D. Jean Clandinin

Stories of Experience and Narrative Inquiry

Although narrative inquiry has a long intellectual history both in and out of education, it is increasingly used in studies of educational experience. One theory in educational research holds that humans are storytelling organisms who, individually and socially, lead storied lives. Thus, the study of narrative is the study of the ways humans experience the world. This general concept is refined into the view that education and educational research is the construction and reconstruction of personal and social stories; learners, teachers, and researchers are storytellers and characters in their own and others stories. In this paper we briefly survey forms of narrative inquiry in educational studies and outline certain criteria, methods, and writing forms, which we describe in terms of beginning the story, living the story, and selecting stories to construct and reconstruct narrative plots. Certain risks, dangers, and abuses possible in narrative studies are discussed. We conclude by describing a two-part research agenda for curriculum and teacher studies flowing from stories of experience and narrative inquiry.

Navigating Sites for Narrative Inquiry

Narrative inquiry is a methodology that frequently appeals to teachers and teacher educators. However, this appeal and sense of comfort has advantages and disadvantages. Some assume narrative inquiries will be easy to design, live out, and represent in storied formats in journals, dissertations, or books. For the authors, though, narrative inquiry is much more than the telling of stories. There are complexities surrounding all phases of a narrative inquiry and, in this article, the authors pay particular attention to thinking about the design of narrative inquiries that focus on teachers’ and teacher educators’ own practices. They outline three commonplaces and eight design elements for consideration in narrative inquiry. They illustrate these elements using recently completed narrative inquiries. In this way, the authors show the complex dimensions of narrative inquiry, a kind of inquiry that requires particular kinds of wakefulness.

Personal Practical Knowledge: A Study of Teachers' Classroom Images.

ABSTRACTTeachers develop and use a special kind of knowledge. This knowledge is neither theoretical, in the sense of theories of learning, teaching, and curriculum, nor merely practical, in the sense of knowing children. If either of these were the essential ingredient of what teachers know, then it would be easy to see that others have a better knowledge of both; academics with better knowledge of the theoretical and parents and others with better knowledge of the practical. A teachers special knowledge is composed of both kinds of knowledge, blended by the personal background and characteristics of the teacher and expressed by her in particular situations.The idea of “image” is one form of personal practical knowledge, the name given to this special practical knowledge of teachers (Clandinin, 1985; Connelly and Dienes, 1982). In this article I show how one teachers image of the “classroom as home” embodies her personal and professional experience and how, in turn, the image is expressed in her classro...

Teachers' personal knowledge: What counts as ‘personal’ in studies of the personal∗

∗A version of this paper was published in Ben‐Peretz, M., Bromme, R. and Halkes, R. (1986) Advances of Research on Teaching Thinking (Swets & Zeitlinger/Swets North America Inc., Lisse/Berwyn). The paper is reprinted here with the permission of Swets & Zeitlinger b.v.

Narrative Inquiry: A Methodology for Studying Lived Experience

The paper briefly outlines the history and development of the methodology of narrative inquiry. It draws attention to the need for careful delineation of terms and assumptions. A Deweyan view of experience is central to narrative inquiry methodology and is used to frame a metaphorical three-dimensional narrative inquiry space. An illustration from a recent narrative inquiry into curriculum making is used to show what narrative inquirers do. Issues of social significance, purpose and ethics are also outlined.

Stories to Live By: Narrative Understandings of School Reform

AbstractRecently, writers on school change and implementation have shifted from the grand schemes and projects of the 1960s to school-based curriculum development and person-oriented approaches. Though more sensitive to local conditions and to teacher knowledge, these latter-day approaches inadequately recognize that (1) school reform is a complex practice/theory social process in which undirected change is inevitable; (2) schools and their participants have narrative histories; (3) the educational reform literature stretches back deep into the last century and is preceded by a relevant philosophical literature; and (4) school reform is an epistemological matter that involves issues of practitioner knowledge. These four points are elaborated in this article. Also, a sketch is offered of how school reform might be viewed in narrative terms that address these points.

Attending to changing landscapes: Shaping the interwoven identities of teachers and teacher educators †

Teachers, in Canada and elsewhere, live and work on school landscapes being shifted by globalization, immigration, demographics, economic disparities and environmental changes. Within those landscapes teachers find themselves struggling to compose lives that allow them to live with respect and dignity in relation with children, youth and families. In places in Canada, increasing numbers of teachers are leaving after only a few years of teaching. In this paper we take up questions about the stories teachers tell of their leaving and about what we can learn about our work as teacher educators from listening to, and inquiring into, their stories. Considering the inter-relatedness of our lives as teacher educators with teachers, we also inquire into our shifting landscapes as teacher educators. We discuss possible spaces we might collaboratively shape with teachers as they, and we, attempt to sustain our stories to live by on these shifting landscapes.

Negotiating Narrative Inquiries: Living in a Tension-Filled Midst

ABSTRACT The authors explore the place of tension in understanding narrative inquiry as a relational research methodology. Drawing on a narrative inquiry into childrens, teachers’, and families’ experiences in schools shaped by achievement testing practices that flow from accountability policies, the authors show how attending to tensions is central to the relational aspects of composing field texts as well as writing interim and final research texts. Through a fictionalized interim research text, the authors make visible the centrality of relational narrative ethics as we live in the midst of tensions. Finally, the authors offer a starting point for considering the dangers of counterstories as we work with participants and attend to tensions.

Narrative Inquiry: Toward Understanding Life’s Artistry

Abstract As we entered into Eisner and Powell’s exploration of the artistic and aesthetic qualities of the work of researchers, we were drawn toward deeper questions of our own lives as narrative inquirers. In particular, we thought about a metaphorical three-dimensional narrative inquiry space as a way to explore the aesthetic and artistic dimensions of experience. By returning to field texts of our recent work alongside Darlene, a mother we met on the landscape of an inner-city school context, we show how she was engaged in an artistic and aesthetic composition of her life experience. Our account also reveals how, as narrative inquirers engaged with Darlene, we, too, were composing artistic and aesthetic stories to live by.

Knowledge, Narrative And Self-Study

In this chapter we explore the ideas of knowledge and narrative in self-studies. Questions of how narrative self-studies allow insight into participant knowledge are addressed. Two sets of assumptions guide the exploration: first, a distinction between teacher knowledge and knowledge for teachers; and, second, a notion of narrative inquiry. We first distinguish between a view of knowledge as something teachers possess and a view of knowledge as coming from experience and as learned and expressed in practice. We then distinguish between knowledge as a state of mind and knowledge as a narrative, historical, phenomenon embedded in a teacher’s actions in classroom studies. Working with these distinctions, we review self-studies of the living of teacher knowledge in practice. We conceptualize a range of self-studies of teacher knowledge as narrative by imagining studies positioned along a continuum between the personal and the social. We position studies along a personal-social continuum with studies emphasizing the personal to studies emphasizing the social. For each study we show why it is a self-study of narrative teacher knowledge. In the next section we link each of the self-studies to professional knowledge. Finally we outline what we see as the potential and risks of self-study in narrative teacher knowledge. We argue that self-knowledge is, in the end, not important but stress that as means it is all important. Self-study is important not for what it shows about the self but because of its potential to reveal knowledge of the educational landscape.