Narrative approaches


After reading on narrative approaches, I can not help but think that narrative approaches are similar to phenomenology in at least one aspect: the making sense of human experiences. Maybe they differ in the details of how the research questions are asked; that is narrative approaches would try to identify what experiences have in common or not (or what experiences reveal when retold/analyzed) with regards to, let’s say state, or status (what does it mean to be an undocumented student in a public school, or engagement with diversity issues on a given campus), while phenomenology starts from looking closely at one phenomenon (like being bullied, or feeling discriminated for being of a different ethnicity than the main stream). It is almost like narrative approaches go from a wide range of views (many told stories by various people) to a more focused view(the retold story of the researcher), while phenomenological approaches go from an identified theme(one phenomenon) to the wide possible generalization. I wonder if narrative research could be used as research material (literature review) for phenomenological research (along with other data-interviews, observations, etc.).

In other words, if I were to take on a study of experiences of international teachers in the US public schools, I would most likely go with a narrative approach, and most likely my voice as a researcher would co-construct the voice of the participants ; if I wanted to explore the feeling of “in between-ness” or feeling a “stranger” as an international teacher, I would most likely go with a phenomenological approach, and my position as a researcher(biases and personal beliefs) would be clear from the research onset.

This can be very confusing?!

Dr. Davis, am I making sense? I feel right now that little knowledge is my greatest enemy, and I feel that my assumptions may be a bit farfetched.