Today I’ve been working on my methods chapter. I’ve headers for all the relevant sections and I feel like I’m on the right track mostly but I also feel there is a heap of information I’m forgetting to include. Driving me batty. Also, I’ve written 8500 words and I’m kinda sick of writing any more.
So, I’m doing narrative inquiry methods, right? So, narrative inquiry is an approach that requires the “storying” of data, because it’s perceived that it’s through stories, or narratives, that we make sense of the world. For Bruner (1996), he even sees our brains having “computational” knowledge and “narrative” knowledge. It’s a great theory for understanding human nature throughout history, I guess, and for those cultures with an oral history, you can see the power of narrative to shape culture, understanding and knowledge.
Ok, so writing stories is quite simple in theory, yeah? Except that in narrative inquiry methods, one has to attend to a bunch of things including the recursive nature of writing, being in the field, the ethics of narrative research, spaciality, temporality and sociality, and other stuff like bumps and tensions in the data. Now, I’m forgetting what I need to write about in detail and I’m concerned that my headers are all over the shop re how the chapter is organised. Stupid, simple stuff but I’m finding it difficult to write about narrative methods because it’s slippery.
I suspect I’m at the part where, yes Jessie, send the damned thing to your supervisor so she can read it and identify the missing links!!!! I’ve still not written the conclusion to my chapter yet. It’s going to be short.
I'm no superwoman. 