Narrative Inquiry: A Recent Trend In Education Research

The complex written stories are called narratives. Narrativists believe that human experience is basically storied experience: that humans live out stories and are story-telling organisms. They further believe that one of the best ways to study human beings is to come to grips with the storied quality of human experience, to record stories of educational experience, and to write still other interpretative stories of educational experience. Narrative inquiry is located in a historical intellectual context. Among it, Dewey's writings on the nature of experience are central to narrative inquiry of education.Reviewing the progression of educational research in 20th century, Quantitative research is a representation of the science pursuit. It would be a dominant paradigm of educational research until educational researchers give up the science ideal. However, educational research is always a reflective and reorientating process of science ideal. The reorientation of educational research makes qualitative research as a new force suddenly rise and sets out a splendid foreground. Narrative inquiry is developed in the diversification phase of qualitative research. In contrast with quantitative research, narrative inquiry, as a new trend of qualitative research, emphasizes experience and stories.At the conclusion, the author constructed Z' teaching story as an example by methodology of composite biography.