Abstract

Narrative inquiry is best described as an approach to research that is cross-disciplinary and extremely diverse theoretically and methodologically (Riessman, 2008). Narrative research in PE reflects this variety (Dowling, Garrett, lisahunter, & Wrench, 2015). Common across the disparate perspectives is, however, the notion that narration is fundamental to human meaning-making: we construct ourselves via the stories we tell. Individual and collective embodied experience is mediated, and indeed, made ‘real’ via the linguistic shaping and telling of stories, and the processes of their consumption. Narratives are thus inevitably relational. The teller and the ‘listener’ are active meaning-making agents, and ‘small’ or what we can call personal stories are inevitably linked to ‘big’ or societal stories that are socio-economically and culturally situated.