CHAPTER 15
NARRATIVE RESEARCH
TEACHING ACTIVITY FOR CHAPTER 15
Activity 1. Story telling and story analysis.
Narrative research requires skills in listening carefully to a research participant’s story during the interview,
taking notes, and then analyzing themes and issues in the story. You can help your students develop an
understanding of these skills by engaging them in this activity.
Form your students into pairs, with one student in each pair assigned to be the storyteller and the other to be the
researcher. Ask the storytellers to recount a brief story, let’s say, highlights of their first year in college, or if your
students are already educators, their first year of teaching or other professional activity. Ask the researchers to take
notes on what the storyteller says. Caution students that you might ask questions about their stories, so students
should omit any details they do not want repeated to the class. It is also advisable to give students the option of not
being a storyteller.
Allow approximately 15 minutes for the storytellers to recount their stories while the researchers take notes.
Then ask the researchers to construct a narrative by using their notes to recount and interpret the stories told by the
storytellers. When this is done, ask the researchers to tell their narratives to the storytellers. The storytellers can
Activity 2. Analysis of a published narrative analysis.
Ask students to read beforehand the reprinted article about teacher identify and career resilience. Then discuss
the article in class. You can ask them whether they agree with the researcher’s interpretation of the teacher’s story,
MULTIPLE-CHOICE TEST ITEMS FOR CHAPTER 15
1. The main difference between narratives and stories is that
a. stories are more detailed than narratives.
b. stories are the initial account and narratives are a subsequent account.
c. narratives are the initial account and stories are the subsequent account.
d. stories recount events, but narratives do not.
2. A research narrative should
a. organize the events in a story, but not interpret them.
b. maintain the order of events as they were told in the story, but without interpretation.
c. organize the story events into a time line and interpret them.
d. let a story speak for itself, without imposing a theoretical framework on it.
3. Narratives
a. occur as individuals engage in interactions with others and also internally as self-talk.
b. play a role in creating an individual’s self-identity.
c. contribute to a culture’s identity.
d. All of the above.
4. A sample for a narrative research study usually is selected by
a. the snowball sampling technique.
b. random selection from a defined population.
c. any of the purposeful sampling techniques used in case study research.
d. any of the sampling techniques used in quantitative research.
5. The primary method of data collection in narrative research is
a. interviewing.
b. administration of questionnaires.
c. participants’ generation of personal journals.
d. direct observation.
6. Coding frames are used to
a. help research participants organize their stories.
b. help researchers capture the overall meaning of narratives.
c. organize frequency counts of key words and phrases in research participants’ stories.
d. All of the above.
7. In narrative research, a dialectic is a/n
a. oppositional relationship between two values or perspectives that play out in an individual’s life.
b. process in which researchers test the validity of their interpretations by considering competing
theories.
c. disruptive event in an individual’s life story.
d. tension between two competing characters who play a role in an individual’s life story.
8. A life story in which an individual makes an early decision to focus her life in a particular direction can be
characterized as a
a. dialectic resolution.
b. polarity resolution
c. stable story structure.
d. commitment script.
SHORT-ANSWER TEST ITEMS FOR CHAPTER 15
1. Create 3 brief stories, each in 2 or 3 sentences, with each one illustrating a different story structure: progressive,
regressive, and stable. Also, label each story by its structure. If you wish, you can use the same characters and
settings for each story.
2. Describe two strategies for evaluating the quality and rigor of a narrative research study.
CHAPTER 15
NARRATIVE RESEARCH
Multiple-Choice Test Items
Short-Answer Test Items