoir relationship as a meaningful relationship; as a valued connection between an individual or a group, and the process and products of savoir.  A savoir relation is a relation between a subject and the world, between the self and others (not only with the school’s curriculum, contents and rules).  It is a relation with a series of activities, and also, it is localized in time, as space for activities (Charlot, 1992:78).  We understand savoir as the learning process linked with the identity of the learner.

The goal is to allow the young person to reflect on his or her savoir, without too much intervention on behalf of the researcher. These aims required us to take into consideration certain measures during the development of our relationship with the young people, the majority of which come from Kincheloe and Berry (2004). Their bricoleurposition, or research as bricolage, implies that relationships are built using fragments – by creating an assemblage, weaving threads, enjoining parts – in an artisan fashion. From this foundation, we inferred from our experience of building methodology as a relationship, how to contact and work with the young people. The difficulty that emerged was that, although the research framework was developed collaboratively among the researchers, when we negotiated with each of the young people, and began having conversations that would allow us to build narratives, this would be filtered by the researchers’ own biographies.  How to make this process compatible with the needs of a collaborative project was a point of debate among the researchers.

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