Voicing Others' Voices: Researcher Identities and Authorial Stances

• In Event: 66.080 - Roundtable Session 26
  In Roundtable Session: 66.080-8 - Perspectives and Practices of Narrative Inquiry in Educational Research

Abstract

Utilising a three-cycle, multi-phase interview design, and solicited digital diaries, this study focuses on the transformative search by nine beginning elementary teachers, in Ireland, for their teaching identities, throughout their initial year of occupational experience, post-graduation. In qualitative studies, the interpretative process facilitates the refashioning of representations, the remaking of choices and the probing of discourses. Thus, spotlighting the researcher as narrator foregrounds a range of complex issues pertaining to voice, representation and interpretive authority. In constructing and interpreting others’ voices and realities, researchers develop their own voices. The manner, in which three researcher voices of Chase’s (2005) typology - authoritative, supportive, and interactive - are deployed in my study, is outlined, as is the scholarly significance of the paper.

Author

• Daniel O'Sullivan, University College Cork