Narrative inquiry in language teaching and learning research

Review of Narrative Inquiry in Language Teaching and Learning Research, G. Barkhuizen, P. Benson, and A. Chik, Routledge 2014. ISBN: 978 0 415 50934 3Almost 50 years have passed since Labov and Waletsky (1967) published groundbreaking reflections on using narratives of personal experience as a method of gathering data documenting African-American Vernacular English in South Harlem. Since then different types of narratives (storytelling, conversational narrative, small stories, etc.), with different research purposes and from various different approaches have become of interest to social scientists in fields such as sociology, psychology, discursive studies, and more recently, teacher educators and ELT researchers. Some understand this popularity as the ‘narrative turn’, from which narrative has been legitimized as a valid mode of conceptualizing and writing research, as well as an umbrella term for a variety of ways of conducting research