The role of the narrator in narrative inquiry in education: construction and co-construction in two case studies

Abstract

This paper explores narratives as an effective means of capturing multiple identities of research participants in complex social environments in education research. In doing so it explores the role of the narrator in two case studies in two modes of narrative inquiry. Both studies present narratives of young people, focusing on multiple identities which are influenced by a variety of cultural and sub-cultural contexts which the participants inhabit to varying degrees. In the first case study the researcher is the narrator; in the second it is the research participants. The paper uses the two case studies to discuss three challenging areas in narrative research: participant voice, contextual complexities and researcher positionality and how the researcher responds to these challenges through construction and co-construction of the narratives. The authors share their strategies for addressing these three challenges in relation to the role of the narrator.Keywords: narrative; narrator; construction/co-construction of narratives; narrative inquiry; educational research; case studies IntroductionThis paper explores how a narrative approach can be effectively utilized in education research by considering the relationship between the researcher and the narrator in two modes of narrative inquiry. Narratives are a means of as expressing, enacting or enabling changes in life meaning, sense, identity, sociocultural formation and unconscious significance (Phoenix, 2008; Reissman, 1993). This paper uses the definition of "narrative" given by Shacklock and Thorp; "Narrative inquiry is concerned with the production, interpretation and representation of storied accounts of lived experience " (2005:156). This method of data presentation allows the researcher to locate life experience, identity and cultural formation within a narrative frame, Shacklock and Thorp argue. In doing so it allows the writer to "introduce additional anchor points for understanding the subjective and structural as mutual informants in understanding our own and other people 's lives" (156). This provides an effective means of understanding the lives of others through the construction or co-construction and narration of 3 their stories (Phoenix, 2008; Reissman, 2007). In narrative inquiry the narrator of the story may be either the researcher or the research participant.There are two forms of narrative enquiry, epistemological, concerned with the nature of knowledge, often exploring lived experiences, and ontological, which the researcher is not involved in and so which requires a deeper exploration of truth as it is perceived or experienced by those in the narrative. Within these two forms there are many different approaches to narrative research; English (2006) identifies 12 different approaches, such as autobiography, life story, historical accounts, ethnographic fiction and personal diaries. The two studies discussed in this paper are examples of epistemological narratives and the discussion focuses on these. The two case studies illustrate different a...

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