Considering the Bonds Between Narrative Art and Narrative Inquiry

• In Event: What Shall We Name the Baby? Identifying the Art in Research and Research in the Arts

Abstract

Purposes
Given the depth and breadth of interest among education researchers in the narrative mode, it is critical that we understand not only the nature of narrative as a methodology and method but also the interdependent, complex relationship between narrative inquiry and narrative art. Embedded within the author’s ongoing study of students’ narratives of urban high school experience, this paper reinforces the importance of mindfulness concerning the synergism between method and art in eliciting, understanding, re-presenting narrative data.

Perspectives
Drawing on Bruner (2002), Clandinin (2007), discussion reviews and explains the attraction to narrative inquiry among contemporary education researchers. Informed by Bruner (2002), Frank (2012), the nature of narrative, emphasizing philosophical, social, cultural, aesthetic underpinnings is explained.

Methods
Presentation reviews, exemplifies interest in narrative inquiry across education disciplines. Interconnected is delineation of various forms of narrative inquiry and their connections to key elements of narrative art. Consideration specifies how narratives work as both art or literary texts, and as narratives of lived experience (Wood, 2008). Central to this consideration is mindfulness. Narrative researchers should be both knowledgeable and attentive in understanding interdependence between narrative as informational and demonstrative of research participants’ lives (Holstein & Gubrium, 2012) and those qualities of narratives drawing upon life-giving structures and conventions of literary art. Iser (in Bruner, 2002) reminds us that narratives are “forms of discourse that recruit the reader’s imagination—enlisting them in the performance of meaning under the guidance of the text ” (p. 25). Barthes reminds us that stories elicited through narrative inquiry are writerly texts (1974), enlisting readers’ experiences and creative vision as indispensible collaborators. Centrally, fostering keen awareness of literary conventions [story structure, plotlines, character development, voice, setting, point of view, imagery, symbolism, multiple literary tropes, amplification of experience] and their role in the vitality of research participants’ stories adds another stratum to the researcher’s interaction with narrative data, that is, the processes of analysis, interpretation, re-presentation, audiencing of findings.

Data sources
Data derive from individual and paired narrative interviews of 35 urban high school students.

Results
Excerpts from students’ narratives exemplify bonds between narrative art and narrative inquiry. Consider, one student’s response to the researcher’s narrative interview: “What’s it been like to be a high school student at X school over these past four years?” At the close of his senior year, 18 year old Xavier expressed: “When I come to school every morning, I keep thinking it’s like riding in an elevator. You’re crowded into this box with a lot of other people waiting for the door to open but it never does.” Literary images (simile and metaphor), evocative word choice, as well as embedded timeline vivify the disclosure of this student’s perception of high school experience. In his speech act, Xavier offers, not a simple cause-effect plotline, but, one of those gems that researchers skilled in narrative inquiry and mindful of narrative art value most, a storied response resonating with sensory data. Narrative data from the study demonstrate value added insights gained through linking method with art.

Author

• Candace Jesse Stout, The Ohio State University