Let’s hear what the experts say: Narrative co-research with young people resisting the gaze of success

This paper documents a co-research journey with three young people who had been labelled as “socially isolated” and “underachievers”. I introduce narrative ideas such as externalising the problem and its effects, exploring the absent but implicit, re-authoring and investigating the cultural context of how success is constructed in Chinese cultures. I describe the co-research methodology we used and the development of five themes; namely, the young people’s views of the problem, their descriptions of the problem and its effects, the strategies they used against the problem and its effects, what they held to be important, and how the results of our co-research were extended to inform future plans and actions. After sharing the voices of the three young persons, I reflect on lessons from this co-research process.