This symposium draws on research undertaken as a part of a project funded by the Higher Education Academy in England.  This project involved working with participants from a range of international settings to present arguments about the principles and distinctive benefits associated with adopting narrative approaches to the conduct of educational research.  Narrative is a well established tool for researching the complex and varied lives of teachers (Case, Marshall, & Linder, 2010; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) and school leaders (Smith, 2011).  This method occupies a significant role in research because it enables the speaker to define what is significant for them, free from excessive influence from the researcher (Smith, 2011).  As a methodology, life history narrative research draws from the fundamental story telling nature of human beings (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) which is common across many cultures (Frank, 2002).  This is an methodology, therefore, which resonates with listeners at a personal level (Chase, 2005). 

But whilst narrative remains of significant interest to researchers there is some feeling that some policy makers’ views of acceptable forms of research, and evidence upon which policy can be made, is sidelining qualitative research in preference for quantitative approaches, or models of research borrowed from medicine, including systematic reviews of research (Evans & Benefield, 2001) and randomised control trials (Wesselink, Colebatch & Pearce 2014).  This has led to the suggestion that “qualitative inquiry is under fire” (Denzin, 2009). In this symposium our aim is in part to present the methodological benefits of narrative research in order, as Koro-Ljungberg, Mazzei & Ceglowski (2013) puts it, to foreground the methodological insights possible from this approach.

Our argument is that the widely shared disposition to story telling provides a firm foundation for narrative forms of research which allow communication and dialogue between researchers and practitioners from different countries and cultures.  This is intended to challenge the dominance of certain forms of research and certain discourses of knowledge which have implications for the ways in which people understand and interpret their lives and work in education.

By presenting a series of papers which illustrate particular insights gleaned from narrative approaches in different international settings our emphasis is on “story as a method” (Gallagher, 2011).  This is a critical treatment of the concept of narrative and its affiliated methodologies which goes beyond naive representations of narrative and ‘voice’ (Hargreaves, 1996).  Through presenting these illustrative cases we aim to make the case for the universal relevance of story telling methodologies, which may be rooted in particular national, cultural, social and societal settings, but which arises from fundamental human interests and characteristics which are shared across contexts, and which can potentially, we believe, provide a common starting point for productive dialogue about the principles of education and the practices associated with it. 

Connelly, F.M., & Clandinin, D.J. (1990). Stories of Experience and Narrative Inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2-14 Chase, S.E. (2005). Narrative Inquiry: Multiple Lenses, Approaches, Voices. In N. K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed.) (pp. 651-679). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Denzin, K. (2009) Qualitative Inquiry Under Fire: Toward a New Paradigm Dialogue. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Evans, J. and Benefield, P. (2001) Systematic Reviews of Educational Research: does the medical model fit? British Educational Research Journal, 27(5), 527-541 Frank, A. (2002) Why Study People’s Stories? The Dialogical Ethics of Narrative Analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 1(1), 109-117 Gallagher, K. (2011) In search of a theoretical basis for storytelling in education research: story as method, International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 34:1, 49-61 Hargreaves, A. (1996) Revisiting Voice. Educational Researcher, 25(1), 12-19. Koro-Ljungberg, M., Mazzei, L.A. & Ceglowski, D. (2013) Diverse ways to fore-ground methodological insights about qualitative research, International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 36(2), 131-144 Smith, J. (2011). Agency and Female Teachers’ Career Decisions: A Life History Study of 40 Women. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 39(1), 7-24. Wesselink, A., Colebatch, H., & Pearce, W. (2014). Evidence and policy: discourses, meanings and practices. Policy Sciences, 47(4), 339-344.