Narrative inquiry and research on physical activity, sport and health: exploring current tensions

Becoming a tyranny? Ubiquitous and in danger of losing all meaning? Divisive and alienated enclaves? These strong concerns about narrative inquiry and its scholars voiced by advocates, not adversaries, in the social sciences (Gergen & Gergen, 2011; Riessman, 2008; Squire, Andrews, & Tamboukou, 2008) form a backcloth to this special issue. As narrative scholars, we believe that the theoretical bricolage of narrative inquiry evident in the field of sport and movement pedagogy has made valuable contributions to knowledge and may continue to provide important insights into complex phenomena associated with embodiment. Yet, the latter we would argue is contingent upon scholars’ critical reflection about, and a heightened sensitivity towards, ongoing theoretical and methodological tensions. For example, tensions between event- and experience-centred narratives; whether narrative is conceived as a celebration of experience or as a starting point for its deconstruction; whether it is an expression of internal states or a dialogical construction; or whether it is understood as a form of social action; or of the ways in which researchers’ own narratives influence their agendas. Judging from the enormous response to the call for papers, it seems many share our concerns and this special edition brings some interesting contributions to the research community's conversation.

Most of the aforementioned tensions arise from how individual scholars conceptualise narrative: as a set of data material, a method, an ontological way of understanding the social world, or perhaps all three of these aspects. Common for the disparate perspectives is the notion that narration is fundamental to human meaning-making. Both individual and collective embodied experience is mediated, and made ‘real’, via the linguistic shaping and telling of stories, and the processes of their consumption. Moreover, narratives are inevitably relational and imbued with power. Yet, strains emerge on account of the wide range of disciplinary subject traditions and philosophies of science and knowledge that characterise narrative inquiry, sport sciences and education research. The articles in this special edition bear witness to this diversity. There are contributions grounded in the disciplines of psychology, sociology, gerontology, disability studies, education and the studies are further informed by theories of pragmatism, social constructivism, critical pedagogy, critical arts and poststructuralism. In addition, most of the articles draw upon a range of theoretical perspectives depending upon the focus of research, such as theories of identity, gender or teacher socialisation, though some scholars choose deliberately to refrain from explicit theoretical analysis preferring instead to allow evocative narratives ‘to speak for themselves’.

Authors make a range of knowledge claims from their narrative inquiry and given the plethora of approaches, these reflect many of the unresolved, and in some cases the unresolvable, tensions listed above. Casey and Schaefer's paper offers, for example, experience-centred narrative claims, paying attention to a PE teacher's career reflections spanning many years with the aim of contributing to the literature on professional development. In contrast, hunter and emerald's article, writing from a postmodern position sensitive to language's complexity and non-transparency, problematises the seeming incommensurability of studying embodiment and movement through a singular focus on narrative as language. Several contributors discuss the complexities of accessing the narrative experience of Others, and moreover, the inherent challenges of ‘giving voice’ and of re-presenting and/or reconstructing it in scholarly texts. Berg Svendby combines the latter with an exploration of how creative writing forms may contribute to her modest critical pedagogical project of facilitating greater agency for young people with a disability in physical education (PE). Most of the papers engage with the multiple ethical challenges of ‘doing’ narrative research and not least, the varying subject positions that narrative scholars assume in the process. We are not advocating for some sense of consensus nor a ranking of different forms of narrative inquiry. Similar to Denzin (2010), we believe in a future characterised by dialogue and a plurality of approaches, in which we can learn from and work alongside each other in our shared aim of deepening out knowledge about our ever-increasing complex worlds. The parameters in which narrative researchers pursue their work inevitably frame both implicitly and explicitly the knowledge claims we can make, but also facilitate possibilities for moving beyond them. Recent criticism of narrative inquiry around the social and cultural production of bodies, sport, movement and schools would seem to suggest that scholars on occasion are not always sufficiently articulate about these limitations, a neglect that can and ought to be rectified.

Collectively, the eight papers in this special edition underscore the breadth of narrative inquiry in the contemporary moment. They highlight the complexities of embodied, lived experience but also foreground ‘unrest’ in conducting, thinking about and making claims about and from narrative work. The special edition identifies new frontiers in the field, original ways of thinking about on-going concerns and new and exciting avenues for research. In the first paper, Denison offers a thoughtful overview in the form of an essay about the need for engagement with social theory in narrative research. In so doing, he provides a conceptual frame around the use of language and theory that subsequent papers resonate with and further develop in a variety of ways. He identifies the significance of ‘first sentences’ as opportunities to present bias, convention and point of view. He also argues the need for narrative analyses to engage more fully with social theory as a means to convey arguments both accurately and forcefully. According to Denison, what connects the sensibilities of good writing is an understanding of how words and language can be used to convey complexity. In working with theory, narrative accounts can go beyond the superficiality of who, what, when and where to capture relations of power, as well as the ‘effects’ they enact. In this way, narrative accounts can blend thick description with thick analysis so a story is not just a story, it becomes an evocative statement that challenges our understanding of ourselves and others as active moving bodies.

Denison's essay leads into a series of papers that examine issues related to how narrative research is conceptualised and enacted, as well as the complexities and tensions experienced in capturing embodied experiences, re-storying lives and catalysing change. To begin, Griffin and Phoenix problematise the pitfalls narrative researchers can fall into if they confine their attention to so-called ‘big’ stories without paying equal attention to the ‘small’ and not least ‘middle stories’ of participants’ life worlds. Their discussion draws upon data from a project focusing on the ways older women learn to tell ‘new’ stories about their embodiment: more specifically, how they learn to tell a story of being a runner. The tale of becoming a runner in later life is contrary to society's dominant master narrative that constructs growing old with physical decline, and as such, is not necessarily an easy tale to tell. Researchers are reminded of the need to pay attention to the performative work of narrating the self(-ves) and professionals are reminded of the need to be aware of the fine grained texture of individuals’ narratives if the intention is to teach them to behave differently. ‘Big’ stories tend to be well-rehearsed, distanced and capturing a ‘truth’, whereas attention to participants’ ‘middle’ and ‘small stories’, concerned with the ‘here and now’, can reveal the messiness, contradictions and multiplicity of parallel storylines. The article also highlights the importance of conceiving narrative in relational terms, illustrating how stories come to be told is both a reflection of the individual and the particular context(s) in which a story is generated.

Where Griffin and Phoenix place emphasis on the temporal aspect of narrative work, the following two papers highlight the complexities of capturing and understanding the sensory aspects of embodiment and movement in the spoken word. In particular, in lisahunter and elke emerald's evocative paper, questions are raised as to how we seriously can represent the lived body of athletes and PE teachers, particularly if rich sensorial and embodied stories are reduced to words or fragments of narratives. The authors propose the need to combine insights from both sensory studies and narrative analysis in order to capture more fully embodied experience, thus forging new directions and research possibilities. Consequentially they explore sensory narrative as a form that captures embodiment where movements and sensations are essential to learning, knowing and understanding. In so doing, hunter and emerald's article provides new insights for exploring sensory narrative at various research moments and presents a beginning framework for understanding and representing storied worlds in embodied ways.

Carless and Douglas adopt a dialogical storytelling approach to alleviate some of the tensions involved in researching another person's embodied experience, both with regard to accessing and re-presenting that experience. Their paper shares evocative tales from a research project investigating an adapted sport and training course for military personnel who have experienced serious injury/trauma. From a starting point that acknowledges how narratives of trauma, particularly amongst men in the military, often remain untold or are silenced, they argue the need for narrative scholars to pay closer attention to creating research contexts that increase the ‘tellability’ of difficult tales and of becoming receptive and appreciative listeners. Narrative inquirers ought to have a heightened sense of their own embodiment and to use it as a means of witnessing Others’ embodied stories. Following Frank (2004), they reiterate the need for researchers to relinquish claims to know and express another's experience using a monological voice, and instead work toward dialogical representations of experience. In their view neither participants’, nor researchers’, narratives of experience ought to assume greater status, rather both positions contribute to opening up Others’ worlds and greater understanding.

The next two papers are concerned with ways to transform narrative data and represent lived experiences via creative analytic writing forms. In writing from a critical pedagogical position, Berg Svendby highlights the discrepancies between rhetoric and practice around students with disabilities and their experiences of PE. She calls for different ways of knowing in conservative subjects such as PE to enable a greater focus upon the variety of student experiences and thus the complexity of creating a more inclusive learning environment. The author highlights how narratives, well told, may provide insight into the multiple realities of inclusion and/or exclusion, disability and experiences of PE. The paper shares narratives from young disabled peoples’ experiences in the form of ethnographic fiction and poetic transcription. These genres, if accomplished in an evocative style, are valuable for understanding young peoples’ stories and have a potential to move the reader to engage both cognitively and emotionally toward empathy. They can trouble the conservative master narrative of PE, although transformation is of course an extremely complex, ongoing process requiring much more sophistication than a single story. In developing these pieces of creative writing, the author identifies the writing process as a form of thinking, analysis and a method of discovery.

Continuing on the theme of (re)presenting research findings using different linguistic devices, Linghede, Larsson and Redelius reveal further complexities and tensions within the story- writing process. In addressing criticisms that creative writing practises avoid the hard labour of theoretical analysis and are a ‘retreat from academic work’, their paper attempts to take the reader through the ‘difficult but inspiring process’ of transforming 19 interviews into literary stories, whilst highlighting the methodological and theoretical concerns along the way. In responding to calls to ‘give voice’ to previously marginalised groups, their evocative texts illuminate men's experiences and the doing of gender within equestrian sports whilst simultaneously unveiling the deliberate and theoretically-informed processes involved in their construction. Similar to Berg Svendby, they remind the reader of the power of the researcher's pen in ascribing meaning to the lives and experiences of others.

McMahon and McGannon extend the special edition's focus on matters of power in re-presenting Others’, as well as scholars’, social and cultural worlds. Their article, crafted from the perspective of the neophyte narrative researcher, presents fragmentary insights into the challenging, and on occasion painful, dual processes of developing a sophisticated narrative analysis of elite swimming culture and fulfilling (postpositivist) rules of the publishing game. It troubles the reader's expectations of a linear text, juxtaposing harrowing tales from the world of elite, young swimmers with emotional researcher tales from the ‘publishing game’. The authors dwell upon whether the explicit use of theory in re-presenting narratives from the field and prevailing academic conventions actually inhibit the generation of new inroads into knowledge. Indeed, as well as revealing the messy, ethical processes of doing and ‘writing up’ research, it breaks the silence surrounding the all too often unwritten rules of the peer review process.

The final paper returns to the temporal aspect of narrative work. Drawing upon Clandinin and Connelly's (1999) notion of ‘stories to live by’, Casey and Schaefer explore the potential of collaboratively exploring and re-visiting narratives. Using the autobiographical case of Casey's professional life history, they reflect upon how emerging professional identities are inextricably contingent upon context. They trace the changing nature of Casey's professional story, contrasting the ways he constructed his narrative identity almost a decade ago whilst writing his PhD thesis on his life as a PE teacher, with his current professional identity as a teacher educator that incorporates the former but is narrated as if having moved far beyond. The paper revisits the tension associated with an individual's struggle to seek narrative coherence and the multiple, complex and often contradictory realities of living one's identity. Informed by pragmatism, the article refrains to a large degree from using explicit theoretical analysis of the narratives it presents and instead, celebrates the individual's story(-ies). Returning full circle to Denison's plea for greater use of social theory in order, for example in this case, to explore the power at play in securing an (professional) identity, the article clearly symbolises an opposing theoretical position on the continuum of what constitutes narrative inquiry in the contemporary moment. It can, however, be seen to compliment Griffin and Phoenix's call for greater attention to ‘middle’ and ‘small stories’ in narrative analysis, lest narrative scholars should wrongfully impose order where chaos actually dominates. It begs the question as to how often do researchers subconsciously generate, analyse and re-present tales from the field within the structures and tradition of Western, Enlightenment-inspired narrative forms? Moreover, how do we take on board theoretical insights from post-colonialism (Said, 1979) to de-centre these dominant ways of knowing and telling?

Of course, it is important to recognise that several of the articles address a range of themes and overlap one another; the categorisations we have used in this introduction run the risk of constructing boundaries that are, in fact, porous or in some cases, seamless. We encourage readers to juxtapose the multiple themes addressed in the eight articles in order to reap the richness of their insights into conducting narrative inquiry in sport and PE contexts. Inevitably, the collection of papers raises new questions pertaining to its definition, priorities and theoretical directions, as well as throwing light onto enduring issues. Looking to the future, we would encourage scholars to venture beyond her/his particular narrative enclave and participate in transdisciplinary dialogues around the many tensions in our field of research. The tensions must necessarily remain contested if we are to spin a richer tapestry of narrative inquiry in the field of physical activity, education, sport and health.