Narrative - Narrative Inquiry

Narrative Inquiry

Narrative inquiry runs deeper than being a research tool used in case studies. "Narrative inquiry rests on the epistemological assumption that we as human beings make sense of random experience by the imposition of story structures." Narrative inquiry makes valuable contributions to the social sciences because of its "open-ended, experiential and quest-like qualities." Narratives are not productions of individuals, but rather are "shaped by social, cultural, and historical conventions" and the relationship between the story-teller and recorder (even if it’s an invisible audience). Therefore, the details of story structures and contents reveal much about the social, cultural, and historical context in which the story-teller exists., Narrative inquiry is conducted with the understanding that stories that people tell are often at the surface of a more complex underlying story. The qualities of narrative inquiry and the potential contextual information that stories may reveal make narrative inquiry beneficial to several disciplines including psychology, anthropology, and education,.

Narrative inquiry research, like any other research tool or methodology, has advantages and limitations. According to Bell (2002), the benefits of narrative inquiry include the following: narrative provides the researcher with an understanding of an experience; narrative gives the researcher access to stories or themes that the story teller may not even be conscious of; narrative highlights changing perspectives and understanding of people and events as a function of time in the evaluation of an experience. Another advantage of narrative inquiry is that the process is as important at the product. In terms of educational research, the stories investigated by teachers and graduate stories "became the objects of their research and the medium for their professional development," adding another dimension to the benefits of narrative inquiry.

Limitations, according to Bell (2002), include the amount time needed to commit to extensive in-depth research, as well as the researcher’s (unavoidable) imposition of meaning on the subject’s story. "Hardened stories," or "narratives that become context-free, portable and ready to be used anywhere and anytime for illustrative purposes," jeopardize narrative inquiry by "killing the spirit of inquiry" and freezing the story in time. Because stories are complex, the story’s truth is constructed and the researcher is subjective, it is necessary to determine what the assessment criteria should be for narrative inquiry research. Conle (2001), in researching the role and rationality of narrative inquiry in teacher education at multiple levels—as a method and as a tool for personal and professional development, offers criteria for assessing the validity of narrative research. It is, she says, fair to challenge a narrative inquirer in four ways: the objective truth of the story, the emotional truth of the story, the social/moral appropriateness of the story, and the clarity of the story. In challenging the narrative inquirer in these ways, a person is "asking for ‘more narrative,’ is the ideal way to challenge a claim of truthfulness" and to determine if reader is interpreting the story according to how the narrative inquirer intended the story to be interpreted.