QLR Narrative Analysis

1. Narrative Analysis
or at least Karen E. Johnson’s
version of it…

2. Narratives: Experience & Continuity
Dewey (1938)
Experience - both personal and social (and both are always present)
“People are individuals and need to be understood as such, but they can
not be understood only as individuals. They are always in relation,
always in a social context.”
Continuity - experiences grow out of other experiences, and experiences
lead to further experiences
“Whenever one positions oneself in that continuum-the imagined now,
some imagined past, or some imagined future- each point has a past
experiential base and leads to an experiential future.”

3. Narrative Mode of Thought
Bruner (1986, 1990)
Humans understand the world in two very different ways:
Paradigmatic mode of thought - seek to comprehend experiences in terms of tightly reasoned
analysis, logical proof, and empirical observation
Narrative mode of thought - concerned with human wants, needs, and goals all of which are
embedded in human interaction and organized in time
Narratives do not represent an external version of some internal mental entity- rather
narratives are a mode of representation of human experience
The social context in which the narrative is related, the narrator’s reason for telling it, the
narrator’s narrative competence, and the nature of the audience are all important
elements in developing an understanding of the narrative.
Agency is inherent in narratives - the storyteller constructs his/her story based on choices.
These choices include determining which story events to disclose to the audience, how
to order those events, and whether to edit or enhance the story based on the audience.

4. A Narrative Epistemological Stance
Sleeter, 1999 & Doyle, 1977
Narratives by their very nature are not meant to describe phenomena
objectively, but rather to connect phenomena and infuse them with
interpretation.
Narratives situate and relate facts to one another, and the essence of
“truth” is how phenomena are connected and interpreted.
Narratives are holistic and cannot be reduced to isolated facts without
losing the “truth” that is being conveyed.
Since narratives are social, relational, and culturally bound, they gain their
meaning from our collective social histories and cannot be separated
from the sociocultural and sociohistorical contexts from which they
emerged. Instead they are deeply embedded in sociohistorical
discourses (Gee, 1999) and thus represent a socially mediated view of
experience.

5. Narrative Analysis: Interpretation &
Reinterpretation
Polkinghorne (1983) Sarbin (1986)
2 types of narratives:
Narratives of description – used to create meaning from events in our lives
Narratives of explanation – move beyond meaning and explore causes of
life events and their connections with one another
Narratives help us interpret the world – narratives constitute a practical,
but also a highly selective, perspective with which we look at the world
around us.
Cultures maintain their stock of narratives to communicate and conserve
shared meanings. To participate in a culture is to know and use a range
of accumulated and shared meanings. These shared meanings are not
static but are in constant revision.

6. Narrative Inquiry in Educational Research
Clandinin & Connelly (2000)
Generally structured in chronological fashion, teachers, within an ever changing
present, try to interpret a series of experiences, to reconcile what is known with that
which is hidden, and to construct and reconstruct understandings of themselves as
teachers and of their teaching with an eye to the future.
Narratives, or the “storying” and “restorying” of a person’s life, are “a fundamental
method of personal (and social) growth.
Storying and restorying one’s life enables a teacher to create new meanings from
systematic inquiry and reflection. These stories enable readers to envision their
own stories and to consider how they might apply lessons learned from another
teacher’s narrative.

7. Narrative Analysis: Structural
Labov (1972, 1997) Structural types of narrative clauses
Abstract and orientation – how the speaker defines/positions him/herself and the context in
which the event(s) takes place (time, place, participants, initial behavior)
Complicating actions – how an event or set of events emerges (sequentially) and how an
event or set of events is constructed and/or understood
Evaluation – what are the consequences of the event or set of events on the speaker or
audience or ‘an other’ (sometimes evaluated in term of other events)
Result or resolution – how the complicating actions are resolved and what resources were
accessed to help resolve them
Coda – how the speaker, if at all, transforms his/her activities in the future or what was
learned by the event or set of events

8. Narrative Analysis: Thematic / Content
Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Spradley, 1979; Bogdan & Biklen, 2007
- coding of data into categories perceived as relevant
Iterative – ‘zigzag’ (vs. orderly) patterns – move back & forth between data collection,
data analysis, and data interpretation – stops at the point of ‘saturation’
Emergent – open, fluid, developing, evolving, responds flexibly to new details/events
Interpretative – researcher’s subjective interpretation of the data based on immersion
in the field (participants conceptual & contextual world)
grounded – themes/patterns emerge from the data
a prioir – focus of analysis imposed on the data
Ethnographic semantics – focus on the meanings that people give to their verbal
expressions - categories often expressed via participants’ wording

9. Hypothetical Research Questions
How does Suzanne understand the experience of designing and teaching an ESL
class on volunteerism?
How does Judy make sense of the academic concepts of subject position and
subjectivity?
What are the factors (events, people, ideas) that shape Sandra’s experiences of
becoming a language teacher?
What are the factors (events, people, ideas) that shape Kate’s experiences of
becoming a language teacher?

10. The Mechanics – a robust interpretation is one founded on
strong or recurrent patterns of empirical evidence
 Read through the data multiple times
 Break up data by idea units
 Account for all of the data
 Identity key ideas, themes, patterns
 Underline words, phrases that signal the subjects’ understandings and/or interpretations
 Look for evidence of voice or multiple voices
 Name the key ideas, themes, patterns
 Group or categorize the key ideas, themes, patterns
 Find relationships among and/or between groups or categories
- superior/subordinate relationships – something seems to cause or direct
something else
- co-occurring relationship- one topic occurs often in the data in proximity to or in
relationship with another topic
- recursive relationships – one thing precedes or follows another, which preceded or
follows another, and connects back to itself
 Display/describe both the categories and their relationships

11. Narrative as a mediational tool
Johnson & Golombek (2011, 2016) SLTE - narrative functions as a vehicle for
inquiry - intended to ‘push’ development
Central Question: What are the cognitive processes that are ignited as a result of
engagement in narrative activity?
Narrative as Externalization - brings experiences to conscious awareness, lays thinking
open to social influence, a means toward self-regulation
Narrative as Verbalization - to regulate thinking, thinking in concepts, ascent from the
abstract to the concrete, use concepts to make sense of experience and to regulate
both thinking and activity
Narrative as Systematic Examination - narrative activities are framed by a priori
procedures or parameters, what is learned will be shaped by how it is learned

12. Narrative Analysis: References
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bogdan, R., & Biklin, S.K. (1992). Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theory
and methods. (2nd edition). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Carter, C. (1993). The place of story in the study of teaching and teacher education. Educational
Researcher, 22 (1), 5-12 18.
Clandinin, D. J. & Connelly, F. M. (2000) Narrative inquiry: experience and story in qualitative
research (San Francisco, CA, Jossey Bass Publishers).
Clandinin, D. J. & Connelly, F. M. (1991) Narrative and story in practice and research, in: D.
Schon (Ed.) The reflective turn: case studies in and on educational practice (New York,
Teachers College Press).
Cizek, G. R. (1999) Narrative and neopragmatism in teacher education and research, in: J. Rath &
A. McAninch (Eds) What counts as knowledge in teacher education? (Stamford, CT, Ablex
Publishing Corporation).
Davies, B., & Harre, R. (1990). Positioning: The discursive production of selves. Journal for the
Theory of Social Behavior, 20(1), 43-63.
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and Education. New York: Collier Books.
Elbaz, F. (1983) Teacher thinking: a study of practical knowledge (London, Croon Helm).

13. Narrative Analysis: References
Elbaz, F. (1991) Research on teachers’ knowledge: The evolution of a discourse, Journal of
Curriculum Studies, 23, 1–19.
Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative
research. Chicago: Aldine.
Goetz, J., & LeCompte, M. (1981). Ethnographic research and the problem of data reduction.
Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 12, 51-70.
Labov, W. (1972). Language of the inner city: Studies in the Black English vernacular.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Labov, W. (1997). Some further steps in narrative analysis. Journal of Narrative and Life Story,
7, 395-415.
Polkinghorne, D. (1983). Methodology for the Human Sciences: Systems of Inquiry. Albany,
NY: State University of new York Press.
Robinson, J. A. & Hawpe, L. (1986) Thinking as a heuristic process, in: T. R. Sarbin (Ed.)
Narrative psychology: the storied nature of human conduct (New York, Praeger).
Sarbin, T. R. (1986). The narrative as a root metaphor for psychology. In Sarbin, T.R. (Ed).,
Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct. (pp. 3-21). New York: Praeger.
Spradley, J. (1979). The ethnographic interview. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston.
Witherall, C. & Noddings, N. (Eds) (1991) Stories lives tell: narrative and dialogue in education
(New York, Teachers College Press).