ABSTRACT
Narrative inquiry, as its own methodology, has developed important terms and distinctions that have become more apparent and well-recognized as guiding what counts, or what fits, within the field of narrative inquiry or narrative research. Dewey’s theory of experience is most often cited as the philosophical underpinning of narrative inquiry. Dewey’s two criteria of experience – interaction and continuity enacted in situations – provide the grounding for attending to a narrative conception of experience through the three-dimensional narrative inquiry space with dimensions of temporality, place, and sociality. Narrative inquiry is a deeply ethical project. Narrative inquiry understood as ethical work means one cannot separate the ethical out as separate from the living out of narrative inquiry. Relational ethics are founded in an ethics of care and are the starting point and stance that narrative inquirers take throughout a narrative inquiry.
