While refugees are part of patterns of global migration, their ordinary lives remain obscured. In a narrative inquiry into the lives of Syrian refugee families who came to Canada within the past 4 years, we focused on their experiences of belonging, agency, and identity as part of social inclusion. The main focus was the lives of young children…

Narrative inquiry is both phenomenon and methodology for understanding experience. In this article, we further develop our understandings of narrative inquiry as a practice of social justice. In particular, we explore ways in which social justice issues can be re-framed and re-imagined, with attention to consequent action. Drawing on work…

In this interview, author, researcher, and professor D. Jean Clandinin reflects on her many years of experience as a narrative inquiry researcher, teacher, and teacher educator. She believes that growing up in a large, extended family with rooted engagement in the community set the stage for her later interest in narrative inquiry. She describes…

Framed by a question around vulnerability in narrative inquiries, we show the multiple ways that vulnerability is evident in narrative inquiry. We take up the concerns around vulnerability to show how, as narrative inquirers, we are searching to find ways to think with vulnerability and with what others have called neglected narratives. Drawing on…

In the 25 years since narrative inquiry emerged as a social science research methodology, it has been rapidly taken up in the social sciences. In what is sometimes called a "narrative revolution," researchers with diverse understandings have co-opted the concept of narrative inquiry and used narrative inquiry or narrative research to…

We began this research by asking questions about the high number of teachers who leave teaching in their first five years of teaching. The literature on early career teacher attrition (Borman & Dowling, 2008; Guarino, Santibanez & Daly, 2006; Macdonald, 1999; Smith & Ingersoll, 2004) left us with wonders around the experiences of…

The authors explore the place of tension in understanding narrative inquiry as a relational research methodology. Drawing on a narrative inquiry into children's, 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…

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…

We outline a theoretical view of narrative inquiry as both phenomenon and method, and we explore the growth and development of narrative inquiry in the field of education. Drawing on research with participants labeled as developmentally disabled, we show how narrative inquiry can illuminate how disability is understood and lived out in social,…

This paper outlines a narrative method for the study of teaching which has as its principle feature the reconstruction of classroom meaning in terms of narrative unities in the lives of classroom participants. This purpose is achieved by comparatively outlining similarities and differences with closely associated lines of work. This study of…

Describes teachers' experiences in a narrative research group. Meeting regularly to discuss their work as educators and researchers, they examined the story of a disagreement between a teacher and parent. Retelling the story within the supportive research group allowed the teacher to reach new insights about what she shared with the parent and why…

Outlines a method for the study of teaching, which reconstructs the meaning of specific classroom activities for students and teachers in terms of narrative unities (i.e., the union of all that a person has been and undergone with the past of the society that shaped him/her). Contrasts narratives and biographies. (DMM)

Some preliminary ideas on narrative inquiry in educational studies and educational reform are presented. Illustrations from Bay Street School (drawn from a 9-year research project on personal knowledge and narrative) are included. Since whatever may be said about narrative as method follows from its character as phenomenon, the aspects of…

This paper discusses the role of imagination, experience, and narrative recounting of practical events in the education of novice teachers. The narrative study of experience connects autobiography to action and intentional future; it connects these to social history and direction; and it links the pluralistic extremes of formalism to the…

Discusses how teachers' and students' personal stories are central to teacher education and to the improvement of schools. The article illustrates how the telling and writing, retelling and rewriting of teachers' and students' stories leads to awakenings and transformations resulting in changes in teaching practices. (SM)