(Co)constructing narratives about who we are and the work we do: How, and why it matters

Narrative inquiry as an approach to investigating life, work, and identity has gained significant visibility and legitimacy in multiple professional disciplines. Despite this accelerated research activity, there still exists some uncertainty about what narrative is, and what narrative inquiry does. In this presentation, I present a framework for narrative inquiry that gets to the foundation of what the methodology is and how it works. I highlight narrative concepts and cover various approaches to narrative data collection and analysis, focusing on the field of language education. To do so, I introduce ‘narrative knowledging’, which refers to how we make sense of or understand experience (teaching, learning, identity) during the processes of inquiry. Central to my presentation will be the concept of ‘story’ – what stories are, how they can be used for research purposes and reflection, and how sharing stories has implications for understanding and transforming the work we do.