Narrative inquiry and relational ethics: negotiating the lived experiences of international school teachers in China

ABSTRACT

This paper is a reflective account of using narrative inquiry and relational ethics as part of doctoral research that explored the lived experiences and identity construction of international school teachers in Shanghai, China. Specifically, it illustrates how narrative inquiry informed the whole research process by focusing on three aspects of the research process: data collection, data transcription, and data analysis. Excerpts from interviews and email correspondence with the participants are drawn on in order to illustrate how the interpretation of the interview data was negotiated through a process of dialogic member-checking. They also reveal moments where the juxtaposition of my interpretation of the data with the participants’ words functioned as a form of reflexivity which bolstered ethical bonds between the researcher and the participants.

KEYWORDS:

• Narrative inquiry
• relational ethics
• qualitative methodology
• international school teachers
• interviews
• member-checking

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The author would also like to thank Jessica Cohen for reading this paper with fresh eager eyes when mine were too close to the paper to spot unforgivable lapses in grammar, logic and word choice. Soundtrack to this paper: ‘The Silent Orchestra’ by Hamilton Leithhauser; ‘Symphonie No.3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’ by Henryk Górecki; ‘No Ceiling’ by Eddie Vedder.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).