Limitations of language: developing arts‐based creative narrative in stories of teachers’ identities

Abstract

This paper is based on a multidimensional study employing a heuristic methodology termed ‘creative narrative’ that combines arts‐based methods with narrative inquiry. Six female teachers’ narratives of identity are explored through artistic, visual images to illuminate if and how they story ‘unconscious’. The creative narratives, illuminated through a multi‐layered extract from one creative narrative, illustrate various ways in which the participants imputed meaning and power to tacit and non‐conscious influences which were emotionally potent but previously hidden from themselves and others and that continued to affect their professional identities. The paper argues that such unconscious or non‐conscious dimensions to teachers’ lives are crucial to the experience and exercise of professional identity and yet are largely absent from our understandings and outside the capture of narrative inquiry as it is presently conceptualized. Narrative inquiry should strive to extend its theoretical boundaries and incorporate non‐verbal arts‐based research methods in order to go beyond the limits of language and capture the meaning of lived experience in more holistic ways.