ABSTRACT
Assessing one's own research is as important as assessing anyone else's. However, in doing so one is in both a more and a less privileged position than other readers: one knows more of the background, but is perhaps not able to attain the same critical distance. The explanatory claims are problematic. While reading off the motivation of staffroom comments from their content seems reasonably convincing in the case of the first claim, here it is less so. The specific relevance of the role of the teacher, on the other hand, needs to be argued for, but no such argument is provided. Justifying inference from case to focus on the basis of theoretical inference is perhaps more promising. There are theoretical ideas in the account, notably concerning the functions of staffroom talk. The sort of assessment relates to some other concerns we may have in reading ethnographic studies.
