Narrative Inquiry as Reflection on Pedagogy - A Commentary

The type of research reporting that has become known as narrative inquiry represents one aspect of a three-sided field that recently evolved across a range of disciplines – writing about research in a subjective manner. The first of these three aspects is writing about research in which a researcher, while primarily writing about the findings of research into her/his chosen topic, analyses both her/his position in the field and the influences of her/his backgrounds on the conduct and outcomes of research. Here a researcher will be expected to admit to misconceptions, personal roles in shaping research methods, how and why these were challenged and altered, and whether this involved personal anguish alongside the development of knowledge and understanding. Kisliuk’s explanation of her role as a researcher with the BaKa people in the Central African Republic (Kisliuk, 1997) is a good example of this style of writing. A second type of subjective research writing is autoethnography, where the researcher is also the object of research research (Ellis&Bochner, 2000).