Narragating’ the labyrinth of a qualitative, narrative approach
4.5 Creating data and crafting narratives
4.5.3 Crafting narratives
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contradictory and emotional responses and silences. In an attempt to minimise possible practical challenges, I phoned teacher participants to confirm dates and times of interviews, arrived punctually, had copies of my interview schedule, ensured tape recorder had batteries and I had sufficient tapes to record interviews (Plummer, 2001). As an emotionalist interviewer (Silverman, 2006), besides developing rapport and trust with teacher participants and providing stimulating, conducive encounters, I also talked openly and freely about personal experiences and emotions. Narrative interviews, I believe, are not only appropriate to delve deeper into the lives and personal experiences of teacher participants, but also provide narrative spaces for interviewers and interviewees to collaboratively create meaning and generate stories (Elliott, 2005, p. 23).
Added to this, I asked teacher participants to record three critical lessons and respond to three scenarios related to HIV and AIDS teaching. I hoped that by reflecting on critical lessons, teacher participants would reflect and shed light on the challenges, subjective experiences and emotionality in their HIV and AIDS teaching. The scenario analysis aimed to elicit their attitudes, values and beliefs related to HIV and AIDS.
The preceding discussion justifies my choices for the data generation instruments - narrative resources - employed to elicit personal narratives of teacher participants’ life and teaching experiences. The next step of my narrative, labyrinth journey, explicates the process of crafting narratives.
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from such stories, which accurately represents their lives and experiences without omitting significant experiences and incidents. To this end, I decided to engage teachers in the process of co-constructing such narratives. Gubrium and Holstein (2009, p. 42) put it simply: “in practice, narrators are the architects and builders of their stories, but they accomplish their craft interacting with other storytellers and listeners”. Along these lines, Witherell and Noddings maintain, “the stories we hear and the stories we tell shape the meaning and texture of our lives at every stage and juncture” (1991, p. 1). As I ‘narragate’ (Brampton, 2009) through this methodological labyrinth, negotiating the narrative turns, it becomes evident - I am surrounded by such stories - my story as the researcher and narrator, teachers’ stories of their personal and professional life experiences, stories about teachers’ subjectivities and emotionality and the HIV and AIDS education story.
This step involves efficiently managing the data or information that narrative accessories or data generation instruments elicited. Most importantly, these narrative accessories or instruments shed light on teachers’ personal and professional experiences and their subject positions, subjectivities and emotions when teaching about HIV and AIDS education.
Interviews and video-recorded lessons were transcribed. Since three of the teacher participants switched between using English and isiZulu during the lesson observations, the transcriber, who was articulate in isiZulu, had to translate the isiZulu conversations into English. At the outset, I engaged in several readings and re-readings of the data, so as to familiarise myself with the teacher participants and their stories. I listened to the recorded semi-structured interviews and watched the lesson observation videos again in an attempt to capture and expand narrative moments. In particular, video-recorded lessons revealed the content taught, teaching strategies used and teachers’ responses. More specifically, I looked for emerging patterns, common issues and contradictions, and made notes of these on the transcripts. Added to this, I made notes of gaps, inconsistencies or issues for further clarity, which I would discuss in follow-up meetings with teacher participants. Following this initial stage, of acquainting myself with, and a preliminary making sense of the data, I embarked on the next, indeed, challenging task, of constructing teachers’ personal narratives from their stories. Although this process was time-consuming, the upshot is that it allowed me the opportunity to immerse myself in the data.
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Initially, I developed profiles of teacher participants, based on oral and written information they provided as well as my observations and field notes, primarily to provide biographical information and shed light on who my teacher participants are. I integrated information from all data sources about teachers’ life and teaching experiences, and the stories they shared, to construct their personal narratives. Original personal narratives, which I constructed, were long-drawn-out and comprehensive, and in a sense represent windows into the social worlds and lives of teacher participants. Copies of these narratives were then given to the participants to clarify whether I had represented their stories accurately, as well as allow them to edit, revise or adjust their narratives. Teacher participants chose their pseudonyms to be used in their narratives: Mary-Ann, Andrew, Nombu, Sandile and Zibuyile. However, after listening to their stories and reading through their co-constructed narratives, I selected an interesting phrase which, I believed, succinctly described each of them:
Andrew - the outsider: this was the title of one of the poems Andrew wrote while at college and, indeed, reflects how he felt during most of his childhood, student and teaching years.
Zibuyile - the conqueror: since she overcame tremendous challenges in her life: retrenchment of her parents, adjusting to English first language demands at training college, a troublesome marriage, attempted suicide and anxiety about her HIV-status.
Sandile - the gentleman: he was always so polite, respectful, tolerant, accommodating and helpful, not only with his colleagues, learners and me, but also with his family.
Nombu - the survivor: she experienced hardships such as her mothers’ death, political violence disrupting her schooling, termination of contract teaching posts, carrying water from river and living in an area with lots of snakes, despite teaching being her second choice of profession, she nevertheless strived to do her best.
Mary-Ann: the extrovert: never afraid to speak her mind, she was expressive, candid and outspoken, very sociable and jovial - a real livewire - fun-loving, uninhibited and good- humoured.
Teacher participants were given an opportunity to reflect on these descriptions/phrases and alter them when reviewing their narratives, however, it would seem that they approved since none of them chose to change these descriptions when editing. This process of co- construction was not only arduous and on-going, but also challenging and time-consuming.
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However, notwithstanding such challenges, I believe, co-construction added richness to the narratives. The following section expands upon this process of co-construction with its concomitant challenges.