Strength, Sharing and Service: Restorying and the legitimation of research texts

This article uses data from a longitudinal qualitative research project exploring the experiences of elementary teachers as they both learnt and taught science in the transition from a pre‐service to an in‐service situation. Interviews, journal entries and observations were the original data sources from which case studies were derived by narrative analysis. The material used in this article concerns a single participant. The purpose is to examine a narrative device, restorying, and explore its usefulness as a way of enhancing legitimation in narrative inquiry. Three sets of criteria for legitimation of qualitative studies are suggested; a set that requires research to be conducted in ways that provide evidence of thoroughness and fairness; a set that allows the reader to experience vicariously the world of the participants; and a set concerned with the ways in which education is enhanced for researcher, participants and reader. The authors suggest that a single text cannot fully satisfy all of these criteria sets but that by using multiple tellings or restorying, the legitimation of findings in qualitative research can be enhanced.