In search of a theoretical basis for storytelling in education research: story as method

In this article, the author argues that storytelling is centrally important to education research. The proliferation of narrative methodologies, albeit significant and innovative in the evolution of qualitative studies in education, has, nonetheless, not been accompanied by a theoretical body that has captured the complexities – ethical and methodological – inherent in such work. Despite a presumed emancipatory inclination, one might reasonably argue that storytelling in education research has frequently produced reactionary and imperialistic accounts. Turning to some of the works of Hannah Arendt and Bertold Brecht, two theorists of great storytelling capability, the author considers how their methodological thinking might be productively imported. Finally, the author draws some lines between these methodological innovators and the kind of empirical research that would most clearly profit from their more politicized and theoretically engaged considerations of the art of storytelling.