Noel Gough: AARE 1993 1 Narrative theory and educational inquiry: qualitative research as metafictional storytelling Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education Fremantle, Western Australia, 22-25 November 1993 Noel Gough Faculty of Education, Deakin University Rusden Campus, 662 Blackburn Road, Clayton, Victoria 3168 Preamble This paper provides a rationale for speculating aboutÑand experimenting withÑmetafictional storytelling as a form of qualitative educational research. The presentation for which it has been prepared will also include examples of fictions produced by graduate students which cannot be reproduced here because (i) some are still in transit from Canada at the time of writing (late September 1993) and (ii) some are visual ÔtextsÕ that are difficult to re/present satisfactorily in print. Narrative theory and educational inquiry The study of narrative is one way of approaching a number of theoretic and practical problems in education. As Kenneth Knoespel (1991: 100-1) writes: Narrative theory has challenged literary critics to recognize not only the various strategies used to configure particular texts within the literary canon, but to realize how forms of discourse in the natural and human sciences are themselves ordered as narratives. In effect narrative theory invites us to think of all discourse as taking the form of a story. To date, my own attempts to apply narrative theory in educational research have focused very largely on inquiries concerning the ways in which the discourses of environmental education (Gough 1991, 1993a, in press c) and science education (Gough 1993b, in press a) are configured as stories, with particular reference to the adequacy of the narrative strategies used by science and environmental educators in their work. More recently, I have critically reviewed some alternative approaches to curriculum studies as a narrative textual practice (see Gough in press b) and have begun to explore ways in which ÔfictionalÕ storiesÑand modes of fictional storytellingÑmight inform reading and writing practices in qualitative educational research. These inquiries are situated in my interrelated practices as both a researcher and a teacher of educational research methodologies and techniques. Teacher educators and educational researchers tell stories to learners and colleagues; researchers in other disciplines, journalists and novelists also tell stories to their respective audiences. Each storytelling practice embodies a particular selection of narrative strategies and conventions, the implicit or explicit knowledge of which influences the storymakerÕs craft, the audienceÕs expectations and the meanings that are mutually constructed. However, we should not take it for granted that the persistence of more-or-less distinct differences between the narrative forms found in, say, a scholarly journal, a textbook on educational research methodology, mass media journalism and literary fiction means that these differences are either necessary or desirable. In other words, the present narrative conventions of much teacher education and educational research are not the onlyÑor necessarily the bestÑmeans of describing and explaining educational experience to learners and other colleagues. In this paper I will explore two specific propositions: (i) that the conventional writing practices of much educational research rarely encompass the narrative complexities that may be needed to represent and problematise educational experience; (ii) that much educational experience may be represented more appropriatelyÑand interrogated more criticallyÑby fictional modes of storytelling, especially the reflexive narrative strategies of metafiction. I thus argue that critical readings of metafictional texts and creative uses of metafictional storytelling strategies should be incorporated into our narrative practices. However, before dealing with the specific qualities of metafiction it may be useful to review some aspects of the relationship between fiction and empirical educational research that have been canvassed by other scholars. Empiricism and fiction, ÔtruthÕ and lies The ontological status accorded to ÔfictionÕ by many educational researchers is suggested in the title of Rob WalkerÕs (1981) paper, ÔOn the uses of fiction in educational researchÑ(and I donÕt mean Cyril Burt)Õ. In much everyday speech, fiction is equated with falsehoodÑin a similar way to which Ôtelling storiesÕ may be equated with Ôtelling liesÕ. To be consistent with such meanings, a ÔtruthfulÕ representation of educational experience would necessarily comprise the documentation of ÔfactsÕ and their interpretation in a Ônon-fictionalÕ narrative. Walker (1981: 147) raises a number of pertinent philosophical questions about these sorts of assumptionsÑfor example, ÔIs fiction the only route to some kinds of truth?ÕÑbut the concerns he addresses in detail are for the most part pragmatic, prudential and procedural. He shows how ÔfictionalisedÕ accounts can be used in case studies of educational evaluation and action research to ameliorate some of the difficulties raised by issues of confidentiality, but each of the ÔfictionsÕ he quotes is clearly based on extensive empirical knowledge and Ôreally changes the truth very littleÕ (Walker 1981: 163). Walker (1981: 163) sees research as Ôessentially a documentary artÕ in which Ôthe task of the writer is to display the subjectÕÑÔhis/her subjectivity, even understanding, must take second placeÕ. By way of contrast, Tom Barone (1992: 143) argues the researcher should adopt Ôan openly political stanceÕ. Reflecting on a previous project (Barone 1989) in which he documented the life story of a potential school drop-out, Barone (1992) argues that there is a moral imperative for qualitative researchers in education to include Ôcritical storytellingÕ in their methodological repertoires. Barone (1992: 143) sees storytellingÑcritical or otherwiseÑas an artful practice which Ôeschews formal theoryÕ (of the scientific and philosophical type) and Ôsystematic methodÕ. However, Barone (1992: 142) applies a number of criteria to Ôthe crafting of worthwhile storiesÕ, including that of ÔhonestyÕ, Émore specifically, a kind of honesty achieved through a heightened empiricism, a determined scrutinizing of the world around us. Like all good art, honest stories are powerfully observed, carefully detailed. They must tend to generate in the reader awareness of the locations of (actual or fictitious) charactersÕ thoughts, beliefs, desires, and habits, in the webs of contingencies that constitute their life-worlds (emphasis in original). It is worth emphasising here that, in BaroneÕs view, stories characterised by ÔhonestyÕ and Ôheightened empiricismÕ can also be ÔfictitiousÕ. Among the examples Barone (1992: 145) describes as Ôcritical stories par excellenceÕ are both ÔnonfictionalÕ works of investigative journalism, such as Norman MailerÕs (1968) Armies of the Night, and novels like John SteinbeckÕs (1939/1967) The Grapes of Wrath: Éthis novelÕs power to persuadeÉ emanates from a careful and committed empiricism that is made manifest through such features of writing as powerfully ÔthickÕ description and invented but convincing dialogue. In a footnote to the above, Barone (1992: 146) adds: Does it matter that this storyÉ [is] fictional? Hardly. I would argue that the ultimate purpose of the critical storytelling I have described can be served equally well through journalistic or novelistic modesÉ In that sense, critical storytelling moves qualitative researchers and readers not only beyond theory and method but beyond genre as well. Novels and other forms of fictional writing have been used both to teach about social and educational phenomena (see, for example, Brieschke 1990, Gough 1993a) and to study them (see, for example, the chapters by Gough, Molnar, Schubert, Taxel, van Manen and Willis collected in Willis and Schubert 1991). However, as Barone (1990) writes, in the past, Ôa masterpiece of educational inquiry such as Hard Times [Dickens 1854/1955] would not have sufficed as, say, a doctoral dissertationÕ. More recently, Hofstra University (New York, USA) has accepted a doctoral dissertation in education in the form of a novel (see Brieschke 1992: 179) and the University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada) has accepted a Master of Education thesis in the form of a collection of short (fictional) stories (Oberg 1993). While there can be little doubt that fictional writing may be very persuasive in achieving the moral purposes of scholars engaged in emancipatory projects, it is likely that many educational researchers would agree with Walker (1981: 163) in seeing that there could be Ôdangers inherent in the approachÕ: Can fiction ever be as ÔgoodÕ as reality? What are the limits on the uses of fiction? How much of an account can be invented? How far can the data be altered, distorted or changed? Should the ÔstoryÕ emerge from the data (as in the examples I have given), or should the story control the use made of the data (as a serious fiction writer might feel). [sic] Accepting that such questions signal ÔdangersÕ depends to some extent on accepting the categorical distinctions they imply, although Walker (1981: 163) explicitly acknowledges the difficulties inherent in his attempt to distinguish Ôpure fiction from fictional research stylesÕ1. Maintaining these sorts of categories suggests that it is possible, at least in principle, to establish reliable (intersubjective) distinctions between ÔrealityÕ, ÔfactsÕ or ÔtruthÕ on the one hand and ÔfictionÕ on the other. At a philosophical level it is relatively easy to trivialise this difficulty by saying that until we can establish the nature of ÔtruthÕ it is impossible to know if telling stories is telling lies. But this is not just an academic problem. Even a cursory examination of the complex interrelationships between our ÔcommonsenseÕ understandings of everyday ÔrealityÕ and the worlds created in texts of all kinds demonstrates that we cannot take such distinctions as fact versus fiction for granted. While it may be possible to assert that ÔrealityÕ exists beyond texts, much of this ÔrealityÕ isÑand can only beÑapprehended through texts (and much of what we call ÔdirectÕ experience is mediated textually and intertextually). For example, much of what we call history is inaccessible to us except in textual form (indeed, I believe that Hegel suggested that history be contemplated as a work of art because in retrospect it ÔreadsÕ like a novel). Further ambiguities in the relationship between ÔrealityÕ and ÔfictionÕ arise when we consider the ways in which writing fiction may move us beyond documenting empirical ÔtruthÕ toward constructing new knowledge and understanding. This argument is advanced by Gillie Rowland, Stephen Rowland and Richard Winter (1990: 291) in outlining a role for writing fiction in research on professional practice: Éif we were asked why, as teachers, we encourage children to write stories, we would explain that writing stories is a way of ÔlearningÕ about our experiences by ordering and exploring them.É In writing (and responding to) stories, we exercise our imaginations by playing with the relationships between experiences and with the ideas they evoke: the structure of a story is an implicit set of general ideas about a segment of life experiences. This, briefly, is the rationale for our proposal that writing fiction can be a valuable mode of inquiry into professional practice: we recommend it for children; why not for ourselves? Writing in a fictional form enables familiar ideas and experiences to be brought into new relationships, and new ideas to be set alongside the familiar. Through fictional writing related to our professional context we can test out new ideas and explore the values upon which our practice is basedÉ we can draw into our narratives those crucial but subtle textures of thought and feeling which are not readily accessible to more standard forms of ÔresearchÕ. In doing this, we make full use of our professional experience, which, even if it is only haphazardly organized, is probably the richest resource we have to draw on. It is important to recognise that some of the Ônew relationshipsÕ and Ônew ideasÕ that may be generated through writing fiction can become the kind of cultural inventions that materially affectÑand are part ofÑour social reality. For example, there is a sense in which George OrwellÕs phrase, ÔBig Brother is watching youÕ, can be regarded as a Ôpure fictionÕ. But in the form in which it was mobilised in arguments against a national identity cardÑthe Australia cardÑand other anticipated forms of bureaucratic surveillance or centralised information systems, it is clearly a part of our ÔrealityÕ. Another way of saying this is that fictional stories can provide us with evidence of alternative realities. But the idea that there are multiple realities both within and beyond our everyday experience is not confined to literary fiction. Rather, it is something of a commonplace among what are now loosely termed postmodernist discoursesÑthe discourses of poststructuralism, feminist standpoint epistemologies, postcolonialist critiques of Western culture, and postmodernist sciences like chaos theory. By way of contrast, the storytelling practices reproduced in conventional educational research and teacher education reflect what Sandra Harding (1986: 193) calls Ôthe longing for Òone true storyÓ that has been the psychic motor for [modern] Western scienceÕ. This longing for Ôone true storyÕ has driven the construction of narrative strategies in which fact and fiction are mutually exclusive categories, facts are assumed to correspond with ÔtruthÕ, and particular kinds of factsÑÔscientific factsÕ, Ôhistorical factsÕÑare equated with a ÔrealityÕ that is represented as being elsewhere than within the reach of human agency. Fact and fiction may be much closer, both culturally and linguistically, than these narrative strategies imply. A fiction, in the original sense of fictio, is something fashioned by a human agent. The etymology of ÔfactÕ also refers to human action; a fact is the thing done, Ôthat which actually happenedÕ, the Latin factum being the neuter past participle of facere, do (OED). Thus, both fact and fiction refer to human experience, but ÔfictionÕ is an active formÑthe act of fashioningÑwhereas ÔfactÕ descends from a past participle, a part of speech which disguises the generative act. Facts are testimonies to experience. Historical facts are testimonies to the experiences of historians in actively constructing facts with their disciplined procedures of evidence generation and interpretation and their traditions of social relationships and organisation. Similarly, scientific facts are testimonies to the experiences of scientists as they actively produce facts with their specialised technologies of data generation and inscription, their rule-governed practices of interpretation, and their characteristic traditions of social relationships and organisation. For example, as Donna Haraway writes: Biology is the fiction appropriate to objects called organisms; biology fashions the facts ÔdiscoveredÕ from organic beings. Organisms perform for the biologist, who transforms that performance into a truth attested by disciplined experience; i.e., into a fact, the jointly accomplished deed or feat of the scientist and the organism.É Both the scientist and the organism are actors in a story-telling practice. Thus, the opposition of fact and fiction in the modern sciences and social sciences is a fictionÑpart of a story which has been fashioned to rationalise the strategies used by modernist researchers in these disciplines to produce facts. But we still have to address the question: what is the fiction (or what are the fictions) appropriate to representing educational experience, including the experience of imagining new relationships and ideas in education? At the time of writing, it seems to me that the first part of the above question has been explored more constructively and more rigorously than the (italicised) second part. For example, in ÔStaying dumb?: Student resistance to liberatory curriculumÕ, Patti Lather (1990) responds to the question, Ôwhat do you do with data once youÕve met poststructuralism?Õ by fashioning four stories (she calls them ÔtalesÕ; I would call them ÔfictionsÕ): realist, critical, deconstructive and reflexive. LatherÕs multi- voiced text juxtaposes different modes of storytelling so as to demonstrate that no Ôone true storyÕ can be fashioned from the data and foregrounds the generative acts that create alternative meanings2. In ÔStaying dumb?Õ, Lather succeeds, I believe, in demonstrating what she has more recently (Lather 1992: 95) described as, Ôa reflexive process that focuses on our too easy use of accepted forms, a process that might lead us toward a science capable of continually demystifying the realities it serves to createÕ. For the purposes of the argument I am developing here, it is important to point out that all of LatherÕs ÔtalesÕÑincluding those she labels ÔrealistÕ, ÔcriticalÕ and ÔdeconstructiveÕÑare in some sense reflexive, since the reader can readily discern LatherÕs self-conscious production of these stories as exemplars of their respective modes. Furthermore, while I have no hesitation in calling LatherÕs stories ÔfictionsÕ, they are sufficiently constrained by the empirical data on which they are based to exemplify something less than what Rowland et al might mean by Ôwriting fiction as inquiry into professional practiceÕ (and certainly something less than what Walker refers to as ÔpureÕ, ÔseriousÕ or ÔrealÕ fiction). That is, while Lather clearly provides ÔsuspiciousÕ and even perverse readings of her data, she does not invent any (at least not self-consciously). This is not a criticism of LatherÕs text but, rather, a way of pointing out that the concept of metafictional storytelling to which I will now turn encompasses something more than the commendable reflexivity Lather demonstrates. Reflexivity and metafiction My argument so far has focused on breaking down the binary categorisation of fact versus fiction and on considering some of the virtues of reconceiving the stories we tell in educational research and teacher education as fictionsÑas stories fashioned for particular purposes. But I also believe that we need to reconstruct many of these fictions as metafictionsÑas self- conscious or reflexive fictions. This is because fictional forms like literary realism may not go far enough in providing readers with a sense of multiple realities or with the critical tools to interrogate them. For example, the critical stories valorised by Barone (1992: 145) may be Ôideologically openÕ to the extent that they reveal their authorsÕ moral and political commitments, but the storytelling modes they exemplifyÑsuch as investigative journalism and realist fictionÑdo not necessarily lend themselves to questioning the ideology of representation they embody. The purposes for which Barone revisits his own critical story (Barone 1989)Ñto retrospectively analyse it as a case study of qualitative problem solvingÑthus stand in sharp contrast to those displayed by Alison Jones (1992) who revisits a comparable critical story (Jones 1989) in order to deconstruct her own assumptions (such as the storyÕs reinscription of the power dynamics to which she was theoretically opposed) and to reconstruct it reflexively (for a brief comparison of JonesÕ two essays see Lather 1992: 94). It will be readily apparent that the mimetic novels of Charles Dickens or John SteinbeckÕs Grapes of Wrath could function as critical histories of their respective social ÔrealitiesÕ. What may be less obvious is that many of the texts of educational research and teacher educationÑespecially those that might be termed Ôempirically basedÕÑare also like mimetic novels in some respects, despite the fiction of their differences and despite each being characterised by very different narrative strategies. These kinds of text sustain the illusion that they do not mediate between reader and an exterior world but, rather, that they are offering transparent windows onto that world. That is, the language of much empirical educational research and literary realism is similar in that descriptions are presented as though they were a selection from a whole which is the ÔrealÕ world. A key difference is that the authors of mimetic texts usually are conscious of their own artistry in sustaining the readerÕs belief in the verisimilitude of the world ÔrevealedÕ by the text, whereas authors of empirical educational research reports seem to believeÑna•vely, I suggestÑthat they are constructing a neutral transmitter of ÔrealityÕ to the reader. But, at least as I read them, many postmodernist approaches to the representation of ÔrealityÕ in a text require that the text draws attention to its own structures and properties as a generator of meaning and significance. In literary criticism, this is what is known as a metafiction, a text which, as Patricia Waugh writes, Ôdraws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and realityÕ. I submit that the texts of educational research and teacher education should aspire to no less: they, too, should pose questions about the relationship between the stories we construct and the realities they purport to describe and explain. In other words, our texts should provide critiques of their own methods of construction, not only to lay their own structures and assumptions bare, but also to explore the fictionality (the textual and intertextual construction) of the ÔrealitiesÕ to which they refer. Educational research as metafictional storytelling In a sense, metafiction rests on a version of HeisenbergÕs uncertainty principle: an awareness that Ôfor the smallest building blocks of matter, every process of observation causes a major disturbanceÕ, and that it is impossible to describe an objective world because the observer always changes the observed. However, the concerns of metafiction are even more complex than this. For while Heisenberg believed that one could at least describe, if not a ÔpictureÕ of nature, a picture of oneÕs relation to nature, metafiction demonstrates the uncertainty even of this process. The implications for educational research and teacher education as storytelling practices are that we must abandon the conceit of trying to tell Ôone true storyÕ and deliberately construct our stories as multiple metafictionsÑself- conscious artefacts which invite their own deconstruction. In such a project we can be aided and inspired by those authors who have explored or exemplified postmodernist worldviews in metafictional textsÑThomas Pynchon, John Barth, Italo Calvino, Tom Robbins and, among the more explicitly SF authors, J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Samuel Delany, Ursula Le Guin, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Octavia Butler, Joanna Russ and many others. Sociologists of science like Malcolm Ashmore (1989) have acknowledged the generativity of Ônew literary formsÕ (Woolgar 1988: 94) in developing their own approaches to reflexivity, arguing that Ôtrue stories about the world, in order to be ÒtrueÓ, must be self-conscious. must acknowledge the story- telling processÕ (Ommundsen 1993: 19). Again, we should aspire to no less. In the short term, we at least need to treat standard textbooks, research reports and metafictional texts more equitably, recognising that each represents a significant cultural expression of human transactions with ÔrealÕ and imagined worlds and allowing each kind of text to mediate and transform interpretations of the other. In the longer term, these mutual transformations may produce a new kind of textÑforeshadowed by Donna HarawayÕs groundbreaking work in books like Primate Visions (1989) and Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (1991)Ñin which stories of scientific ÔfactÕ and science ÔfictionÕ are not polarised but reciprocally generative. References Barone, Thomas E. (1989) Ways of being at risk: the case of Billy Charles Barnett. Phi Delta Kappan 71: 147-51 Barone, Thomas E. (1992) Beyond theory and method: a case of critical storytelling. Theory into Practice 31 (2) 142-6 Brieschke, Patricia A. (1990) The administrator in fiction: using the novel to teach educational administration. Educational Administration Quarterly 26 (4) 376-93 Brieschke, Patricia A. (1992) Reparative praxis: rethinking the catastrophe that is social science. Theory into Practice 31 (2) 173-80 Cherryholmes, Cleo (1993) Reading research. Journal of Curriculum Studies 25 (1) 1-32 Dickens, Charles (1955) Hard Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press) (Original work published 1854) Gough, Noel (1991) Narrative and nature: unsustainable fictions in environmental education. Australian Journal of Environmental Education 7: 31-42 Gough, Noel (1993a) Laboratories in Fiction: Science Education and Popular Media (Geelong: Deakin University Press) Gough, Noel (1993b) Narrative inquiry and critical pragmatism: liberating research in environmental education. In Mrazek, Rick (Ed) Alternative Paradigms in Environmental Education Research. Monographs in Environmental Education and Environmental Studies Volume VIII (Troy, Ohio: North American Association for Environmental Education) 175-97 Gough, Noel (in press a) Environmental education, narrative complexity and postmodern science/fiction. International Journal of Science Education Gough, Noel (in press b) Imagining an erroneous order: understanding curriculum as phenomenological and deconstructed text. Journal of Curriculum Studies Gough, Noel (in press c) Neuromancing the stones: experience, intertextuality, and cyberpunk science fiction. Journal of Experiential Education Haraway, Donna J. (1989) Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge) Haraway, Donna J. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge) Harding, Sandra (1986) The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press) Jones, Alison (1989) The cultural production of classroom practice. British Journal of Sociology of Education 10 (1) 19-31. Also in Lather, Patti (1991) Feminist Research in Education: Within/Against (Geelong: Deakin University Press) 69-81 Jones, Alison (1992) Writing feminist educational research: am ÔIÕ in the text? In Middleton, Sue and Jones, Alison (1992) Women and Education in Aotearoa 2 (Wellington NZ: Bridget Williams Books Ltd) 18-32 Knoespel, Kenneth J. (1991) The emplotment of chaos: instability and narrative order. In N. Katherine Hayles (Ed) Chaos and Order: Complex Dynamics in Literature and Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 100-22 Lather, Patti (1990) Staying dumb?: Student resistance to liberatory curriculum. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Boston, USA, 16-20 April. In Lather, Patti (1991) Feminist Research in Education: Within/Against (Geelong: Deakin University Press) 83-112 Lather, Patti (1992) Critical frames in educational research: feminist and post-structural perspectives. Theory into Practice 31 (2) 87-99 Mailer, Norman (1968) Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History (New York: The New American Library) Oberg, Antoinette (1993) Personal communication (Victoria, British Columbia: University of Victoria) Ommundsen, Wenche (1993) Metafictions? Reflexivity in Contemporary Texts (Carlton: Melbourne University Press) Rowland, Gillie, Rowland, Stephen and Winter, Richard (1990) Writing fiction as inquiry into professional practice. Journal of Curriculum Studies 22 (3) 291-3 Steinbeck, John (1967) The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Viking Press) (Original work published 1939) Walker, Robert (1981) On the uses of fiction in educational researchÑ(and I donÕt mean Cyril Burt). In Smetherham, David (Ed) Practising Evaluation (Driffiel: Nafferton Books) 147-65 Waugh, Patricia (1984) Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction (London: Methuen) Willis, George and Schubert, William H. (Eds) (1991) Reflections from the Heart of Educational Inquiry: Understanding Curriculum and Teaching through the Arts (New York: SUNY Press) 1 In a footnote Walker (1981: 163) admits that works such as Truman CapoteÕs In Cold Blood and Tom WolfeÕs The Last American Hero elude categorization as research reports or Ôpure fictionÕ, and thus to some extent anticipates the blurring of journalistic and novelistic modes that Barone (1992: 146) sees as moving us Õbeyond genreÕ. 2 Each of LatherÕs four ÔtalesÕ is predicated on alternative readings of the amassed data. Alternative reading strategies are discussed by Cleo Cherryholmes (1993) in ÔReading researchÕ, which complements LatherÕs text by enacting alternative readings of a research report rather than alternative readings of the data it seeks to interpret.