ABSTRACT
This chapter presents key issues related to the use of reflection and narrative analysis and how they can be used as complementary research methods to understand graduates’ experience with their career development beyond graduation. Narrative research is a powerful qualitative tool for researchers to understand one’s employability stories. However, it may also result in biased findings, due to the researcher’s interpretation of participant narratives with a lack of understanding of the participants’ cultural and social context. Hence it is imperative for the researcher to gain participants’ own interpretation of their employability experience, via the use of guided reflection. As the first layer of self-narrative analysis, each graduate will narrate their employability experience, including career development trajectories. Guided questions are then used to offer those with limited reflection experience to contemplate their employability experience critically. As the second layer of narrative analysis, the subsequent analyses of these stories and respective reflection as the whole will elicit meaning that they attached to each event in their career development, which will also generate more robust findings.
