Intersecting Methodologies to Support the Telling of Stories in Education Research: Appreciative Inquiry Within Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

Narrative inquiry has often been merged with other methodologies to conduct research in schools. Its interweaving with appreciative inquiry as a methodology to research within education, however, is newly emerging. In this study, which interweaves the two methodologies, narrative inquiry and appreciative inquiry are used to examine stories of teaching and explore teacher identity—an evolution of narrative inquiry that facilitates the telling of participant school stories in a focused and intentional way through an appreciative inquiry framework. This paper explores the interweaving of the methodologies and provides an example of its use. It draws on a doctoral study titled Identity as pedagogy: Locating the shadows in the sacred space between , which examined the stories of teacher identities and the ways such stories manifest in pedagogy, with a group of teachers from a common educational jurisdiction in eastern Canada. The data that emerged through the appreciative inquiry process were narratively analyzed and understood through the common themes they presented.