An important recent development in the study of teaching is the use of narrative analysis to study teachers' lives, their work and anecdotes exchanged in the staffroom.; This book critically examines current approaches to the study of teachers' narratives and argues that, for narrative research to be effective, we need to see narrative in a multi- disciplinary perspective. The book examines models of narrative analysis currently proposed in linguistics, sociology, psycology, anthropology and literature and applies insights from these disciplines to the study of teachers' narratives. The author proposes an alternative approach to studying narratives which is then applied to original data, demonstrating how narrative analysis can be used to study primary teachers' perceptions of their work. lt is suggested that narrative analysis could be used to study the perceptions or culture of any professional group.

Abstract Narrative analysis does not fit neatly within any one scholarly field; it is intrinsically interdisciplinary. Narrative research is conducted across disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and history. Generally, the term “narrative analysis” refers to the interpretation of some form of storytelling derived from long interviews, biographies, journals, and diaries.

Narrative analysis/narrative inquiry is the process of analyzing stories gathered from various sources to gain insight into the storied nature of human experience. An interpretive approach, narrative analysis focuses on the subjective interpretation of human conditions and experiences by the participant as well as the researcher and uses various conceptual frameworks to analyze both. Stories are valuable for analysis as people often reveal their world, their identity, points of view, cultural norms, standpoints and beliefs, thoughts, and emotions about the social world through them. This entry contains a summary of the key concepts of narrative analysis, the approaches to using narrative inquiry as a qualitative communication research method. The strengths and limitations of narrative inquiry are also offered, along with suggestions for future research.

Abstract The ‘deliberative turn’ in normative political theory has coincided with something of a ‘narrative turn’ in empirical social science. Scholars in communication studies, psychology, sociology, politics, public administration, and beyond have increasingly focused their attention on the role that narratives play in social interaction. There is increasing awareness of the importance of narrative for those interested in assessing deliberation. After all, normative ideas about the way people ought to make sense of and stake claims about personal, social, and political phenomena can only be strengthened by closer engagement with empirical accounts of how they actually do so. While narrative analysis has much to offer scholars of deliberation, the growing interest in, and adoption of, this approach in social science research presents some complexities and confusions. Like deliberation itself, narrative means different things to different analysts. It is operationalized in different ways to different ends. The aims of this chapter, then, are twofold. First, it seeks to put forward a version of narrative analysis that is grounded in the traditions of interpretive policy analysis. It makes a case for why this version can answer unresolved questions for scholars of deliberation. Second, this chapter draws on examples from the author’s own research experience to open up about the often-hidden interpretive craft of narrative analysis and demonstrate what it entails in the work of assessing deliberation in practice.

The chapter outlines the possibilities, merits, and limits of narrative analysis as a method in Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). It argues that narratives play an essential role in the construction of politics in general and foreign policy in particular. Narratives are central in situations in which behavior and decisions need to be explained and justified in front of an audience. The chapter gives an overview of the existing literature on narratives in International Relations (IR)/FPA and outlines a specific method of narrative analysis. This method focuses on the narrative elements of setting, characterization, and emplotment as the key ingredients of the concept of narrative understood as a means of ordering and structuring discourse. It provides an analytical framework that makes the analysis of something as vast as “discourse” manageable. The chapter illustrates the suggested method by examining the narrative struggle in the US Congress over the success or failure of the “Iran nuclear deal” in 2015.

One may plausibly assume that the current academic interest in narrative research stems from a growing awareness that human beings are by their very nature storytellers, and that the stories we make become part of who we are, be it as individuals or groups. Indeed, narrative analysis has gained wide ground in many fields of the humanities and social sciences. This bibliography article is intended primarily for students and scholars of politics, but it can be of use for readers and researchers from other disciplinary backgrounds in the social sciences. While political scholars may not be among the pioneers that embraced “the narrative turn,” the connection between politics and narratives is of very long standing. A common reference in this regard is Plato’s discussion on the education of the guardians in the third book of his Republic. For all that, scholars and students of politics who wish to get acquainted with seminal works in narrative research should venture beyond political science into literature studies, sociology, communication, linguistics, historiography, psychology, and many other fields. In fact, the leading approach to systematic study of narratives, known as “narratology,” was developed mainly by literary scholars and is yet to be adapted to questions salient to politics. Therefore it is only right that scholars who wish to engage in narrative study should be able to familiarize themselves with works outside their particular field of expertise. Even a cursory overview of the use of narratives in political science reveals a wide diversity of epistemological and ontological trajectories. The reason is that narrative analysis in political science does not emanate from a preexisting tradition or stream of research, but rather is based on an adaptation of various narrative elements to address an array of questions related to that discipline. Moreover, the variety of assumptions regarding the concept of narrative, manifested in other disciplines, is typical of political studies as well. Such a plurality of definitions and concepts makes the review of selected narrative studies a veritably daunting task. Given the rich, broad, and diverse contents, issues, and methodologies addressed and utilized by scholars who apply narrative analysis in political science, organizing the body of narrative research into clear-cut sections and avoiding overlaps is not always feasible. It is possible, however, to map main trends in the study of narrative analysis in political science. This bibliography begins with a General Overviews and Methodological Sources section. The next several sections largely proceed from studies that emphasize individual perspectives, to research targeting groups and national states, to examinations of the international arena. Several subsequent sections cite mainly investigations concerned with theoretical issues regarding the use of narrative approaches in the political domain. The concluding section comprises a list of fundamental methodological sources and journals relevant for scholars interested in narrative and politics.

Crime is both storyable and storied, and narrative analysis is thus essential for criminologists. In this article I present four different ways of doing narrative analysis: thematic, structural, performative and dialogical. These forms of analysis have different research questions and are associated with very different research traditions. Narrative analysis varies depending on whether researchers are interested in the content of what is told, how it is done, who is narrating and where it is done, or what narratives are at play in a story. The article describes the methodological process of these different approaches and exemplifies their specific application in an interview with a violent offender. It discusses the many advantages, but also the limitations of each of the narrative analysis traditions. Furthermore, it presents the narrative work stories do, such as entertaining, identity and boundary work, and processing and integrating—and argues that it is essential to understand these to capture the role of stories for crime.

Narrative analysis is a relatively recent addition to the toolkit of applied linguistics. Its basic premise is that the telling of stories can elucidate the meanings attached to participants’ experiences. These may be stories told by participants during data collection or stories constructed by researchers (sometimes in collaboration with participants) during analysis of a data set. This chapter is mainly concerned with uses of storytelling and narrative writing in data analysis and presentation of research findings.

Part 1. Analyzing Stories Chapter 1. Exploring Psychological Themes through Narrative Accounts - Dan P. McAdams Chapter 2. Practicing Dialogical Narrative Analysis - Arthur W. Frank Chapter 3. Narrative Analysis as an Embodied Engagement with the Lives of Others - Andrew Sparkes and Brett Smith Chapter 4. On Quantitative Narrative Analysis - Roberto Franzosi Part 2. Analyzing Storytelling Chapter 5. Narrative Practice and Identity Navigation - Michael Bamberg Chapter 6. Exploring Narrative Interaction in Multiple Contexts - Amy Shuman Chapter 7. Speaker Roles in Personal Narratives - Michele Koven Chapter 8. Situational Context and Interaction in a Folklorist's Ethnographic Approach to Storytelling - Ray Cashman Part 3. Analyzing Stories in Society Chapter 9. Analyzing the Implicit in Stories - Martha Feldman and Julka Almquist Chapter 10. Analyzing Popular Beliefs about Storytelling - Francesca Polletta Chapter 11. The Empirical Analysis of Formula Stories - Donileen Loseke Chapter 12. Analyzing the Social Life of Personal Experience Stories - Tamar Katriel

Narrative analysis is an analytical method that accommodates a variety of approaches. Through these approaches, social researchers explore how people story their lives. This is also a process through which researchers understand the complexities of personal and social relations. Narrative analysis provides the researcher with useful tools to comprehend the diversity and the different levels involved in stories, rather than treating those stories simply as coherent, natural and unified entities (Andrews et al., 2004). It is this approach to narrative analysis, which we shall call the constructionist approach to narrative analysis, that we aim to explain in the chapter that follows.