Collaborative narrative inquiry: Fidelity and the ethics of caring in teacher research

Abstract

The authors discuss the internal and external conflicts they encountered while collaborating with teachers and situate their deliberations within the framework provided by Noddings's principles of fidelity and caring. The narrative inquiries that they examine involve methods for recording and reflecting on personal accounts, personal narratives, teachers' stories, and narrative interviews for the purpose of understanding how teachers make sense of problems in their lives and work. The authors explore the place of disclosure and vulnerability as well as the place of selectivity and silence in the texts collected. They reflect on how the ethic of caring helps resolve concerns for the presence of teachers' voices in the interpreting and writing of research. They conclude that it is precisely the relational nature of narrative inquiry that resists simple answers to the question: How can we share teachers' stories and speak to their multiple meanings in caring, moral, and ethical ways?