ABSTRACT
The methodology of narrative analysis presumes that personal narratives are organised into implicitly evaluative schemas that help the speaker to construct and understand their life as well as that of others (Linde, 1993). One of the criticisms levelled at the coding of qualitative data is that such coding tends to fragment the data. The strength of narrative analysis is that there is an emphasis on the whole and the narrative is able to encompass all the ramifications of this situation. For example, the narrative should sit not only within the lifespan of the storyteller, but it should also indicate how the episodes making up the story are interconnected (Bryman, 2004). In this chapter I describe the use of connective stories as an outcome of a research activity and illustrate the merit of this research methodology. Narrative enquiry is not simply an account of what happened; the focus of narrative enquiry is on how people make sense of what happened. To show how to carry out an analysis so that such a narrative can be constructed, I use data generated through a project that involved six scientists, who recount their school memories of science, and I provide teachers’ responses to such accounts. There are limitations with this mode of enquiry and I identify them and provide advice with regard to how to lessen the negative effects.
