The "Educational Narrative Inquiry Workshop" was held successfully in Room A204 Science Building at 9:00 a.m. on May 14, 2018. (The educational narrative inquiry is a qualitative research method in education research area.)The workshop was presided by Professor Bu Yuhua and taught by Professor Michael Connelly and Professor Cheryl J. Craig. The teachers of "the Shanghai Qualitative Research Methods Group" and more than 20 master and doctoral graduate students participated in the workshop.
Professor Michael Connelly is an honorary professor at the Ontario Institute of Education, University of Toronto, Canada, who is the first generation leader in educational narrative inquiry and he learnt from Joseph Schwab. Professor Cheryl J. Craig is currently employed at the Texas A&M University in the United States and is the third outstanding representative of the educational narrative inquiry, and she learnt from Michael Connelly and D.Jean Clandinin. The two scholars jointly described the relationship between theory and practice, knowing and doing in educational narrative inquiry.
First of all, Professor Michael Connelly introduced the narrative inquiry from the origin, the boundary and the pattern. He defined the narrative inquiry as "a way of understanding the daily experience of the individual, and presenting the experience through the form of the story." This process required the researcher to experience the daily life of the research object personally. Experience was gained through observation and communication. Meanwhile, he also believed that narrative inquiry was a cycle from practice to theory to practice.
After that, Professor Cheryl J. Craig narrated the relationship between knowing and doing in narrative inquiry from the practical level.She explained the relationship among experience, story and knowledge that experience was continuous—the experience of the past, present and future, they influenced each other, and narration was the best way to explain and understand personal experience, so narration was also an important way to understand the world.Then she introduced the research tools used in narrative inquiry commonly: Broadening, the macro background and the origin of the narrative; Burrowing, the detailed description of the micro level in the narrative; Storying and Restorying, by using stories to express the emergence of "change".
Finally, the teachers and students in the workshop put forward amount of questions about the speech of the two scholars, for example, "do we need to take a question to make a narrative inquiry, or do we find problems in the narrative inquiry?", "What kind of stories are valuable?" Professor Michael Connelly and Professor Cheryl J. Craig responded to the questions and discussed the methodological issues of narrative inquiry with the teachers and students, and the atmosphere of discussion was very warm. With the interaction and communication, the activity of workshop of "educational narrative inquiry" was ended up well.
