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Report a problem. These two chapters set a frame for the handbook, although some other chapter authors even- tually wrote short pieces in their chapters that outlined their particular takes on the history of the field and the tensions they identify from their contextual standpoints. The distinction was between narrative methodologies that begin with the telling of stories—that is, in the told sto- ries of participants—and those that begin with living alongside participants— that is, in the living out of stories.
In some, perhaps most, narrative inquiry methodolo- gies, participants are asked to tell their stories. For example, Kramp writes that narrative inquiry is both a process in which the narrator tells and a product the story told. In these studies, the begin- ning point is in living in relation with participants. The research ground for such studies is the ongoing life of participants.
Of course, there are also tellings involved in such studies, but living is the main focus. The difference between telling and living is often a difference between life as lived in the past telling and life as it unfolds liv- ing.
The chapters in Part II were commissioned to focus on research methods that began with the telling of stories, while the chapters in Part III focused on methods where the initial starting point was in action or in the lives being lived.
The working editorial group read widely about each particular method, and we talked often, eventually selecting potential authors based on our reading and talking. We realized there was a great range of narrative inquiry in many professions.
While narrative inquiry is also found in nursing, medicine, and law, we did not commission separate chapters in those fields, although several chapters make reference to narrative inquiry in those fields. As these sections were designed, we decided to ask authors not only to review literature in the broad area of their topic, paying attention to breadth, depth, and multiplicity to illuminate themes, but also to describe and use their own research as an exemplar in which to ground the discussion of issues and concerns.
In this way, we hoped the chapters would offer readers more developed examples of the ways a particular method was being engaged. We designed Part V as a separate section to highlight narrative inquiry in areas that we felt warranted special attention. Narrative inquiry in cross-cultural situa- tions seems to generate a unique set of concerns, as does narrative inquiry with children.
I wanted to attend closely to the particular issues in engaging in narrative inquiry with indigenous peoples. Because ethical issues and representational issues emerge again and again in narrative inquiry, we designed Part VI to draw attention to them as well as to highlight their importance as topics in narrative inquiry.
Finally, Part VII was designed to provide a forward-looking overview of narra- tive inquiry. By looking to policy and practice as well as by looking backward and forward, we hoped to offer something of a future-oriented map for narrative inquiry.
By asking key scholars for their views, we hoped not only to define the pre- sent but also to highlight future directions. At this moment in time, narrative inquiry is alive with a rich explosion of ideas.
However, this is also a time of retrenchment and backlash as policy makers try to exercise control over what counts as research and what research counts.
In these final chapters, we hope to offer insights into the current debates as well as to offer openings for continuing narrative inquiry as a vibrant, scholarly area. Working With the Authors Once the design of the handbook was in place and invitations to potential authors proffered and accepted, the working editorial group asked each chapter author s to develop a chapter outline, which was read and responded to by the working editorial group.
Authors then wrote chapter drafts, and we invited two consulting editors to work with each chapter draft. We asked authors and editorial board members to sug- gest names of potential consulting editors and made the decision to have the process be an open one where chapter authors would know the names of reviewers and reviewers would know the names of authors.
We wanted the review process to be a respectful and helpful process in which reviewer comments would be taken seriously by authors. We were amazed by the intellectual, scholarly responses of the consulting editors.
They all took particular care with the chapters. I read each chapter and all reviewer comments and asked authors to further develop their chapters. By spring , complete chapters were received from all authors, and again I read each chapter. Janice Huber, Stefinee Pinnegar, and Barbara Morgan-Fleming each took responsibility for reviewing final chapters and writing introductory pieces to handbook parts.
Lauren Starko worked with authors on technical and stylistic matters. I could not check back on earlier versions of handbooks in the field to see how the field was defined, where the boundaries were located, and what might serve as a useful structure.
Trying to figure out what was in and what was out was a chal- lenge. As we tried to delimit the boundaries for what we included in the handbook, we began with reading the work of those who stated they were using narrative inquiry or narrative research methodologies.
If someone defined his or her work as using narrative research methodologies, we took that person seriously as offering something to the field and, possibly, to the handbook.
We decided against including work that was seen as narrative therapy, although we do include narrative research on therapy, including narrative therapy. We also decided against inviting authors who named their methodology other names such as ethnography, phenomenology, or an inclusive name such as interpretive inquiry. Sometimes, we recognized a particu- lar methodology as narrative inquiry, but if the researchers were claiming a different name for their work, we did not include them as potential chapter authors or include their work in the overall framework for the handbook.
Problems Not Foreseen When the working editorial team and I began work on the handbook structure, contents, and authors, we assumed there was a commonly used and accepted dis- tinction between the terms narrative research and narrative inquiry.
We assumed that narrative research was a broad catchall term that included the range of work that Pinnegar and Daynes planned to review in their chapter on the history of nar- rative research. Narrative inquiry was a more specialized term that referred to the more relational forms of narrative inquiry. We were, however, surprised when we learned the terms are used almost interchangeably in the literature.
Given that, we, too, began to use the terms interchangeably. While we do note the substantive and substantial differences in what counts as narrative inquiry or narrative research see Chapters 1 and 2 , the terms narrative research and narrative inquiry are not used to signify these differences.
Pressing Debates Phenomenon Under Study. What we see as we examine the literature on various forms of narrative research in the social sciences is a broad range of epistemological, ideological, and ontolog- ical understandings of the phenomenon under study. This theoretical debate about the phenomenon that narrative inquirers are studying is an important one. The debate highlights a distinction within narrative inquiry—that is, that we are study- ing either lived experience as a storied phenomenon or the stories people tell about their experiences, such as those who study only language texts would argue.
Reading the chapters and reconsidering the distinctions, it may be possible to reimagine experience as more complex and, in so doing, to compose a view of experience such as one Stone-Mediatore offers. This creates a more complex view of experience with space for understanding the phenomenon that narrative inquirers study as both the liv- ing of storied experience and the stories one tells of their lived experience.
Evidence of the complexity and differences in understandings about the phenomenon under study in narrative inquiry is woven throughout the handbook and partially accounts for the diversity of strands within narrative inquiry. However, it is not the intention of this handbook to point to one or the other as the preferable one but, rather, to encourage researchers to continue the debate and to continue to locate themselves as to their underlying epistemological and ontological assumptions.
Other pressing debates occur around the place of analysis in narrative inquiry. At first, narrative analysis was going to be a separate chapter in the handbook. In one form of analysis, experiential data are collected and the research aim is to organize the data to create a narrative with a plot that unifies the data. The created story is a nar- rative explanation of the phenomenon being studied. In the second form of narra- tive analysis, data stories are collected from research participants or subjects and the narrative data is analyzed for common themes, metaphors, plotlines, and so on to identify general themes or concepts.
Work such as that of Lieblich, Tuval- Mashiach, and Zilber in which they create a four-cell matrix to categorize four different kinds of narrative inquiries—whole content, whole form, categorical content, and categorical form—could have been discussed.
In the end, as we considered the possibility of one chapter, we realized that there are multiple ways of engaging in narrative analysis and narrative interpretation and that it would be better to allow each chapter author to treat the question of analysis and interpretation within their specific field and with careful attention to context.
Again we realized that narra- tive inquirers locate themselves differently in relation to this question. The handbook does lay out the possibilities here; again, however, it is important not to close the debate but to suggest that narrative inquirers locate themselves in relation to this debate. That some narrative inquirers see their work as involving questions of social justice, locating oneself in relation to this debate seems particularly important.
As shown throughout the handbook, narrative inquiry is a profoundly rela- tional form of inquiry. As narrative inquirers, we and our participants are always in the midst of living and telling our stories. We are also situated in the midst of larger cultural, social, and institutional narratives. Because so many of the chapters make it clear that ethics permeates narrative inquiry from puzzle setting and question posing to living in the field to composing field texts and research texts as well as to the ways that research texts follow or haunt participants and researchers, attending to ethical matters is an ongoing and always present part of narrative inquiry.
These questions of what it means to work relationally with participants in narrative inquiry takes on added importance as we consider the place of institutional research boards, as we think about the ways participants and researchers are situ- ated in relation to each other in dominant cultural and institutional narratives, and as we think about the ways that engaging in narrative inquiries can shift the stories of both participants and researchers.
Questions of ethics in narrative inquiry are beginning to be explored, and as many chapter authors make clear, we have much to continue to consider. The handbook chapters begin a conversation that will, we hope, be ongoing. The Thorny Topics of Memory and Imagination. Memory and imagination are both central concepts in narrative inquiry work, and I planned a chapter to address these important topics. I invited Ted Sarbin and Jerry Ginsberg to write a chapter that would draw forward some of the important ideas Sarbin discussed in his chapter in the Daiute and Lightfoot book.
In that chapter, Ted linked imagination to. I hoped Ted and Jerry would have taken these ideas of imagination and emplot- ted narratives and worked to make links with memory, particularly embodied memory. Ted and Jerry were making good progress on their chapter when Ted fell ill in the summer of Narrative inquiry is published in languages other than English. However, the handbook draws on work that is published in English.
In the future, I hope we find ways to bring their voices to the discussion of narrative inquiry. References Clandinin, D. Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualita- tive research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Connelly, F. Narrative inquiry. Green, G. Elmore Eds. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Denzin, N. The experiential text and the limits of visual understanding. Educational Theory, 45 1 , 7— Elbaz-Luwisch, F. Greenwich, CT: Information Age. Gee, J. Discourse analysis: Theory and method.
New York: Routledge. Kramp, M. Exploring life and experience through narrative inquiry. Lapan Eds. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Labov, W. Speech actions and reactions in personal narrative. Tannen Ed. Lieblich, A. Narrative research: Reading, analysis and interpretation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. McCormack, C. Storying stories: A narrative approach to in-depth interview conver- sations.
International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 7 3 , — Polkinghorne, D. Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. Wisniewski Eds. London: Falmer Press. Sarbin, T. The role of imagination in narrative construction. Lightfoot Eds. Studying the development of individuals in society pp. Stone-Mediatore, S. Harding Eds. Philosophy for a multicultural, post- colonial, and feminist world pp. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. E diting this handbook was not something I undertook alone.
Over the more than 2-year period, many people came alongside and worked to make the handbook come alive. Many colleagues, some familiar and some I came to know through their published work, have been companions on the journey. Thank you for your guidance, wisdom, and hard work throughout the process. Thank you for being there all along the way. Thanks are also due to members of the international advisory board, with special thanks to Mark Freeman, Elliot Mishler, Amia Lieblich, and Ruthellen Josselson.
Their questions helped me clarify my ideas, their suggestions were invaluable, and their wise advice was always appreciated. They always answered my frantic e-mails for help and advice. Thank you all. A special thanks also to Elliot Mishler and Amia Lieblich, who, along with Don Polkinghorne, agreed to engage in the conversations that form the basis for the final chapter in the handbook.
Their thoughtful responses will continue to generate new dialogues. I am fortunate to work in the wonderful Centre for Research for Teacher Education and Development at the University of Alberta, Canada, where each week, graduate students and faculty from around the campus and from other places gather at our table for what is known as Research Issues.
This gathering place, and the conversations with so many over the years of this journey, has enriched the handbook. Several colleagues from the table, Joy Ruth Mickelson, Pam Steeves, and Shaun Murphy, did extra editorial work with the chapter authors, and for this, too, I am grateful.
This handbook would not have happened without the involvement of Lisa Cuevas Shaw at Sage. She nurtured the handbook and me throughout the process. I had a strong technical support group here, at the Centre for Research for Teacher Education and Development.
Angela Gauthier, a former doctoral student, and Cherie Geering both worked to handle the many versions of chapters, reviewer comments, editorial letters, and so on. Without their support, I do believe there would have been chaos on many days. Lauren Starko came alongside as final man- uscripts were sent in and helped authors with style and formatting.
She, too, helped bring the handbook together. The consulting editors who worked with each chapter were remarkable.
They are acknowledged for their work with each chapter. They kept to strict timelines but gave detailed and helpful advice in their responses. Thank you all so much. Finally, of course, I want to thank the chapter authors, who worked hard to com- pose compelling chapters that, I hope, will encourage the development of the field of narrative inquiry. Thank you for all that you have done that made this handbook possible. I n Part I there are two chapters. The first, by Stefinee Pinnegar and Gary Daynes, gives us a particular historical read of the movement to narrative inquiry, show- ing how, through a series of narrative turns, there are key moves toward narrative inquiry.
The four turns are a change in the relationship between the researcher and the researched; a move from the use of number toward the use of words as data; a change from a focus on the general and universal toward the local and specific; and a widening in acceptance of alternative epistemologies or ways of knowing.
The four turns offer readers a set of terms with which to read the field historically, to read current work being published, and to consider their own genealogy and devel- opment as a narrative inquirer.
Pinnegar and Daynes highlight the tensions that ensue from the significant epistemological and ontological differences between the ways in which narrative researchers continue to undertake their work. The terms Pinnegar and Daynes offer will both help narrative researchers locate themselves in relation to the four turns and help readers of narrative research understand the dif- ferent ways researchers position their work within the overall field. The map we construct, with its borders and borderlands, allows researchers to locate themselves on the landscape of narrative inquiry methodologies.
Through highlighting the tensions at the boundaries with other areas of scholarship, we bring into sharper relief the differences with other areas of scholarship. I n attempting to locate narrative inquiry historically, we begin by marking off the territory of this methodology. Ultimately this chapter is not a history of the emergence of narrative.
Instead, we provide a description of how the academy opened up in a way that made space for narrative inquiry.
Put another way, we are describing the creation of an environment in which narrative inquiry can flourish. Most of these changes did not come about because of pressure from narrative prac- titioners.
Nor are they the result of competition between narrative and nonnarra- tive ways of inquiry, with narrative gaining the upper hand. To this day, most academic work is nonnarrative, and in many disciplines the most prominent theo- ries, methods, and practitioners continue to do work that is based on quantitative data and positivist assumptions about cause, effect, and proof.
In this chapter, we begin by defining qualitative research and narrative inquiry. These definitions provide the reader with markers from which they can identify where they stand in relationship to narrative inquiry. Next we describe the ways in which situating oneself within a particular history of the move to narrative has been part of the structure of the presentation of narrative inquiry reports.
From an analysis of examples of this phenomenon, we consider four turns researchers com- plete as they turn to narrative inquiry. Finally, we explicate the four turns: the atten- tion to relationships among participants, the move to words as data, the focus on the particular, and the recognition of blurred genres of knowing.
Narrative inquiry is not simply another in a cadre of qualitative research strategies. In this section, we provide not complex definitions of any of these tradi- tions but instead highlight the relationships and distinctions that mark the terri- tory of narrative inquiry. We do this by considering qualitative research and narrative inquiry.
The first marking is the distinction between qualitative and quantitative research. Denzin and Lincoln begin their first Handbook of Qualitative Research with the following definition:. Qualitative research is multimethod in focus, involving an interpretive natural- istic approach to its subject matter. Qualitative research involves the studied use of and collection of a variety of empirical materials.
As this definition reveals, the distinction between the two research paradigms rests not on the decision to use numbers or not, since researchers from either of these paradigms might employ numbers. Instead, the assumptions underlying the research distinguish one from the other although in terms of practice the bound- ary is porous, particularly in terms of specific methods.
Quantitative research rests exclusively in positivistic and post-postivistic assumptions. In contrast, qualitative research forms around assumptions about interpretation and human action. Another difference is the purpose of the research. Qualitative researchers are inter- ested not in prediction and control but in understanding. Qualitative researchers often use words in their analysis, and they often collect or construct stories about those they are studying.
But there are territorial mark- ings that distinguish narrative researchers. These boundaries do not, necessarily, match up with a distinction between the two research paradigms. What narrative researchers hold in common is the study of stories or narratives or descriptions of a series of events. These researchers usually embrace the assump- tion that the story is one if not the fundamental unit that accounts for human expe- rience. Locating Narrative Inquiry Historically——5. Some researchers use the metaphor of story to articulate learning from research generally.
From this perspective, metanarrative, historiography, and critical analy- sis can be seen as potential methods. Others use conceptions from narrative such as plotline, characterization, theme, role, and other literary terms to analyze and make general sense of experience. Other researchers explore narrative as fundamental to cognition Schank, Narrative researchers might also study the impact of par- ticular narratives on experience. Other narrative researchers may code narratives, translate the codes to numbers, and use statistical analysis, or they may analyze the factors involved during a storytelling event as a predictor of some phenomenon of inter- est Pasupathi, Narrative researchers use narrative in some way in their research.
Narrative inquiry embraces narrative as both the method and phenomena of study. Through the attention to methods for analyzing and understanding stories lived and told, it can be connected and placed under the label of qualitative research methodology.
Narrative inquiry begins in experience as expressed in lived and told stories. Conceptions of the Historical Emergence of Narrative Inquiry. Through an exploration of the emergence of narrative inquiry, we found com- prehensive outlines of this development existing already. However, within these histories we identified four themes that are clear indicators of movement toward narrative inquiry both in the research lives of individuals and in the disciplines. Thus, in this section we outline our exploration of the history, the identification of the four themes, and finally a careful consideration of each theme.
The original direction of this chapter was a historical charting of the emer- gence of narrative inquiry within and across the various disciplines of the human sciences. Polkinghorne provides a careful, scholarly, detailed analysis and theoretical defense of narrative knowing.
Bruner , using a broad-brush stroke, argues for two ways of knowing in the human sciences—narrative and traditional positivistic social science research paradig- matic knowing —and in doing so articulates the historical basis for the credibil- ity of narrative knowing. Geertz provides a more metaphoric account of this same process.
Martin , from the perspective of the literary critic, articulates how Barthes and others used social science strategies for understanding narrative in literature. In the process of tracing the history of narrative theories in literary criticism, Martin brings the reader to see how the approaches of the literary critics, such as Joseph Campbell, Northrop Frye, Wayne Booth, Roland Barthes, and Mikhail Bahktin, came to be tools for narrative research.
He also articulates the historical contribution of these literary critics to the development of the use of narrative in human science research. Yet it is also a stronger theoretical account of how, in the moment of their own development as researchers, narrative inquiry emerged as the most compelling and appropriate way to study human interaction. Narrative researchers routinely and consistently situated themselves and their methods historically in the accounts they provided of their work.
What intrigued us, and gave direction for this chapter, were thematic common- alities in these accounts. The themes highlighted changes in the thinking and action of individual researchers and research movements within disciplines.
They pro- vided a way of tracing the process by which one becomes a narrative researcher and ultimately a narrative inquirer or just four definitional points in the stance that narrative inquirers embrace in their research. We realized these themes could be conceptualized as the individual and collective historical bases for the turn toward narrative inquiry, the bases on which a space for this kind of inquiry opened. These themes involved changes in the relationships of researchers and research partici- pants, kinds of data collected for a study, the focus of the study, and kinds of know- ing embraced by the researcher.
Locating Narrative Inquiry Historically——7. From our study, we came to realize that as an individual, discipline, or group of researchers moves toward a narrative inquiry approach to research, there are four turns in their thinking and action that occur.
By turn, we mean a change in direction from one way of thinking or being toward another. We do not argue that these turns occur in a particular order; they evolve based on the experiences of a particular researcher in the process of designing, studying, and engaging in inquiries. However, we become narrative inquirers only when we recognize and embrace the interactive quality of the researcher-researched rela- tionship, primarily use stories as data and analysis, and understand the way in which what we know is embedded in a particular context, and finally that narrative knowing is essential to our inquiry.
We use the term turn strategically because we want to emphasize the movement from one way of thinking to another and highlight the fact that such changes can occur rapidly or slowly, depending on the experience of the researchers and their experiences when doing research. How fully the researcher embraces narrative inquiry is indicated by how far he or she turns in her or his thinking and action across what we call here the four turns toward narrative.
The four include the following: 1 a change in the relationship between the person conducting the research and the person participating as the subject the relationship between the researcher and the researched , 2 a move from the use of number toward the use of words as data, 3 a change from a focus on the general and universal toward the local and specific, and finally 4 a widen- ing in acceptance of alternative epistemologies or ways of knowing.
Those who most fully embrace narrative inquiry are those who, like Clandinin and Connelly , simultaneously embrace narrative as a method for research and narrative as the phenomenon of study. For narrative inquirers both the stories and the humans are continuously visible in the study.
In the movement toward narrative inquiry, researchers, research communities, and research disciplines in particular forge their own idiosyncratic journey. In other words, while we have chosen to list these four turns in a particular order, we do not suggest that every researcher who becomes a narrative inquirer negoti- ates the turns in any particular order. Instead, we recognize that researchers, research groups, or disciplines of inquiry begin at different points.
Thus, what can prompt a move toward narrative inquiry on the part of an anthropologist is not so much a turn from numbers as data but a turn toward a new understanding of the author- ity of the anthropologist and the relationship of the anthropologist and those they are studying Pratt, Thus, anthropologists who become narra- tive inquirers, like historians, may have begun from a position of embracing words rather than numbers as data.
Indeed, the turn to narrative occurs in ways that suggest the image of water that Foucault uses to discuss negotiations of power. Water flows move differently across different landscapes with different seasons, feeder streams, or impediments. In turning toward narrative inquiry, different researchers begin at different places. Some researchers take the turns slowly and more gently, just as some flows meander slowly, with deep turns that become almost switchbacks.
The switchbacks may peri- odically erode through a loop. The path for others may be more constrained, and because of their socialization into research and the kinds of publi- cations available, they may be less able to freely turn toward one or another research methodology.
Indeed, some water flows are cemented in place, such as the Rio Grande at the U. The path of the water is restricted and held in place, with others maintaining authority, power, and control. In such settings, the turns may appear in the currents and eddies or in pools created by barriers.
Having grown up in the dry desert Southwest, we have experienced flash floods where the roaring water coalesces and separate streams flow together forcefully, being stalled by dams that emerge from the flotsam their action creates. The stream may suddenly divide into new flows because of impediments in the path, aban- doning old streambeds and destroying homes and buildings that no one thought were even in the way. For many, this is the path toward narrative inquiry.
Concern with humans, experience, recognizing the power in understanding the particular, and broader conceptions of knowing coalesce in flashes of insight, and old ways of researching and strategies for research seem inadequate to the task of understand- ing humans and human interaction.
We know that water flows and creates the streambed we see at a particular moment in time based in a particular landscape because of the interaction of water, landscape, humans, animals, climate, and so on.
In the same way, inquiry stance and identity as a researcher emerge in a particular place, with particular people, around particular questions, and based on desires to understand humans and human interaction in particular ways.
What we present here are four of the com- mon turns in the stream that direct the flow of inquiry into a narrative channel. Because we are narrative inquirers, we have of course made these turns and embraced these ways of studying and understanding the phenomenon we care about. For us, of course, other ways of inquiry are less appealing and appropriate.
Locating Narrative Inquiry Historically——9. However, we do not assert that other ways are invalid or that those who employ them are less qualified as researchers.
In the rest of the chapter we begin by exploring the turns. We focus first on the change in the relationship between researcher and researched, and then we discuss the characteristics of the move from using numbers toward using words as data. Next, we consider the movement from a focus on the general and universal toward the local and particular.
Finally, we explore the turn in acceptance of a wider range of ways of knowing and the blurring of epistemologies in research. Narrative Turn 1: Relationship of Researcher and Researched. In the turn toward narrative inquiry, no change in direction is more important than the change in an understanding of the relationship of the researcher to the researched.
In the move toward narrative inquiry, the turn is characterized as a movement away from a position of objectivity defined from the positivistic, realist perspective toward a research perspective focused on interpretation and the under- standing of meaning.
In turning, narrative inquirers recognize that the researcher and the researched in a particular study are in relationship with each other and that both parties will learn and change in the encounter. An important movement in the social sciences occurred in the late 19th century.
At that time Comte, Mill, Durkheim Smith, , and others convinced social sci- entists that they could use the methodology of the physical sciences to study human learning and interaction.
An essential feature of this stance is the sense that things being studied are real and that they exist independently and are not brought into existence by the act of studying.
On the basis of such laws, social scientists could control causation in social relations and thus assert control over and make accurate predictions about the social world Smith, Martin , in his exploration of narrative theories and literary criticism, charts the development of the current narrative theories in literary study.
In his dis- cussion, he reminds us that just as the social sciences sought to embrace a ratio- nalist approach to the study of human sciences, scholarly work in the humanities flowed into a similar approach in the use of theories of literary criticism.
Asserting the realist perspective in the social sciences allowed researchers to treat social facts as things. In this way, the objects of study in the social sciences human relationships, interactions, dispositions, and culture could be treated as if they were physical things. From this perspective, research into the social world could be constituted as a neutral activity. Researchers base this stance on an assumption that they can be objective in doing research.
In other words, they can wholly distance themselves from the researched. As human scientists, they can consider themselves bounded, static, and atemporal particularly in regard to their relationship with the researched. As a result, the observations they make are considered systematic, reliable, and unbiased. By labeling the researcher or researched as bounded, we mean that the knowl- edge of the researcher and the knowledge of the researched are separate and dis- tinct from each other and even when they interact the distance between them can be maintained and guaranteed.
Most importantly, under objective conditions, they are almost completely knowable, or at the very least, the things under study cul- ture, humans, human interaction, human traits or dispositions can be explained.
As a result, true beliefs about the social world can become valid and sure knowl- edge. Through careful, systematic, and structured observations guided by uniform instrumentation that has high reliability and validity, coupled with skilled manipulation of potentially intervening variables, randomization, and con- trolled treatment settings, researchers can insert sufficient distance between them- selves and their subjects to make formal knowledge claims on the basis of the scientific method.
Another condition of the researcher-researched relationship is atemporality. This is a state whereby the findings of research are considered outside time, and time itself is a neutral and controllable entity.
Even when the research projects involve a longitudinal, developmental study, the process of change being studied is treated as if it exists independent of time. From a position of atemporality, the phenomenon studied or the process studied can be asserted to exist even generations since those original findings. Such a stance assumes that time is real and static rather than constructed or influenced by culture or individual human interaction Slife, The participants and interactions studied are considered static when the scien- tist acts as though the thing under study can be held still or that the action entailed in observation will not influence what is being studied.
Furthermore, researchers who take this stance proceed as if they can hold themselves at a particular point in their thinking about a phenomenon as they engage in systematic observation of it. Even if the phenomenon is expected to evolve or progress or change during the observation, researchers assume that they can control this process or distance themselves from it enough so that they can objectively observe what is being studied in such a way that they themselves as researchers will remain unchanged.
Locating Narrative Inquiry Historically—— During the research process, both the researcher and researched will be suspended in a static state, each uninfluenced by the other.
Within this perspective, researchers act on the premise that context can be con- trolled in ways that result in decontextualized research findings. As a result, others can then apply the findings to contexts and settings beyond the group being stud- ied. In the case of anthropology, it allows researchers to treat findings about a cul- ture as a monolithic capturing of the essence of the culture Clifford, ; Geertz, Psychology provides another example.
Research in learning sought basic learning principles that could be applied to any learning setting regardless of the age, the environment, or the dispositions of the learner. When such characteristics age, environment, or disposition might intervene, then the results of the research would provide clear directions about how to avoid or control for the potential interference from those variables.
Indeed, one of the powers of this kind of research, and the controlled relationship between researcher and researched, is the ability to assert valid and reliable and, therefore, generalizable findings. Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. May 17, John rated it it was amazing. Invaluable if doing undertaking narrative inquiry research.
Mar 31, Apostolos rated it it was amazing. While I didn't read this book cover-to-cover I did find quite a few chapters quite useful in thinking about and designing my narrative inquiry project.
Jun 20, Jieun Kim rated it it was amazing Shelves: narrative-inquiry. Had you been deep in thought of your topic s of academic research, play, drama, music or secret diary whatever, you would have likely been into investigation and interrogation of particular, local, and contextual stories disclosed around you where your participants live and labor as a subject rather than cause-and effect relationship and logical proof.
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