Three commonplaces—temporality, sociality, and place—specify the dimensions of a narrative inquiry space¶

Theory · All theories
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The article presents the three-dimensional narrative inquiry space as the organizing framework for making meaning of experience. Situated in narrative accounts are three commonplaces—temporality, sociality, and place—which, quoting Connelly and Clandinin (2006), "specify dimensions of an inquiry space" (p. 479). Temporality treats life as ongoing and people, places, and events as always in transition; sociality requires describing both personal conditions (feelings, hopes, desires, aesthetic reactions, moral dispositions) and social conditions (existential conditions, environment, surrounding factors and forces); place requires attending to the specificity of the location where events take place. Understanding a narrative inquiry requires simultaneous exploration of all three commonplaces.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Simultaneous exploration of all three commonplaces is needed to understand a narrative inquiry

Constraints¶

• Place may change as the inquiry delves into temporality, per the article's quoted source

Target Learners¶

• education researchers
• teacher educators

Target Learning Objectives¶

• designing and interpreting narrative inquiries into educational experience

Claims¶

Related Theories¶

Examples¶

• Use myriad field texts and the analytical tools of broadening, burrowing, and storying and restorying to move from field texts to research texts
• Narrative & Experience in Multicultural Education (2005) as an exemplar of puzzle-driven narrative inquiry

Key Sources¶

• Wei, L. (2023). Narrative Inquiry: A Research Method in the Education Field. World Journal of Education, 13(6). https://doi.org/10.5430/wje.v13n6p35