Narrative Inquiry: How to Begin
In “The Future of Narrative” (2007), theorist Petra Munro-Hendry suggests that all research is narrative, and moreover that a strong case can be made that narrative research is the first and oldest form of inquiry. In addition, Clandinin and Rosiek (2007) believe that what feels new is the emergence of narrative research in the field of social scientific research. As a result of the growing interest in narrative inquiry over the last twenty years in both theory and practice, it has been employed as a tool for analysis across disciplines. Two specific reasons for this interest include (1) a critique of the inherent strengths and weaknesses of conventional positivist research methods, and (2) a focus on the individual and the individual's construction of knowledge (Webster & Mertova, 2007).
Conventional positivist research methods, which state that only one truth exists concerning any given notion, restrict accounting for the complexities of human actions and subsequently risk undermining the richness of human experiences by grouping them into discrete, objective measures. Although conventional positivist research, often portrayed through statistics, may provide much meaningful information, we assert that human actions are most complexly accounted for through narratives. However, we are not suggesting that narrative research necessarily explains life, recounts original experience, or provides unmediated access into an individual's world in a more authentic manner than traditional positivist research. Instead, our perspective on narrative research suggests that recounting any experience is a tenuous “contested territory” (Britzman, 2000, p. 30). As theorist Pierre Bourdieu (1990) argues, human life is incoherent and consists of elements standing alongside each other or following each other, without necessarily being related. Hence, narrative inquiry represents the work of researchers to provide a correspondence between life and a written description of it.
As researchers we construct or “story” lives by reducing them to a series of events, categories, or themes; we then put them back together again to make up a whole that is called narrative (Munro-Hendry, 2007). Clandinin and Connelly (2000, p. 48) provide the following procedures for conducting a narrative study:
- Determine if narrative research is suitable,
- Identify problems or questions to guide the study,
- Gather stories,
- Collaborate actively,
- Consider literature,
- Analyze and interpret data,
- Consider context of stories, and
- Re-story.
These steps, although not exclusive to narrative inquiry as a qualitative research methodology, are unique because of their focus on the research participants rather than on the research itself.
The emerging critical vein within narrative research has been attributed to its ability to provide a less exploitive method of inquiry than philosophical traditions evolving from positivist approaches to conducting research. Specifically, when examining historically marginalized communities (for example, women; people of color; the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer [LGBTQ] community), narrative researchers offer the potential for a more egalitarian research relationship that honors intersubjective modes of knowledge production—that is, understandings that are negotiated and have varying meanings for different groups (Munro, 1993). Or, more plainly stated, research relationships are founded on the premise that knowledge is produced and subsequently communicated through the shared experiences and stories of individuals and communities. Furthermore, narrative inquiry portends the ability to add stories that traditionally had been excluded from mainstream educational research discourses (Munro-Hendry, 2007).
Some particularly powerful examples of the utility of narrative research can be found in the work of educators Rosiek (Dibble & Rosiek, 2002) and Miller (1992). Rosiek broadly describes the focus of his research to be an analysis of the ideas and practices that teachers use on a day-to-day basis to provide service to their students. He relates narrative inquiry to these aims because it provides the ability to impart stories about the nuanced aspects of teaching that cannot easily be measured, quantified, or communicated through traditional positivist approaches. For example, in an article Rosiek and his coresearcher Nancy Dibble, who is also the actual teacher in the article, conduct inquiry into Dibble's pedagogical practice in her biology class (Dibble & Rosiek). In the article Dibble comes to see her European American racial identity as influencing her attempts to counsel Mexican American students to pursue further science education. Their decision to frame the article in the voices of the researcher (Rosiek) in order to represent the complex insights that informed the teacher in the study's practice, and of the teacher (Dibble) in the form of the actual stories she told, reflects the authors' desire to move beyond a reductionist conclusion. Instead they use narrative to get at the teacher's reflections on the structure of the science curriculum, on her personal history, and on uncomfortable feelings that contain kernels of insight and eventually grow into reflexive insights about science, teaching, and her race.
Miller (1992) is interested in narrative research that primarily takes the form of autobiography; however, there is not necessarily a difference between narrative research and autobiography (see also Chapter Eight, Trekking Through Autoethnography). This is because a narrative can comprise information about persons and events that existed beyond the writer's personal experience. In “Exploring Power and Authority Issues in a Collaborative Research Project,” Miller described her work conceptualizing curriculum as “cultural, historical, political, and biographical intersections that influence and frame interactions and interpretations among teachers, students, and texts” (p. 165). Miller's work demonstrates the complexity and potential rigor associated with the use of narrative research. Instead of resting on claims that narrative research inherently provides a more equitable and illustrative view of the experiences of teachers, Miller challenges simplistic depictions of teachers and the stories that they tell about their teaching. In “Autobiography and the Necessary Incompleteness of teachers' Stories,” Miller (1998) highlights the importance of studying stories by and about teachers by referencing Shari Benstock's critique of the sense that teachers are often told to just “tell your story.” Benstock (1991, p. 10) states,
Something is missing in this invitation. One difficulty arises when autobiographies, or narratives, or stories about education are told or written as unitary, and transparent, and are used as evidence of progress or success in school reform for example, so that the fabric of the narrative appears seamless, spun of whole cloth. The effect is magical—the self appears organic, the present appears as the sum total of the past, the past appears as an accurate predictor of the future.
Rosiek's and Miller's use of narrative inquiry not only demonstrates the potential for narrative research to describe and analyze “what is” but also raises questions and alternatives for “what might be” as both relate to the stories that are being conveyed (Miller, 1992, p. 169; Dibble & Rosiek, 2002). These possibilities are important in that they provide an approach to inquiry that accounts for the complexity of human experience while also recognizing that even in our most careful attempts at inquiry we still have significant epistemic and ontological limitations. However, these limitations are not intended to stop us as researchers from telling stories or learning from the stories that we tell but instead highlight the significant ways that we shape and are shaped by the world.