Present Day: Setting the Stage for Narrative Inquiry

I started a new Master of Ed. course this weekend, Narrative Inquiry in Teaching, Learning, and Research. I'm still getting my head around the terminology associated with this form of qualitative research, and would like to explore if this is the methodology that would best fit my exit from the MEd. (I heard "stories" and got pretty excited. I heard that I could express myself using any format to share my "stories" -- and thought about my love for blogging. I heard that it is possible to conduct a thesis using the self as both researcher and participant. Very intriguing.)

Here is my rudimentary understanding (any errors or misinterpretations are entirely my own):

The narrative is about personal life experiences remembered and shared in the form of stories. These stories allow for the recovery of meaning and the reconstruction of meaning as we cross time. So, the concepts of memory and time are very significant. This quote says it much better than I can:

"The past shapes the future through the medium of a situation, and the future shapes the past through the stories we tell to account for and explain our situation. Where we have been and where we are going interact to make meaning of the situations in which we find ourselves."
Connelly & Clandinin, 1988

I learned that the field of Narrative Inquiry in education has been influenced by the work of John Dewey (1859-1952) and his student Joseph Schwab (1909-1988).

Dewey viewed education as the study of experience, and to study experience, one must study life.

"...the principle of continuity of experience means that every experience both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies in some way the quality of those which come after."
John Dewey, 1938



So, over the course of the next few weeks I will be composing annals and chronicles of my life experience in order to give a basic shape to my personal and social history. Annals and chronicles are considered "Field Text" .

A chronicle is concerned with the recovery of meaning. Our stories can only be told from our present understandings of what we remember. A chronicle organizes our life experiences in order of their occurrence across time. The chronicle that I complete for this course is to focus on a period of time or a central life theme. I am encouraged to include any evidence to support my chronicle. Evidence can be defined as any object such as a photograph or a letter, that helps to explain or support that the story actually exists/existed. (As someone who loves to tell a story, reads in every spare moment, loves to scrapbook the important moments in her life, is an amateur photographer -- I feel empowered. I know this word. I have history with this form of field text. I have chronicled, just didn't know it in this sense.)

Early Working Idea for Chronicle: I'm considering chronicling a central theme in my life, reading. I'd like to explore my experience with reading, my love for the (fictional) narrative, my belief that the experiences associated with the fictional narrative are just as influential to my life as my lived narrative. Further, I'd like to explore my experience with reading in an educational context and the impact again on my present life and how it has shaped my life as an educator. I'm thinking that this blog can warehouse my chronicle as it forms as well as the annals and autobiography that I will write.

Annal: Annals are items of significance (the recording of an experience, event or situation) found within a chronicle. Where the chronicle is concerned with the recovery of meaning, the annal is concerned with the reconstruction of meaning. This is the assignment of present day meaning to past experience. My annals will take a written form and be posted to this blog. The topics have been somewhat structured by my professor to assist in our practice of composing field text. The first annal that I will be writing needs to convey an experience, situation or event from my childhood.

Early Working Idea for Chronicle: Read Aloud in early elementary school

Autobiography: In this context, a personal or professional autobiography that uses the language of a narrative inquirer. It is a specific story that recovers and reconstructs meaning from a theme or significant event or situation in one's life that emerges from the chronicle or the annals of the chronicle.

I really have no idea right now what direction my autobiography may take. Meaning will have to be recovered and reconstructed from my chronicle and the annals within it, to lead me to a present day understanding of "my truths" from the theme and significant life experiences that I chose to explore.

I hope that I have set the stage adequately for my personal journey into Narrative Inquiry. I feel that it's time for my storytelling to begin.