Narrative Inquiry

Understanding Narrative Inquiry: The Crafting and Analysis of Stories as Research is a comprehensive, thought-provoking introduction to narrative inquiry in the social and human sciences that guides readers through the entire narrative inquiry process—from locating narrative inquiry in the interdisciplinary context, through the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings, to narrative research design, data collection (excavating stories), data analysis and interpretation, and theorizing narrative meaning. Six extracts from exemplary studies, together with questions for discussion, are provided to show how to put theory into practice. Rich in stories from author Jeong-Hee Kim’s own research endeavors and incorporating chapter-opening vignettes that illustrate a graduate student's research dilemma, the book not only accompanies readers through the complex process of narrative inquiry with ample examples, but also helps raise their consciousness about what it means to be a qualitative researcher and a narrative inquirer in particular.

"The literature on narrative inquiry has been, until now, widely scattered and theoretically incomplete. Clandinin and Connelly have created a major tour de force. This book is lucid, fluid, beautifully argued, and rich in examples. Students will find a wealth of arguments to support their research, and teaching faculty will find everything they need to teach narrative inquiry theory and methods."--Yvonna S. Lincoln, professor, Department of Educational Administration, Texas A&M University Understanding experience as lived and told stories--also known as narrative inquiry--has gained popularity and credence in qualitative research. Unlike more traditional methods, narrative inquiry successfully captures personal and human dimensions that cannot be quantified into dry facts and numerical data. In this definitive guide, Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly draw from more than twenty years of field experience to show how narrative inquiry can be used in educational and social science research. Tracing the origins of narrative inquiry in the social sciences, they offer new and practical ideas for conducting fieldwork, composing field notes, and conveying research results. Throughout the book, stories and examples reveal a wide range of narrative methods. Engaging and easy to read, Narrative Inquiry is a practical resource from experts who have long pioneered the use of narrative in qualitative research.

A concise volume aimed at researchers and academics in sociology, anthropology, psychology and interpersonal communication.

Introducing key ideas of narrative inquiry, this is the first book to explore in depth the theoretical underpinnings of the methodology. The authors open up ways of thinking about people's experiences and their lives, which are situated and shaped by cultural, social, familial, institutional, and linguistic narratives. The authors draw on a range of theorists, creative nonfiction writers, poets, and essayists. The book is arranged into five parts covering a range of topics including: embodiment, memory, knowledge, wonder, imagination, community, responsibility, and place. Each section ends with a methodological discussion of their work involving refugee families with young children from Syria.

Organized around a metaphor of an academic journey, D. Jean Clandinin offers published tracings of an unfolding journey over 40 years that, at its outset, appeared to focus only on questions of epistemology. However, the book illuminates how that apparent beginning focus shape-shifted to questions of methodology, ethics, ontology, and subsequently, political concerns. Clandinin shows that, even at the outset, her research wonders were grounded in relational understandings of experience, understandings that were simultaneously ontological, methodological, epistemological and ethical. Jean’s work is collaborative, an engagement alongside others and within the contexts in which they and she lived and worked, including those who were participants in the research. She continues to acknowledge that narrative inquiry changes people’s ways of being in the world, and those changes have ethical significance. While what she and her colleagues now call relational ethics has always been central, recently her sense of ethics has become more explicitly political. She shows the development of ideas over time, beginning as she entered doctoral work and continuing through 2019 and onward. Jean’s work, centered on relational understandings of experience, highlights ethical dimensions, and has come to define narrative understandings for generations of researchers. This book will be an invaluable resource for researchers and graduate students, and professional researchers in both educational and healthcare settings. .

Composed by international researchers, the Handbook of Narrative Inquiry: Mapping a Methodology is the first comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the developing methodology of narrative inquiry. The Handbook outlines the historical development and philosophical underpinnings of narrative inquiry as well as describes different forms of narrative inquiry. This one-of-a-kind volume offers an emerging map of the field and encourages further dialogue, discussion, and experimentation as the field continues to develop.

Narrative Inquiry provides both a new theoretical orientation and a set of practical techniques that students and experienced researchers can use to conduct narrative research. Explaining the principles of what she terms "dynamic narrating," author Colette Daiute provides an approach to narrative inquiry that builds on practices of daily life where we use storytelling to connect with other people, deal with social structures, make sense of surrounding events, and craft our own way of fitting in with various contexts. Throughout the book, Daiute illustrates and applies narrative inquiry with a wide variety of examples, practical activities, charts, suggestions for interpreting analyses, and tips on writing up results. Narrative Inquiry integrates cultural-historical activity, discourse theories (including critical discourse theory and conversation analysis), and interdisciplinary research on narrative as applied to a range of research projects in different cultural settings.

Narrative inquiry examines human lives through the lens of a narrative, honoring lived experience as a source of important knowledge and understanding. In this concise volume, D. Jean Clandinin, one of the pioneers in using narrative as research, updates her classic formulation on narrative inquiry (with F. Michael Connelly), clarifying, extending and refining the method based on an additional decade of work. A valuable feature is the inclusion of several exemplary cases with the author’s critique and analysis of the work. The rise of interest in narrative inquiry in recent years makes this is an essential guide for researchers and an excellent text for graduate courses in qualitative inquiry.