Narrative Inquiry

Whether it is through an essay, lecture, storybook, comic strip, podcast or photograph telling a story or storytelling engages human beings. After reading, Mary Elizabeth Meier’s, Narrative Inquiry: Revealing Experience I felt she suggests a lot of experiences and gives the reader an overview that is quiet extensive on narrative inquiry. “Narrative inquiry is a qualitative research methodology focused on stories of experience. Narrative and autobiographical methods, falling under the broader category of qualitive inquiry (Chase 2005), are particularly well suited to uncovering the nuances of human experience through story. “Issues of complexity and human centeredness” are the focus of a narrative inquiry study (Webster & Metrova, 2007, p. 3). I felt it was a great introduction to such a broad subject, narrative inquiry, like I stated before, it can be executed in many different ways. The other reading that I enjoyed and allowed me to move forward with my narrative inquiry was, Educational Agents for Positive Change, written by: Sheri Klein, Elizabeth Delacruz and Karen Keifer-Boyd. The authors state, “All human communications are a form of storytelling about some aspect of the world” (Klein, Delacruz, Boyd) When we communicate with one another we engage ourselves, open our ears and learn. Communication is the main aspect of what I stress in my classroom. I teach advanced Art History and there is nothing but lecture and communication between the students and myself. Since literacy has been an enormous struggle with integrating into my advanced Photography classes, in Art History I am doing a different approach by having the students initiate the communication, the lecture and the lesson as a hole. It has been a struggle, everyday we work at it. However, I felt that documenting through a photography essay of how that experience is happening currently in my classroom would be the best way to get my narrative inquiry across to the viewer. In my photo essay you can see from the beginning of class to the very end I am having students lecture and they switch off to get other students involved. The students in the photographs are passing the lecture off to the other student and taking notes and commnicating. The students don’t know whom that student is going to pick, so therefore they must always be ready. In my exploration 1 & 2, I discussed about how by having the students lecture on a certain piece of artwork the other students (audience) were not grasping the material. I switched the way I set up the student lecture presentations to having them twice a week go up and pick a certain piece of artwork, they must discuss it for five minutes and pass the next lecture off to another student of their choice. So far this approach has been great and is working out, narratively all students are engaged and we all work together through communication. My active research is a constant and I am learning as I go, this is working so far. The photo essay read from top left on downward, enjoy!