Narrative Research: Contributions and Frames within Postmodern, Critical and Decolonial Perspectives

Portada del libro Methodological uncertainties of research in ELT education I

Narratives have accompanied individuals for a long time in history as part of their daily lives. However, it has been until recent decades that narratives have provided new spaces for researching, while opening opportunities to alternative interpretations of different phenomena in areas such as education, psychology or cultural-social studies. Nevertheless, narratives are so embedded in the daily life of subjects that it is difficult to grasp what they intend to tell us about reality. This menas that, within a single personal narrative there are many elements about the subject’s understanding of reality, all of them interconnected. Chase’s (2018) account of the inquiry within the critical viewpoint, problematizes this aspect by discussing two aspects of embodiment. On one hand, Sparkes & Smith (cited in Chase, 2017) refer to narratives as an embodied social process characterised by the empathy among those who listen or watch. Without being essentialist, those who engage in narratives research need to avoid disingenuous or dry relations with their participants to have real respect for the other. In other words, when carrying out narrative research, researchers become an integral part of the participant’s narrative, not an outsider. On the other hand, the embodiment of narratives has recently been studied from the performances that people do when narrating. Riessman (2012 cited in Chase, 2017), highlighted the externalization of emotions/ feelings of narratives through non-verbal communication and dialogues among members of a community. Embodied performances of narratives encourage researchers to observe not only the narratives themselves but also actions that subjects can do while narrating. For example, in the ELT field, we can find interesting narratives of English Language Teacher Educators (ELTEs) when professors sit around and work on curriculum development or construction. While working on the outline of the curriculum, ELTEs may engage on dialogues about complementary aspects of the curriculum that may not be included in the formal document. (....)

Datos
Titulo: 
Narrative Research: Contributions and Frames within Postmodern, Critical and Decolonial Perspectives
Autor(es): 
Alejandro Mauricio Davila Rubio
Titulo del Libro: 
Methodological uncertainties of research in ELT education I
Pais: 
Colombia
Editorial: 
Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas
ISBN: 
978-958-787-199-9
Paginas: 
91-106
Año: 
2020