Using Narrative Inquiry - Leonard Webster & Patricie Mertova

Webster, Leonard and Patricie Mertova. Using Narrative Inquiry as a Research Method: an introduction to using critical event narrative analysis in research on learning and teaching. New York: Routledge, 2007.

Webster and Mertova's conviction that narrative is a human-centered may limit some narrative approaches that incorporate actor network theory.  However, in identifying the value of narrative inquiry, they point out that "people usually encode their experiences in some form of narrative, partiularly in those experiences dealing with other people" (21).  They are therefore socially situated practices that represent human conciousness.  They also present narrative as "an event-driven tool of research" and that both construction and reconstruction of stories are useful for highlighting complexity (71).  They advocate for focusing on critical events, which has possible connections to "rich events" in ethnography.   Such an event "reveals a change of understanding or worldview by the storyteller" (73).   This may be related to the performance of or impact on the storyteller.  The longer amount of time that has passed between the event and its telling, the more likely it is to have been processed and become critical in that person's encoding of its significance.  Events can be categorized according to the following terms (79):

• critical event: an event selected because of its unique, illustrative and confirmatory nature
• like event: same sequence level as the critical event, further illustrates and confrms and repearts the experience of the critical event
• other event: further event that takes place at the same time as critical and like events

While focusing on such critical events may shed insight on aspects of teaching and learning - the volume is specifically related to educational concerns - prioritizing moments of change may not be appropriate in all situations, especially when stability may be an important focus.