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Narrative research has become part of the landscape of education inquiry, yet its theory and practice are still debated and evolving. This article addresses the construction of narratives using literary elements common to nonfiction and fiction writings. The authors discuss these elements and use four narratives to illustrate them. They address how literary elements intersect with more familiar practices of generating and analyzing evidence to reveal themes, and they relate these intersections with wider issues about what can be known from research and how it can be learned.
Keywords: narrative research; qualitative research; research methodology
In the contested terrain of education research, narrative approaches have established themselves through specialized publications, special interest groups in the American Educational Research Association, and a committed community of scholars. Yet almost all of the theory and practice of narrative research are still debated, including matters of purpose, methods, ethics, and validity. As the discussions continue, narrative and other arts-based forms of research continue to evolve (Barone, 2007; Clandinin & Murphy, 2007; Finley, 2005; Rosiek & Atkinson, 2007).
In this article we consider a single aspect1 of narrative research: the construction of narratives as representations of research studies, using literary elements and devices common to nonfiction and fiction texts. These elements are familiar to specialists who theorize, teach, or practice writing but are unfamiliar to the vast majority of education researchers. Our purpose is to describe these literary elements to an authence of generalists and illustrate them by pointing out specific features of four chosen narratives. For this authence,2 we explore the intersection of narrative construction with conventional trajectories of data generation and analysis, representation of the results of research, and application of epistemologica! notions of warranted evidence.
To orient the reader, we organize the rest of the article as follows. First, we briefly review the literature that establishes a context for our work. Next, we describe the literary elements used to construct narrative accounts, introduce the four texts that will be used as reference points, and provide examples of the literary elements. Finally, we examine the intersections of narrative construction with conventional practices and epistemologica! ideas regarding evidence and truth.
Literature on Narrative Inquiry and Narrative Construction
From the wide range of narrative forms of inquiry, Polkinghorne...