Opportunities and Challenges in Representing Narrative Inquiries Digitally

Source: Teachers College Record, Volume 115 Number 4, 2013

In this article, two sources previously cut off from one another—the narrative inquiry research method and the digital storytelling approach—were brought together to inform how the live research projects became represented.

Setting
The four research endeavors, all involving arts-based instruction and all funded by the same reform movement, were undertaken in four different school sites serving primarily underserved minority youth in the fourth largest city in the U.S.

Participants
The participants were mainly teachers, although some principals, students, and grandparents contributed to certain digital representations. Research assistants were also highly involved.

This meta-level ‘inquiry into inquiry’ traversed all four narrative inquiries and the digital exemplars produced for each to show how digital narrative inquiries (narrative inquiries represented through digital story) attend to eight considerations: relationship, perspective, authorial voice, cultural/contextual considerations, relevance, negotiation, audience and technology were learned.