The Power of Narrative

I was very intrigued by the conversation between the two readings, the one responding to and challenging the ideas of the other. Since I had the opportunity to take a course in qualitative research methods in adult education last semester, and as part of that I did a case study using narrative inquiry, I could read both pieces with a certain level of resonance. I recognized from the LA reading that the process laid out, while clear and well-defined, was very mechanistic and not terribly realistic in terms of real world logistics. Similarly, remembering from last semester's experience, I recognized that the process is much "muddier" and idosyncratic than the process as laid out in LA would suggest. Human beings and their learning contexts have far too much individuality to be crammed into a research "box" when the effort is to get at the actual lived experience of subjects. I can definitely understand and agree with Newkirk in recognizing the power of narrative (even of one person), but I have to acknowledge (as he does) the limits and generalizeability of narrative inquiry. What its strength is, I think, is in giving voice to the experience of the learner and being able to capture in rich and descriptive detail the thinking, the context, and the rationales that undergird the learning and writing process. I still struggle with the subjectivity that seems inevitable, even in the pulling out of categories and the identifying of themes. This was particularly problematical when we did a group project in narrative inquiry last semester, and the potential for skewing and completely re-shaping the data still haunts me.