Chapter 2

This chapter explores the specific places where narrative inquiry thinking comes into new territories and becomes a new way of thinking. 

Clandinin and Connelly were invited to work on a team to revise Bloom’s Taxonomy – framework for categorizing educational goals.  Clandinin and Connelly explored the tension at the boundaries between the grand narrative and narrative territories through their own vivid experiences.  In their work with the Taxonomy team, issues of continuity led to discussions about the tensions of temporality, people, action, and certainty.

Bloom’s Taxonomy levels of cognitive behavior: Knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  These categories are hierarchically arranged from simple to complex and are seen as the inherent order of things.

Narrative is described by the authors as being central to the understanding of experience and should therefore be central to the Taxonomy.  Narrative allows an understanding of individuals living storied lives on a storied landscape.  Although the narrative lens is concerned with the experience, narrative thinking also alters what the observer observes.

Tensions

The most apparent tension in their work with the Taxonomy team, centered on temporality.  There were tensions around the notion of different uses of objectives at pre-instructional, instructional, and post-instructional times.  Any event or thing, has a past, a present as it appears to us, and an implied future.

A closely related tension was one that had to do with people, students and teachers, and was closely linked with temporality. For example, knowing the immediate educational history of a child as well as the larger narrative is central to narrative educational thinking.  

A third tension was centered on how action was understood.  In narrative thinking, an action is seen as a narrative sign.  For example, a student’s performance on an achievement test is a narrative sign of something.  Without understanding the narrative history of the student, the significance or meaning of the sign remains unknown.    

A fourth tension centered on certainty.  In narrative thinking, the interpretations of events can always be otherwise.  For example, when using student achievement as a measure of certainty, performance could be interpreted in different ways.  

A fifth tension is centered on context.  In narrative thinking, context is ever present and can be thought of as temporal context, spatial context, and the context of other people.  One way in which context was introduced into the Taxonomy was by the distinction between the in-classroom and out-of-classroom places on the school landscape

Thinking Narratively: Reductionistic and Formalistic Boundaries

Chapter three explores the boundaries “between narrative inquiry and the grand narrative” (p. 34) as it related to professional practice. Clandinin and Connelly (2000) describe the grand narrative in educational practice being one that values reductionistic and formalistic theoretical boundaries, which creates disembodied knowledge that is dismissive of experience. Therefore experience as it is elevated in narrative inquiry is mistrusted within formalistic research perspectives and the grand narrative of educational practice (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). However, narrative inquiry is less focused on developing theory or add new knowledge to the field, and instead, “The contribution of narrative inquiry is more often intended to be the creation of a new sense of meaning and significance with respect to the research topic” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 42). 

People’s lives and experiences represent a significant tension between narrative inquiry and formalist inquiry rooted in the grand narrative. In formalistic inquiry people are viewed as “exemplars of a form-of an idea, a theory, a social category” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 43) whereas, “In narrative inquiry, people are seen as embodiments of lived stories” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 43). This tension also includes the place of the researcher, who comes to the inquiry with their own lived experience and contributions to the narrative. 

Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass .

In a Deweyan sense narrative inquiry consists of an interaction (personal and social), a continuity (past, present, and future), and a place (situation). So an inquiry is three-dimensional: temporality, personal and social, and place.

However, Clandinin and Connelly (1994) talked about four directions of an inquiry: inward (“internal conditions such as hopes, aesthetic reaction, and moral disposition), outward (existential conditions, environment), backward and forward (temporality-past, present, and future). We do research by looking the experiences we want to study through these four directions.

Ming Fang’s and Michael’s narrative is interesting example of a three-dimensional way of a narrative inquiry that took the four directions (inward, outward, backward, and forward). In a narrative inquiry, the stories of participants as well as that of the inquirers are (re)told.

In narrative inquiry, the enquirer is as vulnerable as the participants whose story he/she inquires about.

References

Clandinin, D.J, Connelly, M.F(200) Narrative Inquiry. Experience and Story in Qualitative Research. San Francisco. Jossey-Bass