CHAPTER 3: DEVELOPING THE TOOLS AS A MASTER CARVER
3.3 NARRATIVE INQUIRY: THE WHY? WHAT? AND HOW?
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also acknowledges that the human mind is the purposive source of origin and meaning (Nieuwenhuis, 2010), the habitus of the person (Bourdieu, 1986). The interpretive paradigm is focused on understanding the world as it is from the subjective experiences of individuals (Reeves & Hedberg, 2003).
My aim for this study was to obtain an in-depth understanding (Cohen, Manion &
Morrison, 2011) of the inner lives of my participants. Interpretivism suggests that “reality is socially constructed” (Mertens, 2005, p. 12), and adopting an interpretivist approach therefore allowed me to understand the multiple fluid lives of my participants, both in the context of the different school quintiles and also in the various settings that reflected their socio-cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Interpretivism also focuses on understanding complex human behaviour (De Villiers, 2005), and the researcher does not stand above or outside but is an observer who attempts to understand the meanings of actions as they are communicated within specific social contexts (Mutch, 2005). As a researcher, I wanted an insider view of the phenomenon, and therefore deemed the interpretivist approach to be appropriate.
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A journey of listening Stories lived and told
Experience of place, space and time An Investigation into Life’s Experiences
An entanglement between
Written by participants and researchers Stories used as data
Stories and re-stories
The highlighted lines from the poem now informed my understanding of narrative inquiry as a research methodology. Also, my understanding of narrative inquiry was supported by Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) definition of narrative inquiry as a term that encapsulates personal and human aspects of experience over time and takes cognisance of the relationship between individual experience and cultural context. Furthermore, Clandinin and Caine (2008) view narrative inquiry as both a phenomenon and a methodology. As a methodology, narrative inquiry is a study of individuals over time and context, and also involves narratively inquiring into their experience. As a phenomenon, narrative inquiry is a means of understanding people’s experiences (Clandinin & Caine, 2008).
3.3.1 Experience of place, space and time
To understand the aspects of place, space and time, I lean on Connelly and Clandinin’s (2006) commonplaces of narrative inquiry to clarify the distinct qualities that encompass this methodology. Connelly and Clandinin (2006, p. 479) identified “three commonplaces of narrative inquiry. These are temporality, sociality, and place which specify dimensions of an inquiry space”. Embarking on narrative inquiry requires the “simultaneous exploration of all three commonplaces” (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p. 479). Firstly, according to Connelly and Clandinin (2006, p. 479), “events under study are in temporal transition”; temporality, therefore, refers to taking heed of the past, present and future of people, contexts and places, things and events as in process, as always in transition.
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Secondly, the sociality commonplace takes heed of the person’s personal and social conditions. A researcher and narrative inquirer has to consider both the individual and social conditions of his or her participants. The personal conditions include the hopes, needs, and moral character and nature of the participants. In contrast, the social conditions draw on external conditions (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006), which may incorporate the social-cultural, economic and historical contexts. And finally, the place commonplace refers to “the specific concrete, physical and topological boundaries of place or sequence of places where the inquiry and events take place” (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p. 480).
As a researcher, it was therefore also essential for me to understand the environment and circumstances within which the participants’ stories unfolded (Creswell, 2007), as the teachers were drawn from diverse contexts. While as a researcher I was able to identify with those teachers who teach within the township of Chatsworth, I also had to understand the teachers who had been born in, and had lived and worked in different contexts.
3.3.2 An investigation into life’s experiences
Clandinin and Connelly (2000) indicated that narrative inquiry is a term that considers the personal and human aspects of experience over time. Accordingly, understanding who the teachers were required a holistic knowledge of the participants — both their present and past experiences, and their primary and secondary socialisation (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), as these experiences had been instrumental in shaping their habitus (Bourdieu, 1978) and outlook on life. It is this reservoir of expertise that teachers can draw on to help them negotiate their dilemmas and dilemmatic spaces within schools. These experiences can be brought to the fore through the stories that teachers recount of themselves. Hence, narrative inquiry is ideally suited to understand the essence of an experience, as it places the participants centre stage and gives voice to their individual stories (Creswell, 2007).
In addition, because the collective voice of teachers has been restricted within educational spaces (De Clercq & Phiri, 2013), resulting in frustrated demotivated teachers, narrative inquiry offers a voice to those who have been previously unheard in educational research
— like some teachers within particular school quintiles. Narrative inquiry also allows researchers to explore the significance of the participants’ experiences as told through stories (Creswell, 2008). It was through the stories that the teachers told about their experiences within school quintiling that I as the researcher was able to investigate how
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teachers are enabled or constrained, and how they, in turn, interpret their individual experiences (Creswell, 2007). Furthermore, I wore the caps of both teacher and researcher, and narrative inquiry allowed for my story as a teacher-researcher to also be told. Through the stories I told of my life as a teacher I could ascertain how my own subjective experiences or stories reflected, and also resisted, the broader social or cultural patterns or understandings (Ellis, 2004).
3.3.3 Written by participants and researchers
When considering the researcher-participant relationship that needed to be established, I considered the words of Connelly and Clandinin (1990), who suggested that before any formal data can be obtained, a trusting relationship needs to be established between the researcher and the participant. Narrative inquiry allows for this relationship to be developed, as according to Clandinin and Connelly (2000, p. 20), narrative inquiry is a way of understanding and inquiring into an experience through “collaboration between researcher and participants”. Collaboration between researcher and participant allows for a relationship to be established and offers a lens for coming to a better understanding of the participants’ similar, yet unique, experiences (Wiebe, 2008). Thus, negotiating entry into the field of research is essential. A healthy relationship requires a relationship of equality.
This relationship brings the issue of voice to the fore (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990).
However, as researcher and teacher, I also understand that as practitioners in the classroom we have been silenced and without a voice for so long that attempting to establish a caring, open relationship may prove difficult (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). I therefore endeavoured to tell my participants about my life as a teacher within my particular school quintile. As a teacher myself, I understood the dynamics involved in school education. For years as an Indian teacher at a predominantly Indian school, I had been exposed mostly to other Indian teachers. My interactions with Black teachers had been mainly restricted to meetings and workshops. But now, as a researcher, I appreciated that there may be social-cultural differences which I was not aware of. As a researcher, I had to consider all these factors as they could have created a problem. I had to emphasise the need for an empowering relationship based on equality, care, shared purpose and
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intention (Råheim et al., 2016), and I had to reflect on this relationship continually. I had to emphasise the shared nature of the research process as encompassing researcher and participant in the community, which has importance for researcher and participant, theory and practice (Noddings, 1986).
3.3.4 Stories and re-stories
The teachers in this study had emerged from a period of apartheid history that fashioned a narrative of neglect, want, deprivation and scarcity. Allowing participants time and space to reflect on their lived experiences requires them to go back in time and recall those lived experiences. In this process, they bring forth their experiences through the stories they tell. However, the kind of story they tell speaks volume of their character, personality and agency as teachers. Stories and re-stories are, therefore, fundamental to the narrative inquiry process. Downey and Clandinin (2010, p. 387) highlighted that
“stories are not just about experience but experience itself; we live and learn in, and through, the living, telling, retelling, and reliving of our stories”. Hence, in order to make sense of and uncover the meaning between our prior and current experiences, and using these understandings to develop, advance and progress, we need to engage in not only telling our stories but also in retelling them. The process of rewriting and retelling our stories and experiences provides a platform for understandings to be revealed and new theoretical understandings to develop, and we begin to change ourselves and realise new possibilities for practice (Clandinin & Connelly, 1994).