Narrative Research Design

Narrative Research
Designs
15
C H A P T E R
P eople live storied lives. They tell stories to share their lives with others and to pro-
vide their personal accounts about classrooms, schools, educational issues, and the
settings in which they work. When people tell stories to researchers, they feel listened
to, and their information brings researchers closer to the actual practice of educa-
tion. Thus, stories reported in qualitative narrative research enrich the lives of both
the researcher and the participant. This chapter defines narrative research, identi-
fies when you use it, assesses the key characteristics of it, and advances the steps in
conducting and evaluating this design.
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
◆ Describe narrative research, and describe when to use it, and how it developed.
◆ Identify the types of narrative designs.
◆ Describe the key characteristics of narrative designs.
◆ Identify some potential ethical issues in gathering stories.
◆ Understand the steps used in conducting narrative research.
◆ List criteria for evaluating a narrative study.
Maria chooses a narrative design for her research project studying the possession of
weapons by high school students. Maria’s teacher friend, Millie, has a story to tell about
how she encountered a student in the high school who was hiding a weapon in his
locker. Maria studies this question: “What is the story of a teacher who found a student
hiding a weapon in her high school?” Maria interviews Millie and listens to her stories
about her experiences with the student, with other teachers, and with the school prin-
cipal. The story falls into an easy chronology from the initial incident to the follow-up
discussions. To make the story as accurate as possible, Maria collaborates with Millie in
writing the story, and she shares the written report as it unfolds. Maria engages in narra-
tive research.
501
502 PART III Research Designs
WHAT IS NARRATIVE RESEARCH, WHEN DO YOU USE IT,

AND HOW DID IT DEVELOP?
The term narrative comes from the verb “to narrate” or “to tell (as a story) in detail”
(Ehrlich, Flexner, Carruth, & Hawkins, 1980, p. 442). In narrative research designs,
researchers describe the lives of individuals, collect and tell stories about people’s lives,
and write narratives of individual experiences (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). As a distinct
form of qualitative research, a narrative typically focuses on studying a single person,
gathering data through the collection of stories, reporting individual experiences, and
discussing the meaning of those experiences for the individual. With recent popularity,
national research conferences have devoted sessions and papers to it, and educational
journals have published stories reported by teachers, students, and other educators. New
books are now available from publishers that provide essential information about the
process of conducting this form of qualitative inquiry.
When Do You Use Narrative Research?

You use narrative research when you have individuals willing to tell their stories and
you want to report their stories. For educators looking for personal experiences in actual
school settings, narrative research offers practical, specific insights. By conducting nar-
rative studies, researchers establish a close bond with the participants. This may help
reduce a commonly held perception by practitioners in the field that research is distinct
from practice and has little direct application. Additionally, for participants in a study,
sharing their stories may make them feel that their stories are important and that they are
heard. When they tell a story, it helps them understand topics that they need to process
(McEwan & Egan, 1995). Telling stories is a natural part of life, and individuals all have
stories about their experiences to tell others. In this way, narrative research captures an
everyday, normal form of data that is familiar to individuals.
You use narrative research when the stories told to you follow a chronology of
events. Narrative research is a literary form of qualitative research with strong ties to
literature, and it provides a qualitative approach in which you can write in a persua-
sive, literary form. It focuses on the microanalytic picture—individual stories—rather
than the broader picture of cultural norms, as in ethnography, or abstract theories, as
in grounded theory research. As an example of this micropicture, consider the case of
Ms. Meyer, who had two children in her fifth- and sixth-grade class write stories
about their personal lives. Anthony, a 9-year-old who considered himself an inventor
and writer, kept a scientific journal of his discoveries and wrote an expressive piece
about his grandmother. Anita, an 11-year-old, wrote about the good times she had in
a swimming pool, learning to play kickball, and being able to succeed at something
(McCarthey, 1994).
How Did Narrative Research Develop?

Despite substantial interest in narrative research, its methods are still developing, and it
is infrequently discussed in the literature (Errante, 2000). This has led to little agreement
about its form. The “narrative turn,” as Riessman (1993) called it, embraces all of the
human sciences, so that this form of research is not the providence of any specific field
of study. Writers in literature, history, anthropology, sociology, sociolinguistics, and edu-
cation all lay claim to narrative and have developed discipline-specific procedures. Like
CHAPTER 15 Narrative Research Designs 503
the art and science of portraiture discussed recently in the social sciences, this design
involves drawing portraits of individuals and documenting their voices and their visions
within a social and cultural context (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997).
However, a comprehensive overview of this design of research in education emerged
in 1990. Educators D. Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly provided the first overview of
narrative research for the field of education. In their informative, classic article, “Stories
of Experience and Narrative Inquiry,” published in the Educational Researcher (Connelly
& Clandinin, 1990), they cited many social science applications of narrative, elaborated
on the process of collecting narrative fieldnotes, and discussed the writing and structure
of a narrative study. This article expanded their earlier discussion about narrative within
the context of teaching and learning in classrooms (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988). More
recently, these two authors expounded their ideas in a book titled Narrative Inquiry
(Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), which openly espoused “what narrative researchers do”
(p. 48).
Within the field of education, several trends influenced the development of narrative
research. Cortazzi (1993) suggested three factors. First, there is currently an increased
emphasis on teacher reflection. Second, more emphasis is being placed on teachers’
knowledge—what they know, how they think, how they develop professionally, and how
they make decisions in the classroom. Third, educators seek to bring teachers’ voices to
the forefront by empowering teachers to talk about their experiences. For example, “Our
Own Stories,” reported by Meyer (1996), is a collection of stories about teachers sharing
their experiences, whether they are sitting in the teachers’ lounge at noon or after school.
McEwan and Egan (1995) provided collections of stories about educators as teachers and
curriculum developers. For women in general, as well as for female teachers, their stories
to children, to adolescent girls, and to their own female associates often take on a femi-
nine repertoire to serve their female audiences (Degh, 1995). Hearing these stories has
encouraged educational studies using the narrative approach. In fact, within education a
special interest group in AERA has been formed to create an ongoing discussion about
narrative research.
A growing number of interdisciplinary social scientists outside education have
offered procedural guidance for narrative reports as a form of qualitative research (e.g.,
see the psychologists Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998; the sociologist Cortazzi,
1993; and Riessman, 1993). Interdisciplinary efforts at narrative research have also been
encouraged by the Narrative Study of Lives annual series that began in 1993 (e.g., Jossel-
son & Lieblich, 1993).
WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF NARRATIVE DESIGNS?
Narrative research assumes multiple forms. If you plan to conduct a narrative study, you
need to consider what type of narrative study to conduct. Narrative research is an over-
arching category for a variety of research practices (see Casey, 1995/1996), as shown in
Figure 15.1. For individuals planning a narrative study, each type of narrative provides a
structure for conducting the study and ready references for how to conduct the project
that faculty, journal reviewers, and book publishers will recognize. For those reading
narrative studies, it is less important to know what type of narrative is being used and
more important to recognize the essential characteristics of the types. The five questions
discussed in the following subsections are helpful in determining your type of narrative
study.
FIGURE 15.1
Examples of Types of Narrative Research Forms
• Autobiographies • Personal documents • Autoethnographies

• Biographies • Documents of life • Ethnopsychologies
• Life writing • Life stories and life histories • Person-centered ethnographies
• Personal accounts • Oral histories • Popular memories
• Personal narratives • Ethnohistories • Latin American testimonios
• Narrative interviews • Ethnobiographies • Polish memoirs
Source: Adapted from Casey, 1995/1996.
Who Writes or Records the Story?

Determining who will write and record the individual’s story is a basic distinction in nar-
rative research. A biography is a form of narrative study in which the researcher writes
and records the experiences of another person’s life. Typically, researchers construct
biographies from records and archives (Angrosino, 1989), although researchers some-
times use other sources of information, such as interviews and photographs. In an auto-
biography, the individual who is the subject of the study writes the account. Although
not a popular approach, you can find reports of autobiographical accounts of teachers as
professionals (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990).
How Much of a Life Is Recorded and Presented?

This question introduces a second distinction among narrative studies. In anthropology,
numerous examples exist of stories of an individual’s entire life. A life history is a narra-
tive story of the entire life experiences of a person. Anthropologists, for example, engage
in life history research to learn about an individual’s life within the context of a culture-
sharing group. Often the focus includes turning points or significant events in the life of
an individual (Angrosino, 1989). However, in education, narrative studies typically do not
involve the account of an entire life but instead focus on an episode or single event in
the individual’s life. A personal experience story is a narrative study of an individual’s
personal experience found in single or multiple episodes, private situations, or com-
munal folklore (Denzin, 1989). Clandinin and Connelly (2000) broadened the personal
experience story to be both personal and social, and conveyed this stance as the essence
of the experiences reported about teachers and teaching in schools.
Who Provides the Story?

A third approach for identifying the type of narrative is to examine closely who provides
the story. This factor is especially relevant in education, where types of educators or
learners have been the focus of many narrative studies. For example, teachers’ stories
are personal accounts by teachers of their own personal classroom experiences. As a
popular form of narrative in education, researchers report teachers’ stories to capture
the lives of teachers as professionals and to examine learning in classrooms (e.g., Con-
nelly & Clandinin, 1988). Other narrative studies focus on students in the classroom. In
children’s stories, narrative researchers ask the children in classrooms to present orally
or in writing their own stories about their learning experiences (e.g., Ollerenshaw, 1998).
Many different individuals in educational settings can provide stories, such as adminis-
trators, school board members, custodians, food service workers, and other educational
personnel.
Is a Theoretical Lens Being Used?

Another question that shapes the character of a narrative is whether and to what extent
the researcher uses a theoretical lens in developing the narrative. A theoretical lens in
narrative research is a guiding perspective or ideology that provides structure for advo-
cating for groups or individuals in the written report. This lens may be to advocate for
Latin Americans using testimonios, reporting the stories of women using a feminist lens
(e.g., Personal Narratives Group, 1989), or collecting the stories of marginalized individu-
als. In all of these examples, the narrative researcher provides a voice for seldom-heard
individuals in educational research.
Can Narrative Forms Be Combined?

In a narrative, it is possible to have the different elements listed above combined in the
study. For example, a narrative study may be biographical because researchers write and
report it about a participant in a study. This same study may focus on a personal study of
a teacher. It may also address an event in the life of a teacher, such as a dismissal from a
school (Huber & Whelan, 1999), resulting in a partial life story, or a personal narrative. In
addition, if this individual is a woman, a researcher might use a theoretical lens to exam-
ine power and control issues in the school. This could lead to a feminist narrative. The
final resulting narrative thus could be a combination of different elements: a biography, a
personal story, a teacher’s story, and a feminist perspective.
Given the many types of narrative studies, what type of narrative research should
Maria conduct? As she gathers stories from Millie about her encounter with the student,
(a) does Maria or Millie write the story? (b) Is Maria reporting on an entire life or a spe-
cific episode? (c) Who provides the story to Maria? (d) Should Maria advocate for weapon
control in the school through her narrative study? Answer each of these questions and
think through your rationale for answering them. What would you call Maria’s narrative
approach as she writes about it in her research study? She would probably use a personal
narrative approach. How would you answer each of the questions above to arrive at this
approach?
WHAT ARE THE KEY CHARACTERISTICS OF

NARRATIVE DESIGNS?
Despite the many forms of narrative inquiry, they share several common characteristics.
Before reviewing the key characteristics, we discuss them in general terms and relate
them to the qualitative characteristics of research.
As shown in Table 15.1, narrative researchers explore an educational research
problem by understanding the experiences of an individual. As in most qualitative
research, the literature review plays a minor role, especially in directing the research
questions, and the inquirer emphasizes the importance of learning from participants in
a setting. This learning occurs through stories told by individuals, such as teachers or
students. The stories constitute the data, and the researcher typically gathers it through
interviews or informal conversations. These stories, called fi eld texts ( Clandinin &
TABLE 15.1
The Research Process, Qualitative Characteristics, and Narrative Research Characteristics
Narrative Research
The Research Process Qualitative Characteristics Characteristics
Identify a research problem • A qualitative problem requires • Seeks to understand and
exploration and understanding. represent experiences through
the stories individual(s) live
and tell.
Review the literature • The qualitative literature plays a • Seeks to minimize the use of
minor role. literature and focuses on the
experiences of the individual(s).
• The qualitative literature justifies
the research problem.
Develop a purpose • The qualitative purpose statement • Seeks to explore the meaning of
statement and research and research questions are broad the individual’s experiences as
questions and general. told through a story or stories.
• The qualitative purpose statement
and research questions seek
participants’ experiences.
Collect qualitative data • Qualitative data collection • Seeks to collect field texts that
is based on using protocols document the individual’s story
developed during the study. in his or her own words.
• Qualitative data collection
involves gathering text or
image data.
• Qualitative data collection involves
studying a small number
of individuals or sites.
Analyze and interpret • Qualitative data analysis consists • Seeks to analyze the stories by
qualitative data of text analysis. retelling the individual’s story.
• Qualitative data analysis consists • Seeks to analyze the stories by
describing information and identifying themes or categories
of developing themes. of information.
• Qualitative interpretations situate • Seeks to situate the story within
findings within larger meanings. its place or setting.
• Seeks to analyze the story for
chronological information about
the individual’s past, present,
and future.
Write and evaluate a study • Qualitative research reports use • Seeks to collaborate with the
flexible and emerging structures participant when writing the
and evaluation criteria. research study.
• Qualitative researchers take a • Seeks to write the study in a
reflexive and biased approach. flexible storytelling mode.
• Seeks to evaluate the study
based on the depth, accuracy,
persuasiveness, and realism of
the account.
Connelly, 2000), provide the raw data for researchers to analyze as they retell the story
based on narrative elements such as the problem, characters, setting, actions, and reso-
lution (Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2000). In this process, researchers narrate the story
and often identify themes or categories that emerge. Thus, the qualitative data analysis
may be both a description of the story and themes that emerge from it. In addition, the
researcher often writes into the reconstituted story a chronology of events describing
the individual’s past, present, and future experiences lodged within specific settings or
contexts. Throughout this process of collecting and analyzing data, the researcher col-
laborates with the participant by checking the story and negotiating the meaning of the
database. In addition, the researcher may interweave his or her personal story into the
final report.
This brief overview of the process highlights specific characteristics of research often
found in narrative reports. As shown in Figure 15.2, seven major characteristics are cen-
tral to narrative research:
◆ Individual experiences
◆ Chronology of the experiences
◆ Collecting individual stories
◆ Restorying
◆ Coding for themes
◆ Context or setting
◆ Collaborating with participants
Individual Experiences
In narrative research, the inquirer often studies a single individual. Narrative researchers
focus on the experiences of one or more individuals. Although less frequent, researchers
may study more than one individual (McCarthey, 1994).
In addition to the study of an individual, the researcher is most interested in explor-
ing the experiences of that individual. For Clandinin and Connelly (2000), these experi-
ences in narrative inquiry are both personal, what the individual experiences, and social,
the individual interacting with others. This focus on experience draws on the philosophi-
cal thoughts of John Dewey, who saw that individual experience was a central lens for
FIGURE 15.2
Major Characteristics of Narrative Research
• Experiences of an individual—social and personal interactions

• Chronology of experiences—past, present, and future experiences
• Life stories—first-person, oral accounts of actions obtained through field texts (data)
• Restorying (or retelling or developing a metastory) from the field texts
• Coding the field texts for themes or categories
• Incorporating the context or place into the story or themes
• Collaboration between the researcher and the participants in the study, such as
negotiating field texts
Source: Adapted from Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Lieblich et al., 1998; Riessman, 1993.
understanding a person. One aspect of Dewey’s thinking was to view experience as con-
tinuous (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), where one experience led to another experience.
Thus, narrative researchers focus on understanding individual history or past experiences
and how it contributes to present and future experiences.
Chronology of the Experiences

Understanding the individual’s past as well as the present and future is another key ele-
ment in narrative research. Narrative researchers analyze and report a chronology of an
individual’s experiences. When researchers focus on understanding these experiences,
they elicit information about a participant’s past, present, and future. Chronology in
narrative designs means that the researcher analyzes and writes about an individual life
using a time sequence or chronology of events. Cortazzi (1993) suggested that the chro-
nology of narrative research emphasizes a sequence, which sets narrative apart from
other genres of research. For example, in a study about a teacher’s use of computer
technology in a high school classroom, the inquirer would include information about
the teacher’s introduction to computers, current computer use, and future goals and
aspirations. The story reported by the researcher would include a discussion about the
sequence of events for this teacher.
Collecting Individual Stories

To develop this chronological perspective of individual experiences, the narrative
researcher asks the participant to tell a story (or stories) about his or her experiences.
Narrative researchers place emphasis on collecting the stories told to them by individuals
or gathered from a wide variety of field texts. These accounts might arise during informal
group conversations or from one-on-one interviews. A story in narrative research is
a first-person oral telling or retelling of an individual. Often these stories have a begin-
ning, a middle, and an end. Similar to basic elements found in good novels, these aspects
involve a predicament, conflict, or struggle; a protagonist or character; and a sequence
with implied causality (a plot) during which the predicament is resolved in some fashion
(Carter, 1993). In a more general sense, the story might include the elements typically
found in novels, such as time, place, plot, and scene (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). For
those relating to narrative from a literary perspective, the sequence might be the devel-
opment of the plot as it unfolds, the emergence of a crisis or turning point, and the
conclusion or denouement. Narrative researchers hope to capture this story line as they
listen to individuals tell their stories.
Narrative researchers collect stories from several data sources. Field texts represent
information from different sources collected by researchers in a narrative design. Up to
this point, our examples have illustrated collecting stories by using discussions, conversa-
tions, or interviews between a researcher and one individual. However, the stories might
be autobiographical, with the researcher reflecting on his or her story and interweaving
that story with those of others. Often the researcher’s role in the inquiry process may be
central, in which they find themselves in a “nested set of stories” (Clandinin & Connolly,
2000, p. 63). Journals are another form used for collecting stories, as are fieldnotes writ-
ten by either the researcher or the participant. Letters provide useful data. These letters
may be written back and forth between participants, between research collaborators, or
between the researchers and participants (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Family stories,
photographs, and memory boxes—collections of items that trigger our memories—are
other forms used for collecting stories in narrative research.
Restorying
After individuals tell a story about their experiences, narrative researchers retell (or restory
or remap) the story in their own words. They do this to provide order and sequence to a
story that may have been told out of sequence. Restorying is the process in which the
researcher gathers stories, analyzes them for key elements of the story (e.g., time, place,
plot, and scene), and then rewrites the story to place it in a chronological sequence.
When individuals tell a story, this sequence is often missing or not logically developed.
By restorying, the researcher provides a chronological sequence and a causal link among
ideas. There are several ways to restory the narrative.
Examine the transcript, shown in Table 15.2, from a narrative project addressing
adolescent smoking behavior (Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2000). This table displays the
process of restorying interview data for a high school student who is attempting to quit
smoking. The process involves three stages:
1. The researcher conducts the interview and transcribes the conversation from an
audiotape. This transcription is shown in the first column as raw data.
2. Next the narrative researcher retranscribes the raw data by identifying the key ele-
ments of the story. This is shown in the second column. The key at the bottom of
the table indicates the codes used by the researcher to identify the setting [s], char-
acters [c], actions [a], problem [p], and resolution [r] in the student’s transcript.
3. Finally, the narrative researcher restories the student’s account by organizing the key
codes into a sequence. The sequence presented in this passage is setting, characters,
actions, problem, and resolution, although another narrative researcher might report
these elements in another order. This restorying begins with the place (McDonald’s),
the characters (the student), and then the events (behaviors such as “shaky” and
“hyper”). The researcher reworks the transcription to identify the elements of the
story and restories the elements into a logical sequence of activities.
To clearly identify these elements, the researcher might organize them into a table similar
to Table 15.3. This table describes five elements used in restorying (Ollerenshaw, 1998).
The setting is the specific situation of the story, illustrated by such factors as time, locale,
or year. The researcher may discuss characters in a story as archetypes or portray them
through their personalities, behaviors, styles, or patterns. The actions are the movements
of the individuals in the story, such as the specific thinking or behaving that occurs dur-
ing the story. The problem represents the questions or concerns that arise during the
story or the phenomena that need to be described or explained. The resolution is the
outcome of addressing the problem: the answer to a question or the conclusion reached
in the story. It may involve an explanation about what caused the character to change in
the story.
The elements of setting, characters, actions, problem, and resolution illustrate only
one example of the elements that narrative researchers look for as they restory an
individual’s experiences. They might also use the elements of the three-dimensional
space narrative structure advanced by Clandinin and Connelly (2000). As shown in
Table 15.4, the three dimensions of interaction, continuity, and situation create a “meta-
phorical” (p. 50) inquiry space that defines a narrative study. As researchers construct
their story (either their own or someone else’s), they would include information about
the following:
◆ Interaction: the personal interaction based on an individual’s feelings, hopes,
reactions, and dispositions as well as the social interaction to include other people
and their intentions, purposes, assumptions, and points of view
TABLE 15.2
Retranscribing and Restorying a Transcript
Transcription of Audiotape
(Raw Data) Retranscription by the Researcher* Restory by the Researcher
Well, I know it wasn’t the first about a year ago, [s] I [c] had been trying • A year ago, I worked at McDonald’s
time but I remember this one to quit and I hadn’t smoked for about, and I didn’t buy cigarettes for about
most vividly. Almost . . . about I just didn’t want to do it anymore [p] a month.
a year ago, I had been trying was this guy [c], that I liked [a] at • I had nicotine fits.
to quit and I hadn’t smoked for McDonald’s [s], but he didn’t like me, he
about, I’d say about a month or liked my best friend [c]. I had nicotine fits • I got shaky.
more, I think I just didn’t want to [a] a lot. You get shaky [a]. You get really • I got high.
do it anymore. There was this high [a] You need to go get some fresh • I got hyper.
guy that I liked at McDonald’s, air. You need to get a cigarette [a]. You
• I started bouncing off the walls.
but he didn’t like me, he liked just get really hyper and start bouncing
my best friend. We all worked off the walls [a]. I calmed down after a • I needed air.
at McDonald’s after school until little bit [a], friends [c] would be smok- • I went outside.
close. Oh, wow, I had nicotine ing outside by the tree [s]. It looks like • Friends were smoking by the tree.
fits a lot. Sometimes you get a cupcake or something good [a]. Hey,
shaky. You get really high, you do you want to drive or something? [a] • I wanted a cigarette because they
know, just like you need to go “No. I’m trying to quit [a].” I’d go to bed looked good.
get some fresh air. You need [a]. Sometimes I just go back inside the • I wanted to drive.
to get a cigarette, just like, you school [s] cause you can’t smoke inside • I went inside the school.
know, you just get really hyper there, [a] I slipped maybe one or two but
and start bouncing off the walls. [a], I was upset, tense [a]. This guy I liked • I went home to bed.
I calmed down after a little bit, started going out with my best friend [a]. • I calmed down.
but . . . I was tempted to start I got really upset and started just smok- • The guy I liked from McDonald’s
again during the month I quit. ing again [a]. That’s the one that I really started dating my friend.
Uhm, well my friends would be remember . . . me and her were best
• I got upset and tense.
smoking outside by the tree, friends no more [r].
so it was like you know, you • I slipped one or two cigarettes.
look at it and you’re just like, it • I started smoking again.
kind of looks like a cupcake or • We’re not friends any more.
something good, you know. Just
like you want, but then they ask
you, “Hey, do you want to drive
or something?” Just say, “No.”
So I’m trying to quit but I can’t
do it. They understand but then
it’s just like, “Okay. I gotta go
home now” and I get to go to
bed. Sometimes I just go back
inside the school cause you can’t
smoke inside there so . . . I might
have slipped maybe one or two
but I mean I was upset tense.
This guy I liked started going out
with my best friend and so then
I got really upset and started
just smoking again just like you
know. That’s the one that I really
remember . . . me and her were
best friends no more.
*Key to codes in the retranscription: setting [s], characters [c], actions [a], problem [p], and resolution [r].
Source: Adapted from Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2000.
TABLE 15.3
Organizing the Story Elements into the Problem Solution Narrative Structure
Setting Characters Actions Problem Resolution
Context, environ- Individuals in the Movements of indi- Questions to Answers to questions
ment, conditions, story described viduals through the be answered or and explanations
place, time, locale, as archetypes, story illustrating the phenomena to about what caused
year, and era personalities, their character’s thinking be described or the character to
behaviors, style, and or behaviors explained change.
patterns
Source: Adapted from Ollerenshaw, 1998.
◆ Continuity: a consideration of the past that is remembered; the present relating to

experiences of an event; and the future, looking forward to possible experiences
◆ Situation: information about the context, time, and place within a physical setting,
with boundaries and characters’ intentions, purposes, and different points of view
Coding for Themes

As with all qualitative inquiry, the data can be segmented into themes. Narrative research-
ers may code the data of the stories into themes or categories. The identification of
themes provides the complexity of a story and adds depth to the insight about under-
standing individual experiences. As with all qualitative research, the researcher identifies
a small number of themes, such as five to seven. Researchers incorporate these themes
into the passages about the individual’s story or include them as a separate section in a
study. Narrative researchers typically present these themes after retelling the story.
TABLE 15.4
The Three-Dimensional Space Narrative Structure
Interaction Continuity Situation
Personal Social Past Present Future Place

Look inward Look outward Look backward Look at current Look forward Look at context,
to internal to existential to remembered stories and to implied time, and
conditions, conditions in the stories and experiences and possible place situated
feelings, hopes, environment experiences from relating to experiences in a physical
aesthetic with other earlier times. actions of an and plot lines. landscape or in
reactions, moral people and event. a setting bounded
dispositions. their intentions, by characters’
purposes, intentions,
assumptions, purposes, and
and points of different points
view. of view.
Source: Adapted from Clandinin & Connelly, 2000.

Context or Setting
Narrative researchers describe in detail the setting or context in which the individual
experiences the central phenomenon. In the restorying of the participant’s story and
the telling of the themes, the narrative researcher includes rich detail about the setting
or context of the participant’s experiences. The setting in narrative research may be
friends, family, workplace, home, social organization, or school—the place where a story
physically occurs. In some narrative studies, the restoried accounts of an educator may
actually begin with a description of the setting or context before the narrative researcher
conveys the events or actions of the story. In other cases, information about the setting is
woven throughout the story.
Collaborating with Participants

Throughout the process of research, narrative researchers collaborate with the study indi-
viduals. Collaboration in narrative research means that the inquirer actively involves the
participant in the inquiry as it unfolds. This collaboration may include many steps in the
research process, from formulating the central phenomenon to deciding which types of
field texts will yield helpful information to writing the final restoried story of individual
experiences. Collaboration involves negotiating relationships between the researcher and
the participant to lessen the potential gap between the narrative told and the narrative
reported (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). It may also include explaining the purpose of the
inquiry to the participant, negotiating transitions from gathering data to writing the story,
and arranging ways to intermingle with participants in a study (Clandinin & Connelly,
2000). Collaboration often calls for a good working relationship between teachers and
researchers, an idealized situation that takes time to develop as a mutually illuminating
story between the researcher and the teacher (Elbaz-Luwisch, 1997).
WHAT ARE SOME POTENTIAL ETHICAL ISSUES

IN GATHERING STORIES?
When gathering stories, narrative researchers need to be cautious about the stories. Is
the story authentic? The participant may “fake the data” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990,
p. 10), providing a Pollyanna story or a story with a typical Hollywood ending, where the
good guy or girl always wins. This distortion of the data may occur in any research study,
and it presents an issue for narrative researchers in particular because they rely heavily
on self-reported information from participants. The collection of multiple field texts, the
triangulation of data, and member checking can help ensure that good data are collected.
Participants may not be able to tell the real story. This inability may arise when
experiences are simply too horrific to report or too raw to recall (e.g., Holocaust vic-
tims, disaster victims). It may also occur when individuals fear sanctions against them
if they report their story, such as in sexual harassment cases. The real story may also
not emerge because individuals simply cannot recall it—the story is buried too deeply
in the subconscious. It may also occur because individuals base their stories on events
that happened years ago, leading to early memories that may distort events and provide
inventions of past actions (Lieblich et al., 1998). Although distortion, fear of reprisal, and
inability to tell may plague storytellers, narrative researchers remind us that stories are
“truths of our experiences” (Riessman, 1993, p. 22) and that any story told has an ele-
ment of truth in it.
The telling of the story by the participant also raises the issue of who owns the story.
In reporting stories of individuals marginalized in our society, narrative researchers run
the risk of reporting stories that they do not have permission to tell. At the minimum,
narrative inquirers can obtain permission to report stories, and inform individuals of the
purposes and use of the stories at the beginning of the project.
Along with the potential problem of ownership is also the issue about whether the
participant’s voice is lost in the final narrative report. For example, when restorying exists,
it is possible for the report to reflect the researcher’s story and not the participant’s story.
Using extensive participant quotes and the precise language of the participants, and care-
fully constructing the time and place for the story, may help to ameliorate this problem.
A related issue is whether the researcher gains in the study at the expense of the partici-
pant. Careful attention to reciprocity or giving back to participants, such as serving as a
volunteer in a classroom or providing an award for participating in the study, will main-
tain gains for both the researcher and the participant. A final issue is whether the story
told has long-lasting negative implications for the participant. As discussed in Box 15.1,
one strategy is to tell a composite story based on various research experiences.
BOX 15.1 Ethical Dilemma
When Narrative Researchers Report about Tensions

Ethics spans the entire research process. What happens ethically after the researcher
concludes the study? Clandinin (2006) says that responsibilities may not end, and
that they may linger and reappear and, “in some sense haunt us . . .” (p. 5). This is
especially so when the narratives focus on tensions, and the writer creates “coun-
terstories” that are read by others and create vulnerabilities for individuals, such
as teachers, who talk about tension in their schools and classrooms. One strategy
for shielding individuals who provide narrative stories is the use of “fictionalized
interim research texts” ( Clandinin et al., 2010 ). These texts are composed from
multiple field texts based on various research experiences. This composite type of
story thus protects individuals who may feel vulnerable to having their stories told.
Narrative researchers need to be “awake” to these vulnerabilities when they tell
counterstories.
As you consider your narrative research study, assuming that your narrative
might create conflict for your participant after the study is completed and shared,
what strategies will you use to shield the individual?
WHAT ARE THE STEPS IN CONDUCTING

NARRATIVE RESEARCH?
Regardless of the type or form of narrative research, educators who conduct a narra-
tive study proceed through similar steps, as shown in Figure 15.3. Seven major steps
comprise the process typically undertaken during a narrative study. A visualization of
the process as a circle shows that all steps are interconnected and not necessarily linear.
FIGURE 15.3
Steps in Conducting Narrative Research
Build in place Describe their

Build in past, Analyze their
or setting story
present, future story for themes
Restory or retell the

individual's story
Step 4
Have them Collect other Collaborate with

tell their story field texts the participant
Step 5
storyteller in all
phases of research.
Collect stories from

that individual that
Step 3
reflect personal and Write a story about
social experiences. the participant’s
Step 6
personal and social
experiences.
Purposefully select
an individual from
Step 2
whom you can Validate the
learn about the Step 7 accuracy
phenomenon. of the report.
Identify a
phenomenon to
Step 1 explore that
addresses an
educational problem.
The use of arrows to show the direction of steps is only a suggestion and is not prescrip-
tive of a process that you might use.
Step 1. Identify a Phenomenon to Explore That Addresses

an Educational Problem
As with all research projects, the process begins by focusing on a research problem to study
and identifying, in qualitative research, a central phenomenon to explore. Although the
phenomenon of interest in narrative is the story (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990), you need to
identify an issue or concern. For example, the issue for Huber (1999), in a narrative study
of children in a classroom, consisted of stories about the difficulties that she and her student
teacher, Shaun, had meeting the diverse needs of students. This included children excluding
other children, using hurtful words with each other, and persistently using anger and aggres-
sion to solve problems. When exploring issues such as these, you seek to understand the
personal or social experiences of an individual or individuals in an educational setting.
Step 2. Purposefully Select an Individual From Whom You Can Learn

About the Phenomenon
You next find an individual or individuals who can provide an understanding of the phe-
nomenon. The participant may be someone who is typical or someone who is critical
to study because he or she has experienced a specific issue or situation. Other options
for sampling are also available. Although many narrative studies examine only a single
individual, you may study several individuals in a project, each with a different story that
may conflict with or be supportive of each other.
Step 3. Collect the Story From That Individual

Your intent is to collect field texts that will provide the story of an individual’s experi-
ences. Perhaps the best way to gather the story is to have the individual tell about his
or her experiences, through personal conversations or interviews. You can gather other
field texts as well, such as these:
◆ Have the individual record his or her story in a journal or diary.
◆ Observe the individual and record fieldnotes.
◆ Collect letters sent by the individual.
◆ Assemble stories about the individual from family members.
◆ Gather documents such as memos or official correspondence about the individual.
◆ Obtain photographs, memory boxes, and other personal/family/social artifacts.
◆ Record the individual’s life experiences (e.g., dance, theater, music, film, art, and
literature; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000).
Step 4. Restory or Retell the Individual’s Story

Next, review the data that contain the story and retell it. This process includes examining
the raw data, identifying elements of a story in them, sequencing or organizing the story
elements, and then presenting a retold story that conveys the individual’s experiences.
You use restorying because the listener and the reader will better understand the story
told by the participant if you sequence it into a logical order.
What elements do you identify in the raw data for your story? How do you arrange
these elements in your story? Narrative researchers differ about the elements to select,
although in general you might mention the narrative elements found in a literary analy-
sis of a novel. For example, time, place, plot, and scene are major elements located in
stories by researchers (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). Focusing on the plot, you might
identify an abstract of the events or actions, orient the listener, convey the complicating
action, evaluate its meaning, and resolve the action (Cortazzi, 1993). Another inquirer
might examine the story for setting, characters, actions, problem, and resolution (Olle-
renshaw & Creswell, 2000). Although several analytic strategies exist for locating and
sequencing a story, all procedures order the story for the reader and listener using liter-
ary elements.
Step 5. Collaborate with the Participant–Storyteller

This step is one that interacts with all the other steps in the process. You actively col-
laborate with the participant during the research process. This collaboration can assume
several forms, such as negotiating entry to the site and the participant, working closely
with the participant to obtain field texts to capture the individual experiences, and writ-
ing and telling the individual’s story in the researcher’s words.
Step 6. Write a Story About the Participant’s Experiences

The major step in the process of research is for the author to write and present the story
of the individual’s experiences. Although there is no single way to write the narrative
report, it is helpful to include several features of narrative. Your restory certainly claims
a central place in the narrative report. In addition, you might include an analysis to high-
light specific themes that emerged during the story.
Typically, you do not include a specific literature section; instead, you incorporate
the literature and research studies about the problem into the final sections of the study.
Because readers are often not familiar with narrative, you might write a section about the
importance of narrative research and the procedures involved in it so that you can inform
readers about narrative research. As with all qualitative research, you are present in the
narrative report, and you use the first-person pronoun to refer to yourself.
Step 7. Validate the Accuracy of the Report

You also need to validate the accuracy of your narrative account. When collaboration exists
with participants, this validation may occur throughout the project. Several validation prac-
tices such as member checking, triangulating among data sources, and searching for discon-
firming evidence, are useful to determine the accuracy and credibility of a narrative account.
HOW DO YOU EVALUATE NARRATIVE RESEARCH?
As a form of qualitative research, narrative needs to be consistent with the criteria for a
good qualitative study. In addition, there are specific narrative aspects that people reading
and evaluating a study might consider. In a high-quality narrative study, the researcher:
◆ Keeps the focus on a single individual (or two).
◆ Reports the life experiences of individuals as told through their stories.
◆ Restories the individual’s stories and tells the story using a chronology with a
beginning, middle, and end (and possibly not in this order).
◆ Describes in some details the context of the story (i.e., the setting, the place where
it occurs, the people involved, and so forth).
◆ Reports themes (5 to 7) to emerge out of the story.
◆ Closely collaborates with the participant providing the story and engages with the
participant by having them check the evolving story frequently and examining the
final story to see if it accurately reflects the individual’s experiences.
KEY IDEAS IN THE CHAPTER

What Is Narrative Research, When Is It Used, and How Did It Develop?
Narrative research has emerged as a popular form of qualitative research. It has become
a viable way to study teachers, students, and educators in educational settings. All of
these individuals have stories to tell about their experiences. Narrative inquirers describe
the lives of individuals, collect and tell stories about people’s lives, and write narratives
of individual experiences. These qualitative studies focus on identifying the experiences
of a single individual or several individuals and understanding their past, present, and
future experiences. A researcher uses narrative designs when individuals are willing to
provide their stories, when their stories follow a chronology.
The Types of Narrative Designs

Narrative research is an overarching category for a variety of types of narrative studies.
These may be such types as autobiographies, biographies, life histories, and personal
narratives of teachers or students. The specific type of narrative study depends on who
writes or records the story, how much of a life is recorded and presented, who provides
the story, and whether a theory is used by the researcher.
The Key Characteristics of Narrative Designs

Narrative researchers collect stories from individuals and retell or restory the participants’
stories into a framework such as a chronology of the characters, the setting, the prob-
lem, the actions, and a resolution of those actions. In addition, the inquirer may gather
field texts and form them into themes or categories and describe, in detail, the setting
or context in which the stories are told. Throughout the research process, the researcher
emphasizes collaboration between the researcher and the participant.
Potential Ethical Issues in Gathering Stories

Ethical issues may arise at many stages in the process of conducting a narrative study. At
the data collection stage, the researcher needs to question whether the story is authentic,
determine whether the participants can tell (or recall) the real story, assess who owns
the story told, determine if the participant’s voice is included in the final story, stage the
project so that the participant, not the researcher, gains as a result of the research, and be
cognizant of the lasting impact of the story that is told.
Steps in Conducting a Narrative Study

The steps in conducting a narrative study are to identify a problem suited for narrative
research and to select one or more participants to study. Researchers then collect stories
from the participant about his or her life experiences and retell the story to form a chro-
nology of events that may include the characters, setting, problem, actions, and resolu-
tion. Throughout this process, collaboration occurs with the participant, and the story
composed by the researcher tells of the participant’s life experiences.
Evaluating a Narrative Study

A good narrative study reports the stories of lived experiences of an individual, organ-
izes them into a chronology, situates them within the setting or context, derives several
themes that the stories address, and demonstrates a close collaboration in the narrative
project between the researcher and the participant.
USEFUL INFORMATION FOR PRODUCERS OF RESEARCH

◆ Individuals planning or conducting a narrative study can employ the steps in the
process identified in this chapter.
◆ Consider the type of narrative design you plan to use. Ask yourself the following
questions: Who writes or records the story? How much of a life is recorded and
presented? Who provides the story? Is a theoretical lens being used? Can narrative
forms be combined?
◆ The three steps used in restorying provide a structure for processing a transcript
and developing a retelling of the participant’s story.
◆ As you listen to a participant’s story, consider some of the potential issues that
may arise, such as whether the story is authentic, whether data are distorted,
whether individuals can tell the story, and who owns the story.
USEFUL INFORMATION FOR CONSUMERS OF RESEARCH

◆ Consumers can review the steps in the research process in this chapter to deter-
mine how narrative inquirers conduct a study.
◆ The evaluation criteria discussed in this chapter can be used to assess the quality
of a narrative study.
◆ When narrative researchers conduct an inquiry, they need to report that they have
checked the accuracy of their findings. Look for reports about triangulating data,
member checking, or providing disconfirming evidence for themes.
◆ The narrative journal article reported in this study provides one example of nar-
rative research. It is used to identify the major characteristics of a narrative study
and to model the composition of a narrative study.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES YOU MIGHT EXAMINE

A major book to consult is the text on narrative inquiry by Clandinin and Connelly
(2000). This text captures all aspects of narrative designs from learning to think
narratively to constructing a story using the three-dimensional model to the types of field
texts that narrative researchers collect. It also includes information about composing a
narrative text and using the forms available in dissertations and books. See:
Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in
qualitative research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Clandinin (2007) has edited a 24-chapter handbook on narrative research that touches
on many aspects of conducting a narrative study. Another useful book in education and
teacher education is the book edited by McEwan and Egan (1995). This volume provides
helpful examples of specific narrative studies in education. Examine:
Clandinin, D. J. (Ed.) (2007). Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
McEwan, H., & Egan, K. (1995). Narrative in teaching, learning, and research. New York:
Teachers College Press, Columbia University.
Several journals have published excellent overviews of narrative research as applied
to the field of education. One article often cited is the Connelly and Clandinin (1990) dis-
cussion on “Stories of Experience and Narrative Inquiry” in the Educational Researcher.
This article is especially good at identifying the procedures used in conducting a narrative
study. Another article is by Clandinin (2006), who discusses what happens after the research
has been disseminated. An article in the Educational Researcher is by Kathy Carter
(1993) on “The Place of Story in the Study of Teaching and Teacher Education.”
This article presents the pros and cons of studying the stories of teachers, such as
the political context of story and the issues of gender, power, ownership, and voice. A
third article, by Kathleen Casey (1995/1996), titled “The New Narrative Research in Edu-
cation,” is found in the Review of Research in Education. This article addresses the his-
tory of narrative research and surveys many topics in narrative research, such as various
types (e.g., autobiographical reflections), issues (e.g., plastic identities), and methodo-
logical concerns (e.g., nuanced discussions of emotions). See:
Carter, K. (1993). The place of a story in the study of teaching and teacher education.
Educational Researcher, 22(1), 5–12, 18.
Casey, K. (1995/1996). The new narrative research in education. Review of Research in
Education, 21, 211–253.
Clandinin, D. J. (2006). After the research. Paper presented to the Faculty of Education
Graduate Students, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry.
Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2–14.
One entire issue of the journal Teaching and Teacher Education (Gudmundsdottir,
1997) addresses “Narrative Perspectives on Teaching and Teacher Education.” Including
major international writers on narrative research, this volume provides examples of spe-
cific narrative studies as well as thoughtful discussions about topics that critique as well
as support narrative designs. See:
Gudmundsdottir, S. (1997). Introduction to the theme issue of “narrative perspectives on

teaching and teacher education.” Teaching and Teacher Education, 13(1), 1–3.
Also examine the entire issue of The Journal of Educational Research (Kim & Latta,
2009) for a recent discussion about narrative research. It covers timely topics such as nar-
rative inquiry and school reform, ethnic identity, and professional development. See, for
example:
Kim, J. H., & Latta, M. M. (2009). Narrative inquiry: Seeking relations as modes of interac-
tion. Journal of Educational Research, 103(2), 69–71.
Clandinin, D. J., Murphy, M. S., Huber, J., & Orr, A. M. (2010). Negotiating narrative
inquiries: Living in a tension-filled midst. The Journal of Educational Research, 103,
81–90.
Outside the field of education, in the social sciences, are several books useful to
understanding narrative designs. Riessman (1993) provided thoughtful procedures for
analyzing and reporting narratives, Josselson and Lieblich (1993) provided a six-volume
series on the study of narrative lives, and Cortazzi (1993) also included systematic
approaches to narrative analysis. Examine:
Riessman, C. K. (1993). Narrative analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Josselson, R., & Lieblich, A. (Eds.). (1993). The narrative study of lives (Vol. 1). Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Cortazzi, M. (1993). Narrative analysis. London: Falmer Press.
Go to the Topic “Narrative Research” in the MyEducationLab

(www.myeducationlab.com) for your course, where you can:
◆ Find learning outcomes for “Narrative Research.”
◆ Complete Assignments and Activities that can help you more deeply under-
stand the chapter content.
◆ Apply and practice your understanding of the core skills identified in the
chapter with the Building Research Skills exercises.
◆ Check your comprehension of the content covered in the chapter by going to
the Study Plan. Here you will be able to take a pretest, receive feedback on
your answers, and then access Review, Practice, and Enrichment activities to
enhance your understanding. You can then complete a final posttest.
Example of a Narrative Study

Examine the following published journal article that is a narrative design study. Marginal
notes indicate the major characteristics of narrative research highlighted in this chapter.
The illustrative study is:
Living in the Space Between Participant and Researcher as a Narrative

Inquirer: Examining Ethnic Identity of Chinese Canadian Students as Narrative
Conflicting Stories to Live By Characteristics
in Marginal
Elaine Chan Annotations
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Abstract
Schooling experiences of 1st-generation Canadians interact with cultural experiences in their immi-
grant households to shape a sense of ethnic identity both as Canadians and as members of an ethnic
community. This long-term, school-based narrative inquiry is an examination of ways in which
expectations for academic performance and behavior by teachers and peers at school and immi-
grant parents at home contributed to shaping the ethnic identity of an immigrant Chinese student
as conflicting stories to live by. A narrative approach revealed challenges of supporting immigrant
students in North American schools, and contributed to understanding of the nuances of multicul-
tural education.
Key words: narrative inquiry, ethnic identity, curriculum, multicultural education, student
experiences
For children, school has enormous implications for their sense of identity as members of soci- (01)
ety, of their families, and of their ethnic communities. Each individual brings to their school context
experiences shaped by their participation in schools, whether in Canada or in their home country,
whether positive or negative, enriching or demoralizing. For a child of immigrant parents, tensions
between home and school, the interaction of parent and teacher experiences of schooling, and
their own experiences of schooling may be felt especially strongly, to the point of being experi-
enced as conflicting stories to live by (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999). These students have their own
ideas of how they should be in their school context, shaped by interaction with peers, exposure to
popular culture and media, and prior experiences of schooling, schools, and teachers. At the same
time, they are evaluated by teachers and supported by parents whose experiences of schooling
may be vastly different, by nature of social and political influences as well as personal circum-
stances of the societies of which their own childhood schools were a part.
In the present study, I examined the experiences of one Chinese immigrant student, Ai Mei (02)
Zhang. I explore her participation in her Canadian middle school curriculum as the interaction of A focus on the
student, teacher, and parent narratives, a story of interwoven lives (Clandinin et al., 2006). I exam- experiences of a
ined ways in which her sense of ethnic identity may be shaped by expectations for her academic single individual
performance and her behavior in her school and her home. I focus in particular on ways in which
participation in her urban, multicultural school setting may contribute to shaping her sense of affili-
ation to family members and members of her ethnic and school communities, and contribute to
her maternal-language development and maintenance. I also examined ways in which she experi-
enced well-intended school practices and curriculum activities designed to support her academic
Copyright of Journal of Educational Research is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd. and its content may not
be copied or e-mailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written
permission. However, users may print, download, or e-mail articles for individual use.
Address correspondence to Elaine Chan, Department of Teaching. Learning, and Teacher Education, College
of Education and Human Sciences, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, 24 Henzlik Hall, Lincoln, NE 68588-0355.
(E-mail: [email protected])
Stories collected performance in ways not anticipated by policymakers and educators. I explored these influences
from individuals as conflicting stories to live by (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999).
(03) I examined experientially the intersection of school and home influences from the perspective of
one middle school student as a long-term, school-based narrative inquirer. I explored features of nar-
rative inquiry, such as the critical role of researcher–participant relationships, and the role of temporal
and spatial factors (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) of the research context in contributing to a nuanced
understanding of multicultural education in this diverse school context. The present study is holistic,
in that I examined the impact of multiple influences in a connected way as they intersected in the life
of one student rather than as examples of ways in which an issue or theme may be experienced by
different members of the same ethnic group.
(04) Given the increasing diversity of the North American population (Statistics Canada. 2008; U.S.
Census Bureau, 2002) that is in turn reflected in North American schools (Chan & Ross, 2002; He,
Phillion, Chan, & Xu, 2007), addressing the curricular needs of students of minority background
and supporting the professional development of teachers who work with them is essential. The
present study contributes to existing research in the area of multicultural education and, in particu-
lar, curriculum development for diverse student populations, and student experiences of multicul-
tural education.
(05) To date, research addressing the interaction of culture and curriculum is often presented as an
argument for the inclusion of culture in the school curriculum or as documentation for ways in
which the inclusion of culture in the curriculum was successful (Ada, 1988; Cummins et al., 2005).
There is an abundance of research highlighting the importance of culturally relevant and respon-
sive pedagogy (Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2001; Villegas, 1991) and a culturally sensitive
curriculum that builds on the experiences and knowledge of immigrant and minority students
(Ada; Cummins, 2001; Igoa, 1995; Nieto & Bode, 2008).
(06) Acknowledging the cultural knowledge of minority students in the classroom has been found
to have important implications for their well-being outside of school. For example, Banks (1995)
highlighted the inclusion of culture in the curriculum as a means of helping students to develop
positive racial attitudes. Rodriguez (1982), Wong-Fillmore (1991), and Kouritzin (1999) presented
compelling accounts of ways in which the failure to support the maintenance and development
of maternal-language proficiency for students of minority background had dire consequences for
their sense of ethnic identity and their sense of belonging in their families and ethnic communities.
McCaleb (1994), Cummins (2001), and Wong-Fillmore elaborated on some of the dangers, such as
increased dropout rates among immigrant and minority youth as well as increased likelihood of
gang involvement, or failing to recognize the cultural communities from which students come.
(07) Existing research has been invaluable in highlighting the importance of acknowledging the cul-
tural knowledge that immigrant and minority students bring to a school context, and the work of
educators as they develop curricula and teach an increasingly diverse student population (Banks,
1995; Cummins, 2001; Moodley, 1995). Research has also accentuated the need to develop ways
of learning about the ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds of students to inform curricu-
lum development and policymaking for students of diverse backgrounds. Cochran-Smith (1995),
Ladson-Billings (1995, 2001), and Conle (2000) explored the practice of drawing on the cultural
knowledge of preservice teachers as a resource for preparing them to teach in culturally diverse
classrooms. It is interesting to note that although there is research that has acknowledged the
potential difficulties of moving from home to school for students of a minority background, and
the difficulties of moving from school back home when minority students have assimilated to the
school and societal expectations that differ from those of their home cultures, the day-to-day transi-
tion as minority and immigrant students move from home to school and back home again seems
to have been overlooked. In the present study, I examine the nuances that one student lives as she
makes this transition on a daily basis.
(08) This work addresses the need for experiential research, focusing specifically on exploring the
intersection of home and school influences from the perspective of the students themselves. Pres-
ently, there is a surprising lack of research examining ways in which students, in general (Cook-
Sather, 2002), and immigrant and minority students, in particular, personally experience their school
curriculum and school contexts (He et al., 2007). Bullough’s (2007) examination of a Muslim stu-
dent’s response to curriculum and peer interactions in his U.S. school is among the few pieces exam-
ining school-curriculum activities from the perspective of a student of ethnic-minority background.
Feuerverger’s (2001) ethnographic work exploring tensions that Israeli and Palestinian youth expe-
rience in their Israeli-Palestinian school is among few studies documenting and exploring student
perspectives of their schooling experiences. Sarroub (2005) and Zine’s (2001) accounts of Muslim
students in American and Canadian schools, respectively, illustrate the complexities of negotiating
a sense of identity among peers in a school context when values in the home differ significantly.
Within the relatively limited body of existing research addressing student experiences of school- (09)
ing and curriculum presented, I present examples of student experiences thematically to address
specific issues, topics, or arguments rather than ways that acknowledge multiple facets and ten-
sions interacting at once to shape the experiences of an individual student. Smith-Hefner (1993), in
her ethnographic study of female high school Khmer students, presented examples of Puerto Rican
female students whose limited academic success was shaped by cultural and sociohistorical influ-
ences in their ethnic communities. Rolon-Dow (2004) examined tensions Puerto Rican students and
their teachers experience when values supported in their home and in their ethnic communities
seem to conflict with those encouraged in school. Lee’s (1994, 1996) ethnographic study focused
on ways in which Asian high school students’ sense of identity and academic achievement was
influenced by self-identified labels and membership in specific peer groups. There does not exist
a large body of research examining the experiences of one student in the context of their North
American school in a way that presents the stories to illustrate ways in which the interaction of
multiple influences and issues of relevance may impact on an immigrant or minority student.
This narrative inquiry is intended to provide a glimpse of the intersection of complex influences (10)
shaping the life of an immigrant student. I drew on existing narrative and ethnographic accounts
of immigrant and minority students attending North American schools to inform this work. Valdés’s
(1996) work documenting the experiences of a small number of Latino and Mexican American
families in their school and community and Li’s (2002) ethnographic study with Chinese families
as they supported their children’s literacy development provide a glimpse of ways in which transi-
tions between home and school may be challenging, and even overwhelming, due to differences
in expectations about the school curriculum and the work of teachers. Carger’s (1996) long-term
narrative account of a Mexican American family’s experiences provides an organizational structure
for the present study, in that it is an in-depth account of one family’s experiences of supporting
their child in school, taking into consideration the intersection of multiple influences shaping the
child’s education. Ross & Chan’s (2008) narrative account of an immigrant student, Raj, and his
family’s academic, financial, and familial difficulties highlighted the many challenges the family
encountered in the process of supporting their children’s adaptation to their Canadian school and
community. This examination of Ai Mei’s experiences contributes to the growing but still limited
body of research addressing Chinese students in North American schools (Chan, 2004; Kao, 1995;
Kim & Chun, 1994; Lee, 1994, 1996, 2001; Li, 2002, 2005).
Theoretical Framework
Given the focus on experience in contributing to Ai Mei’s sense of ethnic identity, I used Dewey’s (11)
(1938) philosophy of the interconnectedness between experience and education as the theoretical
foundation for this study. I examined, in particular, ways in which the many influences in her home,
school, and neighborhood life with family members, peers, teachers, administrators, and school cur-
riculum events intersected to contribute to her overall experience or learning of a sense of ethnic
identity as an immigrant student in a Canadian school context. Ai Mei’s stories are set into the frame-
work of a three-dimensional narrative inquiry space (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), with Bay Street
School as the spatial dimension, the years 2001–2003 as the temporal dimension, and my interactions
with Ai Mei, her classmates, her teachers, her parents, and other members of the Bay Street School
community as the sociopersonal dimension. The stories are a means of exploring the interaction of
influences contributing to Ai Mei’s sense of identity; they highlight the extent to which this intersec-
tion of narratives may be interpreted as conflicting stories to live by (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999).
Method
I first met Ai Mei when I began observations in her seventh-grade class as a classroom-based par- (12)
ticipant observer for a research project exploring the ethnic identity of first-generation Canadian
students. The focus on examining the intersection of culture and curriculum as experienced by
Chinese Canadian students over the course of their 2 years in middle school was deliberate from
the beginning. As I learned about the details of the students’ experiences, the complex interaction
of factors contributing to Ai Mei’s sense of ethnic identity became apparent and merited further
analysis.
(13) Ai Mei’s homeroom teacher, William, told me about how she had arrived at Bay Street School
from an urban area of Fuchien province in China as a 7-year-old. Although she did not initially
speak English at all, she was relatively proficient by the time I met her 4 1/2 years after her arrival.
Her English was distinct from that of her native-English-speaking peers by the unusual turns of
phrases and unconventional uses of some words, but the animated way in which she spoke about
her experiences caught my attention from the beginning. I later appreciated this quality even more
as I began to work more closely with her as a research participant. Her dark eyes, partially hidden
behind wisps of hair, seemed to flicker and dance as she elaborated on details of interactions with
peers and family members, especially when she recounted amusing or troublesome events pertain-
ing to difficulties she had experienced in communicating with others. She also seemed to enjoy
telling me about incidents that had occurred at home, at school, or in the community. As I learned
about Ai Mei’s stories of immigration and settlement, the conflicting influences and expectations of
her family members, peers and teachers at school, and members of her ethnic community became
more apparent, thus further contributing to my decision to focus on her stories in this study.
(14) As a narrative inquirer, I learned about Ai Mei’s stories of experience (Connelly & Clandinin,
1988) using a variety of narrative approaches, including long-term, school-based participant obser-
vations, document collection set into the context of ongoing conversational interviews with key
participants, and the writing of extensive field notes following each school visit, interview, and
Collabora- interaction with participants (Clandinin & Connelly, 1994, 2000; Clandinin et al., 2006) to explore
tion between the interwoven quality of Ai Mei, her teacher, her classmates, and her family members’ lives. I
researcher and observed and interacted with her in the context of regular classroom lessons as I assisted her and
participants her classmates with assignments, accompanied them on field trips, attended their band concerts
and performances, and took part in school activities such as Multicultural Night, Curriculum and
Report of a Hot Dog Night, school assemblies, and festivals. School visits began during the fall of 2001 as Ai
chronology Mei and her classmates began seventh grade and continued until June 2003 when they graduated
of individual from eighth grade at Bay Street School.
experiences (15) I conducted interviews as well as ongoing informal conversations with Ai Mei over the course of
the 2 years I spent in her homeroom classroom. I also collected documents such as school notices,
announcements of community and school events, notices from bulletin boards and classroom walls
in the school, agendas and minutes from School Council meetings, and samples of student work.
Descriptive field notes, interview transcripts, researcher journals, and theoretical memos written
following school visits were computerized and filed into an existing research project archival sys-
tem. I examined field notes pertaining to Ai Mei’s experiences numerous times to identify recurring
themes. Her stories were set into the context of field notes written about her classroom teacher, her
peers, and her school community since I began research at the school in 2000.
Results
Ai Mei’s Stories of Home and School: Conflicting Stories to Live By
(16) I subsequently present some of Ai Mei’s stories of experience to explore challenges and complexi-
ties, harmonies and tensions (Clandinin & Connelly, 2002), she lived as she attempted to balance
affiliation to her peers while at the same time accommodating for expectations placed on her by
her teachers and parents. I explore ways in which parent, teacher, and peer expectations may con-
tribute to shaping her sense of identity, and examine the contribution of narrative methodology in
revealing nuances of the intersection of multiple influences in her life.
A description Bay Street School Context

of a setting (17) Ai Mei’s stories were set in the context of Bay Street School, a school known to consist of a diverse
or context student community from the time of its establishment (Cochrane, 1950; Connelly, He, Phillion, Chan,
& Xu, 2004), located in an urban Toronto neighborhood where the ethnic composition of residents
is known to reflect Canadian immigration and settlement patterns (Connelly, Phillion, & He, 2003).
Accordingly, the student population at the school reflects this diversity. An Every Student Survey
administered to students during the 2001–2002 school year (Chan & Ross, 2002) confirmed the eth-
nic and linguistic diversity of the students. More specifically, 39 countries and 31 languages were
represented in the school. This was the context in which Ai Mei’s stories played out.
Development of
Home Language Conflicting with School Language themes
I subsequently present the story, “I was trying to hide my identity,” as a starting point for examin- (18)
ing Ai Mei’s experiences of her academic program at Bay Street School. The story is
retold by the
“I was trying to hide my identity” researcher
Ai Mei: When I first came to Bay Street School, I stayed with the IL (International Language)1
teacher, Mrs. Lim . . . I stayed with her for the whole week, and she taught me things
in English.
Elaine: What did she teach you?
Ai Mei: You know, easy things, like the alphabet, and how to say “Hello.” Then I went to
Ms. Jenkins’ class. I sat with a strange boy.
Elaine: A strange boy?
Ai Mei: Well, he wasn’t that strange. My desk was facing his desk, and he did this to me (Ai
Mei demonstrates what the boy did), he stuck his tongue out at me. I didn’t know
what it meant. He had messy orange hair.
Elaine: Did you make any friends?
Ai Mei: No, not for a long time. Some people tried to talk to me but I didn’t understand them.
Then Chao tried to talk with me in Fujianese and I pretended I didn’t understand her. She
tried a few times, then gave up. Then one day, my sister said something to me in Fujianese
and Chao heard. She looked at me—she was really surprised because she tried to talk with
me and I pretended I couldn’t understand her. She didn’t like me at all.
Elaine: Why did you do that? Why did you pretend you couldn’t understand her?
Ai Mei: I don’t know. I was trying to hide my identity.
Ai Mei (calling over to Chao): Chao, remember how I didn’t talk with you, how I pretended
I didn’t understand you?
Chao: Yeah, I remember. (Chao scowls at Ai Mei.) I didn’t like you for a long time.
Ai Mei: Yeah, a long time.
(Fieldnotes, April, 2003)
When Ai Mei arrived at Bay Street School, new students coming into the school spent a week (19)
or two with the respective International Language (IL) teacher prior to placement into a classroom.
The new student orientation provided teachers the opportunity to assess the English and maternal-
language proficiency of new students, identify potential learning difficulties, and learn about their
previous schooling experiences. The orientation also provided students an opportunity to learn
about school routines in their home language while being gradually introduced into their age-
appropriate classroom.
Ai Mei’s response to the new student orientation, however, was surprising for a number of (20)
reasons. From her teachers’ perspective, Chao would have seemed like an ideal friend for Ai Mei—
both girls were from the same rural province of southern China, grew up speaking Fujianese at
home and Mandarin in school, and Chao could help Ai Mei to adapt to Bay Street School because
she had arrived two years earlier. However, Ai Mei did not seem to welcome the opportunity to
speak with Chao in Fujianese. Her teachers were also likely puzzled that she would try to “hide
[her] identity,” because, from their perspective, they worked hard to create programs that would
acknowledge students’ home cultures in a positive way.
In this context, it is possible that Ai Mei, similar to many students featured in research on (21)
immigrant and minority students (Cummins, 2001; Kouritzin, 1999), perceived her affiliation to
her family’s home language as a hindrance to acceptance by English-speaking peers. She seemed
to appreciate learning English from her IL teacher and perhaps felt that her inability to speak in
English was an obstacle to forming friendships with English-speaking peers. One day, as we were
walking back to her homeroom classroom after art class, she has told me about an incident when
she felt embarrassed when she attempted to order drinks at a shopping mall and the vendor could
not understand her because “[her] English accent was so bad!” Ai Mei may have been attempting
to distance herself from those she perceived as non-English-speaking when she said she “tried
to hide [her] identity.” Wong-Fillmore (1991) elaborated on how a language minority child might
abandon the home language when she or he realizes the low status of this language in relation to
the English that is used by peers in school. At the same time, in choosing not to respond to her
Fujianese-speaking classmate who attempted to befriend her, Ai Mei was giving up the opportunity
to make a friend at a time when she did not have the English proficiency to build friendships easily
with English-speaking peers.
School Language Conflicting with Home Language

(22) In addition to pressure to achieve a higher level of English proficiency, Ai Mei seemed to be under
pressure from her IL Mandarin teacher, Mrs. Lim, to maintain and to develop her Mandarin profi-
ciency. She was in a high level of language within her grade-level Mandarin program,2 and she was
doing well in the class, judging from the grades I saw when she showed me her Mandarin language
textbook and workbooks. Her teacher has said that she did well in her assignments and tests, and
that she was a strong student in Mandarin. She stated that it was important for Ai Mei to work hard to
maintain the advantage she had over her Canadian-born Chinese peers. Mrs. Lim believed that Ai
Mei has an easier time learning the characters that many Canadian-born Chinese students have dif-
ficulty with, due to her early years of schooling in China before arriving in Canada. She also felt that
Ai Mei had an advantage over her Chinese-born peers, in that her schooling prior to leaving China
was regular and uninterrupted in a way some of her Chinese-born peers had not experienced.
(23) Maintenance of her Mandarin language proficiency is an achievement her parents support. At
the same time, they would like her to maintain fluency in her family’s home dialect of Fujianese.
For Ai Mei and her parents, maternal language maintenance has important implications for com-
munication within the family. Ai Mei told me about the following mealtime conversation involving
her mother and her younger sister, Susan.
“Susan doesn’t speak Fujianese”
Ai Mei: We were eating supper and my mother said to my sister, “(phrase in Fujianese).” My
sister asked me, “What did she say?” so I told her, “She wants to know if you want
more vegetables.”
Elaine: Your sister doesn’t understand Fujianese?
Ai Mei: She does but not everything.
Elaine: What did your mother say? Is she worried that your sister doesn’t understand her?
Ai Mei: She looked at her like this—(Ai Mei showed me how her mother gave her sister a
dirty look).
(24) From the fieldnote, it seems that Ai Mei’s parents were beginning to feel the effects of maternal lan-
guage loss within the family. Fujianese is not easy to develop and maintain because its use in Canada
is not widely supported outside the home, with the exception of exposure to the dialect through other
recent immigrants from Fuchien Province. Susan’s inability to understand basic vocabulary in her
home language likely worried her and Ai Mei’s parents, but given the limited resources to support it
and limited time to encourage her themselves, they might wonder what can be done. Ai Mei spoke
about how her parents reminded her often to speak with her sister in Fujianese. Meanwhile, the sisters
had long grown into the habit of speaking to one another in English; communication in their home
language of Fujianese would have been stifled at that point due to the lack of ease both felt in using
it as well as Susan’s limited vocabulary. It might be the case that their parents, as they began to realize
the extent of their daughter’s maternal language loss, might already be too late to stop it. This pressure
to develop and to maintain language proficiency interacted with other factors contributing to Ai Mei’s
sense of identity and affiliation in her school and in her home and ethnic communities.
Parent Values Conflicting with Peer Values

(25) In addition to pressure to succeed academically, Ai Mei was also under pressure to behave accord-
ing to the expectations of her peers, teachers, and parents. Through interaction with Ai Mei at Bay
Street School over the course of two full academic years, it became apparent that being included
within her peer group was very important to her. Like her peers, Ai Mei was becoming more firmly
entrenched into popular movies, music, and fashion trends as she moved into adolescence. These
influences were coupled with increasing pressure from peers to scoff at school success and down-
play the importance of academic work. During the fall of 2001, there were a number of days when
I arrived at Ai Mei’s classroom to find her friends trying to console her after a popular and outspo-
ken male classmate, Felix, had made unflattering comments about her appearance. Her homeroom
teacher also told me about incidents when she had left school in tears after being excluded from
an after school activity that had been planned by classmates. Another day, I overheard Felix mim-
icking one of the stories from Ai Mei’s Mandarin IL text; although he spoke in English, the tone and
storyline were along the lines of what might be found in the text. Ai Mei laughed at Felix’s attempts
and seemed to appreciate that he knew a little about what she did in IL class but I also wondered
whether she was embarrassed or annoyed with him.
In addition to concerns about being excluded by her peers and feeling the pull of multiple (26)
influences in school to behave in certain ways, Ai Mei also seemed to live the tensions of parental
expectations and standards for her behavior and comportment that, at times, conflicted with those
of her peers, and ways in which she saw herself. I wrote the following fieldnote after a conversa-
tion with Ai Mei in which she complained about her mother’s comments about her in relation to
her mother’s friend during a family outing.
“Dim Sum with her mother’s friend”

Ai Mei told me today about going out to dim sum with her mother’s friend and her family. She
said she was very annoyed at being compared to her mother’s friend’s daughter who is close in
age to Ai Mei but who seems like a perfect daughter in her mother’s eyes. Ai Mei told me, “My
mother said, ‘Look at Ming Ming, so pretty and tall. And so quiet! She helps her mother do the
cooking and the cleaning at home.’ She said to Ming Ming’s mother, ‘Look at Ai Mei, 13 years
old and so short. And she doesn’t help me at home, and she doesn’t cook!’ She kept comparing
us, saying how nice Ming Ming is and how terrible I am.” Ai Mei rolled her eyes.
The interaction between Ai Mei and her mother highlighted the potential for tensions to develop (27)
when expressing differences in perspective about the value of certain kinds of behaviors over oth-
ers. It sounded as if Ai Mei resented that her mother did not think she was quiet or helpful or tall
enough when compared with her friend’s daughter. Although a generational gap might account for
some of the tension about what constituted appropriate behavior and goals for Ai Mei with respect
to what she did to contribute to the family, some of this tension might also have been shaped by
the very different contexts in which Ai Mei and her mother have spent their childhood. Ai Mei has
spent a good portion of her childhood living in different homes in an urban, commercial district
of Toronto. Her perception of appropriate behavior and practices has likely been shaped by influ-
ences different from what her mother experienced in rural Fuchien province of China where she
spent her own childhood.
Teacher Expectations Conflicting with Parent Expectations

Moreover, although Ai Mei’s parents and her teachers had in common the goal of academic suc- (28)
cess for her, tensions surfaced about the time commitment needed to fulfill these school and family
responsibilities. Ai Mei seemed to be caught between pressures to help in the family business and
teacher expectations for completed homework and thorough preparation for tests and assignments.
Ai Mei’s family acquired a dumpling restaurant during the fall of her eighth-grade year, and (29)
since then, the whole family had devoted much time and energy toward building a successful
business. I knew that Ai Mei’s family owned a dumpling restaurant because she had told me about
what she did to help.
Ai Mei: There’s a door that no one can close but me.
Elaine: What’s wrong with it?
Ai Mei: It’s stuck, so I have to kick it shut. (She demonstrates as she says this, kicking to one
side as she leans over.) Then, we go home, me, my mom, and my dad.
Elaine: How about your sister?

Ai Mei: She goes home a little earlier, with my grandmother and grandfather.
(Fieldnotes, October, 2002)
Each day after school, Ai Mei and her sister, Susan, after spending some time with their friends
in the classroom or in the school yard, headed to the dumpling restaurant to spend the evening
there helping their parents. Ai Mei’s sister, Susan, has told me about how she helped their father
by standing outside the restaurant where the family sells vegetables and fruits to watch for people
who attempted to take food without paying for it. When I asked her whether this often happened,
she nodded gravely.
(30) The importance of Ai Mei and Susan’s participation in the family business could be denied, but
Ai Mei’s teachers had questioned the time commitment involved. Late in the fall after the family
acquired the dumpling restaurant, Ai Mei’s teacher, William, noticed that she had begun to come to
school looking very tired, and without her homework done. One day while he was meeting with
her to discuss the report card that would soon be sent home to her parents, he told her that she
could have done better had she submitted all of her homework and done a better job on recent
tests. Ai Mei surprised him by bursting into tears. Little by little, William learned that Ai Mei had lit-
tle opportunity to do her homework or to study because she was helping out at the restaurant dur-
ing evenings and weekends. By the time the family had closed up the restaurant, traveled home,
and eaten supper, it was past 11:00pm or 12:00am, beyond what William thought was appropriate
for a 12-year-old. With a sense of professional responsibility to report potentially negligent situa-
tions to officials and the support of school board policies guiding his actions, William spoke with
his principal about the situation. Both decided it was a borderline case, and with the principal’s
knowledge, William contacted the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) about Ai Mei’s family. I wrote the
following field note the day William told me about his call to the CAS.
“I called the CAS”

I was helping William straighten up the textbooks, sort student assignments into piles, and
organize pens, pencils, and chalk into appropriate places in the classroom. We have gotten into
the habit of talking about events of the day as we tidy up the classroom after the students have
left for French class toward the end of the day. Today, William said to me, “I called the CAS
about Ai Mei. She doesn’t do her homework or have time to study because she’s up late work-
ing in the family restaurant. She’s exhausted.”
(Fieldnotes, December, 2002)
(31) The dumpling restaurant was tied to Ai Mei’s family’s dreams of financial success and family
reunification. Ai Mei had spoken about how her parents had sponsored her maternal grandparents
to come to Toronto from Fuchien province, and were in the process of trying to bring her paternal
grandparents over to join the family as well. The importance of helping her family with their busi-
ness could not be denied from her parents’ perspective and, from what Ai Mei has said about the
ways in which she helped the family, it could be assumed that she also recognized the importance
of her role as well.
(32) At the same time, it was beginning to become apparent that assisting her parents in the family
business might have diverted her attention away from fulfilling her parents’ desire for her to do
well in school, in that time spent in the restaurant helping her family was time that she could have
otherwise devoted to her school work. Ai Mei was caught between her parents’ dreams of financial
and business success, her sense of responsibility, as the oldest daughter in the family, to help them
achieve this success, her parents’ desire for her to perform well academically to secure her own
future economic success, and her teacher’s professional responsibility to report potentially negli-
gent situations to officials. She lived the tensions of deciding how best to use her time to assist her
parents in the family business as well as to perform well academically.
(33) This situation also needed to be examined in terms of her teacher’s professional tensions and
ways in which these tensions might have contributed to Ai Mei’s sense of identity. Her teacher,
William, was aware that the cultural and social narratives guiding his professional practices might
have differed from those guiding the practices of the parents of his students, and had expressed
a commitment to acknowledging the diversity of his students. The potential for conflict between
teacher, student, and parent perspectives pertaining to Ai Mei’s use of time in the evenings and
on weekends became apparent when William contacted child-protection officials to report that Ai
Mei’s time in the family’s restaurant in the evenings was contributing to her late arrival at school in
the mornings, without her assigned homework completed. He did so with the belief in the impor-
tance of protecting Ai Mei’s time to ensure that she had adequate time and necessary conditions in
her home to complete her school work.
William’s call to the CAS, however well intentioned, had the potential to cause difficulties in (34)
Ai Mei’s family as well as a rift in his own relationship with Ai Mei. In fact, he later told me about
how Ai Mei, on realizing that he had reported her parents to the CAS, neither came around after
school to spend time in his classroom nor did she tell him about what was happening in her life as
she was accustomed to doing up until that time. He felt he had lost her trust and believed that his
call to the CAS had been the cause. This example highlights some of the tension William felt as he
attempted to balance his professional obligation to report potentially negligent situations to child
protection officials and his ideal of the role of teacher as an advocate who supported students in
ways they would appreciate.
Learning About Ai Mei’s Experiences as a Narrative Inquirer

These stories highlight some of the complexities of the interaction of multiple influences in contribut- (35)
ing to Ai Mei’s sense of identity. Underlying these accounts of Ai Mei’s experiences with her peers,
teachers, and parents in the context of school and community-based events are accounts of my inter-
actions with Ai Mei as a narrative inquirer. The narrative inquiry approach used in this study facilitated
the identification of the many nuances of living as an immigrant student in a North American school
context, and provided a framework in which to ponder these complexities. To begin, the stories of
experience documenting Ai Mei’s experiences as an immigrant student at Bay Street School were
gathered over a long period of time as I spent 2 full school years in her homeroom classroom with
her, her teachers, and her peers as a participant observer. During this time, I became a member of the
classroom, joining the class for activities such as field trips, special school events, band concerts, and
school assemblies. More importantly, however, I was a part of their class during the uneventful days
of lessons and regular school activities. It was during these times that I was able to build a relationship
with Ai Mei and her peers and teachers. They grew to see me as an additional teacher in the classroom
who was able to help them with assignments, act as an adult supervisor during in-school activities or
field trips, and as a listening ear when they had disagreements with friends or with teachers.
I learned about the details of Ai Mei’s life as she told me about her classmates, her parents, her (36)
family’s dumpling restaurant, her sister, and family outings. I heard about her perceptions of how
she fit into her peer group, her ethnic community, and her family as she told me about specific
interactions, such as the family dinner when her sister did not understand what her mother had
said in Fujianese, her mother’s criticisms of her in comparison with her mother’s friend’s daughter,
or her impressions of the new student orientation that was in place to ease her transition into the
school as a new student from China.
As the students came to realize my interest in learning about their school lives, they began to (37)
update me on events I had missed between visits, and to fill me in on what they referred to as “gos-
sip” at school. At one point partway through my second year with Ai Mei’s homeroom class, I con-
ducted interviews with the students. As I planned the questions and discussed them with William, I
remember wondering whether this shift to a more formal kind of interaction with the students would
change the relationship we had established. My concern about negatively impacting the relationship
turned out to be unfounded. In fact, I was pleased to realize one day when Ai Mei approached me
to tell me about a family dinner (see “Susan doesn’t speak Fujianese”) that the process had opened
up further opportunities to learn about the students’ lives. Realizing that I was interested in hearing
about their interactions at home and in the community with members of their ethnic groups, the stu-
dents began to tell me more about them. Our existing relationship had provided a foundation such
that I could talk with the students about their experiences with family and members of their ethnic
communities, and the interviews provided an opportunity for the students to learn, in a more explicit
way, about my interest in hearing about out-of-school aspects of their lives. Our relationship was
such that they knew they could trust that I would treat their stories and their perceptions of these
stories with interest and respect.
(38) I also saw Ai Mei in the neighborhood with her friends during the after school hours as they
moved from house to house visiting one another in the housing project while their parents worked
in nearby restaurants and shops, and on weekends as she shopped with her sister and her parents
in the stores that lined the commercial area near the school. These brief interactions provided
further glimpses of influences interacting in her life to contribute to shaping a sense of identity
in ways that would not be possible through formal interviews or a more structured schedule of
research observations. In addition, these interactions provided an opportunity for Ai Mei’s friends
and family to become familiar with my presence and participation in the school.
(39) Tensions of acting as a researcher with a focus on learning about the experiences of my par-
ticipants became more apparent as my role as researcher became less clear. As I got to know Ai
Mei and her family, I felt the tensions she experienced as she balanced the multiple influences in
her life and wanted to advocate for her. I felt a sense of responsibility to Ai Mei, to support her
learning and to attempt to ease some of the tensions she experienced as she balanced affiliation
to her home and school cultures. I understood a little of the betrayal she felt when her parents
were reported to child protection officials, and the fear her parents might have felt. When she told
me about how her parents would not be able to attend her eighth-grade graduation because they
needed to work, I wanted to be sure to attend and to take photos of her with her sister so that she
would have a record of the event. The nature of the researcher-participant relationship in contrib-
uting to understanding about the nuances of experiences lived by my student participant height-
ened my understanding of what the events might mean for her.
(40) The role of narrative inquiry, and, more specifically, the role of long-term participation in the
day to day school life of an immigrant student that was critical to this narrative inquiry, contrib-
uted to the researcher-participant relationship I was able to develop with Ai Mei, her peers, and
her teachers. Careful attention to the details of life in classrooms (Jackson, 1990) and within the
school, and respect for the ongoing negotiation so critical to building a research relationship from
initial negotiation of entry into the school research site to negotiation of exit towards the comple-
tion of school-based narrative inquiries—features foundational to Clandinin & Connelly’s (2000)
approach—further contributed to the development of a research relationship based on trust and
familiarity with Ai Mei. This trust, in turn, engaged me in careful consideration of the potential
implications of telling and retelling Ai Mei’s stories, and what they might mean for her, as well as
other immigrant and minority students who may struggle with similar challenges of balancing ten-
sions of affiliation to home and school cultures in a North American school context. It was also
through this commitment to examining these tensions narratively from multiple perspectives of
others in Ai Mei’s school, as well as in relation to temporal, spatial, and sociopersonal dimensions
at play in her school, that enabled me to see some of the nuances and complexities of the conflict-
ing influences in Ai Mei’s life. In the process of examining Ai Mei’s experiences narratively, I also
became a participant, in that my experiences and interpretations of Ai Mei’s stories were continu-
ally being examined and reflected on as I shared my interpretations with Ai Mei in an ongoing
process to better understand the stories she told.
(41) This relationship, in turn, was critical to my learning about the complexities of Ai Mei’s experi-
ences. In this way, this long-term, school-based narrative inquiry approach contributes not only
to knowledge about the experiences of my participants as I focus on examining nuances of the
research phenomenon at hand but it also raises awareness about the intricacies, and the impact, of
the work of researchers in the lives of our participants.
Discussion
Conflicting Student, Teacher, and Parent Stories to Live By: Implications for Practice,
Research, and Theory
(42) This examination of the intersection of home, school, and ethnic community influences in Ai Mei’s
life provided a glimpse of the challenges immigrant or minority students might encounter as they
negotiate a sense of ethnic identity. More specifically, examining Ai Mei’s stories reveals ways in
which immigrant and minority students may be pulled in many directions, with some of these
influences experienced as conflicting stories to live by as teacher, peer, and parent expectations
intersect on a school landscape. The stories highlight the potential for conflict when immigrant
students have values shaped by interaction with family and members of their ethnic community as
well as values shaped by interaction with peers, teachers, and other members of their North Ameri-
can school communities.
As Ai Mei grows up, she needs to determine which aspects of her home and school communi- (43)
ties she incorporates into her own set of values. The age-old tension between children and their
parents as children move toward adulthood and make decisions pertaining to their education and
the kind of life they see themselves leading is exacerbated by differences in perspective that are
influenced by differences in culture between their new host society that the children are navigating
and the landscape that their immigrant parents experienced as children in their home countries.
This tension is further complicated by struggles that their parents have endured in the immigration
process as they settle into new countries. Ai Mei’s stories revealed the extent to which ideas for
innovative curricula and the good intentions of teachers, administrators, researchers, and policy-
makers may unfold in unexpected ways. Learning about Ai Mei’s conflicting stories to live by high-
lighted the importance of examining ways in which curriculum and school events may contribute
to shaping the ethnic identity of immigrant and minority students in ways much more complex
than anticipated by their teachers, their parents, and even the students themselves.
This knowledge, in turn, informs the work of teachers and administrators as they attempt to (44)
meet the needs of their increasingly diverse student populations. Teachers need to learn to meet
the academic and social needs of their immigrant and minority students in a school context with
sometimes little knowledge about the cultures and education systems from which they are coming.
In this way, knowledge gained from this study has implications for teachers working in diverse
school contexts, professional development for in-service and pre-service educators, and decision
making pertaining to the development of curriculum policies for multicultural school contexts.
Examining Ai Mei’s experiences of the intersection of home and school influences informs the
development and implementation of programs designed to facilitate the adaptation of immigrant
students in North American schools. Ai Mei’s stories of experience may be referred to as an exam-
ple of a life-based literary narrative (Phillion & He, 2004), and contribute to the body of student
lore introduced by Schubert and Ayers (1992) and recognized by Jackson (1992) in Pinar, Reynolds,
Slattery, and Taubman’s book, Understanding Curriculum (1995). Attention to the narratives of stu-
dents and their families is a reminder not to lose sight of the diversity in student populations and
highlights the need for attention to issues of social justice and equity in education. Not only does
this research address the dearth of research focused specifically on students’ experiences from their
perspective, but it also contributes to understanding of the experiences of immigrant and minority
students to provide insights into the experiences of a group about which educators and policymak-
ers involved in developing and implementing school curriculum are desperately in need of better
understanding.
Conclusion
Teachers and administrators with whom I shared this piece appreciated the acknowledgment of (45)
the challenges they encounter in their work with their students. William, as a beginning teacher,
recognized the need for further attention to prepare teachers for diverse classrooms and felt that
stories such as those presented in this article contributed to raising awareness of difficulties teach-
ers may encounter; he recognized the potential of the stories as a forum to generate discussion
among teachers and administrators. His administrators spoke of the challenges inherent to meeting
the needs of their student population, and referred to the tensions of needing to abide by existing
policies even as they lived the difficulties of implementing some of the policies with their students
and teachers.
Exploring the multitude of influences shaping student participation in school curriculum using a (46)
narrative inquiry approach to examining student experiences is also a means of acknowledging the
complexity of schooling and teacher preparation (Cochran Smith, 2006), and the need for guidance
about how best to develop curriculum and pedagogy for students of minority background, and
the challenges associated with working with diverse student populations. Given the increasingly
diverse North American context, is it essential that educators and policymakers are well informed
about the students for whom educational practices and policies are developed.
Notes
1. Students at Bay Street School chose from IL classes in Cantonese or Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic,
Swahili/Black History, or Spanish that were integrated into their regular school day.
2. The Mandarin texts used in the IL program were based on a multigrade format in which each grade level was in
turn divided into six levels of difficulty ranging from beginner to advanced to accommodate for differences in language
proficiency among students in the same grade level.
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Author Note
Elaine Chan is an assistant professor of Diversity and Curriculum Studies in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and
Teacher Education at the College of Education and Human Sciences, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Her research
and teaching interests are in the areas of: narrative inquiry, culture and curriculum; multicultural education; ethnic
identity of first-generation North Americans; student experiences of schooling; and educational equity policies. She has
taught and conducted long-term classroom-based research in Canadian, Japanese, and American schools. She is cur-
rently co-authoring a book on engaging ELL students in arts education with Margaret Macintyre Latta.

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Narrative Research

WHAT IS NARRATIVE RESEARCH, WHEN DO YOU USE IT,

When Do You Use Narrative Research?

How Did Narrative Research Develop?

WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF NARRATIVE DESIGNS?

• Autobiographies • Personal documents • Autoethnographies

Source: Adapted from Casey, 1995/1996.

Who Writes or Records the Story?

How Much of a Life Is Recorded and Presented?

Who Provides the Story?

Is a Theoretical Lens Being Used?

Can Narrative Forms Be Combined?

WHAT ARE THE KEY CHARACTERISTICS OF

• Experiences of an individual—social and personal interactions

Chronology of the Experiences

Collecting Individual Stories

Source: Adapted from Ollerenshaw, 1998.

◆ Continuity: a consideration of the past that is remembered; the present relating to

Coding for Themes

Personal Social Past Present Future Place

Source: Adapted from Clandinin & Connelly, 2000.

Collaborating with Participants

WHAT ARE SOME POTENTIAL ETHICAL ISSUES

BOX 15.1 Ethical Dilemma

When Narrative Researchers Report about Tensions

WHAT ARE THE STEPS IN CONDUCTING

Build in place Describe their

Restory or retell the

Have them Collect other Collaborate with

Collect stories from

Step 1. Identify a Phenomenon to Explore That Addresses

Step 2. Purposefully Select an Individual From Whom You Can Learn

Step 3. Collect the Story From That Individual

Step 4. Restory or Retell the Individual’s Story

Step 5. Collaborate with the Participant–Storyteller

Step 6. Write a Story About the Participant’s Experiences

Step 7. Validate the Accuracy of the Report

HOW DO YOU EVALUATE NARRATIVE RESEARCH?

KEY IDEAS IN THE CHAPTER

The Types of Narrative Designs

The Key Characteristics of Narrative Designs

Potential Ethical Issues in Gathering Stories

Steps in Conducting a Narrative Study

Evaluating a Narrative Study

USEFUL INFORMATION FOR PRODUCERS OF RESEARCH

USEFUL INFORMATION FOR CONSUMERS OF RESEARCH

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES YOU MIGHT EXAMINE

Clandinin, D. J. (Ed.) (2007). Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology.

Gudmundsdottir, S. (1997). Introduction to the theme issue of “narrative perspectives on

Riessman, C. K. (1993). Narrative analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Go to the Topic “Narrative Research” in the MyEducationLab

Example of a Narrative Study

Living in the Space Between Participant and Researcher as a Narrative

A description Bay Street School Context

School Language Conflicting with Home Language

Parent Values Conflicting with Peer Values

“Dim Sum with her mother’s friend”

Teacher Expectations Conflicting with Parent Expectations

Elaine: How about your sister?