Understanding stories as maps: more than pretty pictures

I am in a rewarding, but fairly labour intensive part of my PhD research at the moment. I'm looking at narratives from leaders of early childhood services, and thinking about their connection to the social contexts for their creation and use. The project involves people as active participants, so we create and think about these issues together to some extent. I'm at the 'analysis / interpretation' stage (or at least the first stages of it) which has involved putting all the narratives into categories: references to social interaction, talking about myself (what I call 'first order' narrative) and reflection (what I've called 'second order narrative').

Within the first and second order narrative, I've used NVivo to create about thirty 'themes' from the narratives configured by each participant. This has been carefully and painstakingly done, as I try to remain true to what people have said and my understanding of their meanings. I've got a fairly good idea of this, as we've worked together over four extended sessions each so far, and circled around a set of subjects to do with professional identity.

My interest all along has been to reflect the theory and methodology in how I analyse / interpret. Part of my methodology is to work with visual elements (in this case, cartoons I have created) to interpret and to facilitate further shared thinking. When it came to understanding how these narratives were structured - which would form the foundation of further analysis - I wanted to focus on relationships between the 'parts' and the 'parts and the whole'. This is prompted in part by my use of Ricoeur's approach to hermeneutic analysis, which I've talked about previously. In this particular case, doing this has required patient work, but has also been exciting and rewarding. This week, I've created 'semantic structure maps' (sounds fancy, I know) which illustrate the connections between themes in each narrative. As connections are drawn from each theme to all other related themes, a 'web' of relationships is shown. Looking at it, I'm already thinking about many different ways this 'map' will be useful when I take it back to participants to think about together. For example, we can think about those aspects of their story that seem to be most 'interconnected' or we can pick out particular relationships and discuss or annotate these.

I've just written a research journal note to myself about the next stage (which came to me whilst in the bath, as all good PhD reflections do). This has to do with forming the next set of 'connections': between aspects of participants' narratives and references to social interaction. The reason I'm doing this - as I briefly noted above - is because after understanding the narratives 'in themselves' I want to ask questions about their 'social' origins and applications. This again links to Ricoeur and his mimetic arc.

I've realised that my analysis, as with the methodology generally, has been about establishing patterns and connections, then seeking to understand them. When I have produced these 'semantic maps' I've been challenged to reflect upon their status as analytic / interpretive tools. I'm very aware the basis on which I have 'drawn lines' between one narrative theme and another has been based on intimate knowledge of these texts, and the intentions of the participants. As I've done this, I did experience doubt as I thought about whether I should have created the themes based on the frequency of their mention, or drawn connectors between them based upon some kind of 'scientific' measure. As I have reflected, I remain clear that what I am doing is not some 'objective' analysis in the traditional sense, but the very act of analysis is in itself more interpretation. I am 'seeing' relationships, some I have chosen not to draw because although on the face of it, two terms could be connected but for that person they were not. Although the process of analysis can lead to 'cutting up' narratives into tiny units, I am aware that I don't want to dissolve narratives into simply 'words' which can be made to say anything. So, the process of creating semantic maps has been intensive and has involved careful reflection on the intended meaning of the participant. Still, the maps will still be my reading (or 'configuration') and they will return to participants for verification and further work together.

Any insight generated by production of these 'semantic maps' is only partial. As I have produced them, I have realised that their status needs thinking about because they are also a sort of heuristic tool. Rather than being 'answers' to what the narratives are about (even though the connections do reflect things about the semantic structure of the narratives) they are tools to ask questions with participants, to reflect on patterns and move from a basic structural understanding to a deeper hermeneutic understanding (back to Ricoeur's mimetic arc again). Reflecting has helped me articulate why I am doing things in this way. No one has yet accused me of simply producing 'pretty pictures', but if they do, I am clear about their value as a tool in the hermeneutic arc.

Why practitioners need a better model of reflective practice, and what I'm doing about it.

Working with the detail of a project like a PhD forces you to look at things in detail, which is fair enough. From time to time, though, I find any project requires me to step back from that and ask 'so what'. Not enough people ask 'so what?', in my opinion. A career of community work and work with children keeps me focused on issues of relevance and application.

In my own case, I'm engrossed in the detail of asking questions about how narratives of professional identity relate to the contexts for their 'telling'. In other words, I'm looking at how experiences turn into stories, and how stories are used in action. I'm working with a small sample of leaders of Early Childhood services in the North East of England, thinking about these issues over several extended conversations, involving talk and work with cartoon images. The question applies to this study: so what? Is this another self indulgent PhD?

Asking why on earth this study is important is not a question I can, or should, dodge. Firstly, because I am working with participants in this study, I need to present something that makes sense and is worthwhile. Secondly, because I know the research will have a 'life' post-doc (as I work in a University as an academic), I anticipate a professional as well as an academic audience for different outputs of my research. I've begun to explain my reasoning to supervisors, academic panels, participants and colleagues, but it's good to clarify it here. Who knows, perhaps it will get you thinking about why you are doing what you are doing?

For my own professional audience, those working with young children and their families,  the idea of narrative is at one both familiar - we talk to, and with people, people have things to say; and not so obvious, in that too often the 'talk' is incidental to processes or activities. If pressed, many of us say we value people, and that involves talking to and with people. We also realise, sadly, that we can 'learn' a form of practice that involves telling and not listening, ticking boxes and not understanding. We don't particularly like falling into that sort of practice, but workloads, policy initiatives and management busyness don't help us avoid the pitfall. I know when I've been in that mode, I'm less aware of myself and others, what is important and why. That's key to effective practice.

Thinking about who we are and how we work when we are in this kind of mode seems like navel gazing and unproductive. Sometimes, though, we see that how we are and how we talk is related to what we achieve with others. That's what I'm pointing my own research at, the idea, somewhere down the line, that we can get some insight into how we come to talk and think about ourselves. Do these things matter? I would argue that they do. Do narratives pop out 'of thin air'? I would argue that they do not, but we still don't know enough about that.

In my previous field of work in Children's Services much was (and continues to be) made of the idea of 'reflective practice', but it seems to me that when it comes to thinking about reflective practice, it remains a bit of a 'black box', or something we just don't understand. At best, we work with models and ideas of reflective practice, influenced by Schon (1987, 1991) Argyris (1978, 1993) and others which, whilst good, have been over simplified and fossilised. At any rate, these ideas certainly have not translated themselves into the praxis of many Early Childhood practitioners. I think that this needs to change, because I believe in the power of practice that is purposeful, reflective and confident. I would argue that ultimately, that sort of practice is better for children and their families, which is what matters most. The is the larger context for my study, but ultimately is something that will be addressed most directly post-doc, once I get the 'nuts and bolts' looked at in my PhD.

In my own study, I have realised that, just like good practice with children, some creative  theoretical work is needed. I've looked at what the hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur and the pragmatics of GH Mead, Dewey, James et al have to offer as I look at relationships between action and meaning making (in narratives). The first thing that hit me was that, on one level, there are complex and interesting relationships between action and narratives not currently captured by our 'over simplification' of reflective practice in much of the early childhood sector. I'm not satisfied to leave the mechanisms of meaning making under-explored, because I feel we may miss out on some new ways to think about praxis. Praxis, put very simply, addresses the interplay between thinking and doing. This transcends the idea of 'thinking' and 'doing' being separate, and moves towards the idea of deliberative and moral (in the broadest sense) action. This is about engagement with the situation at hand, not habit or procedure. I love this idea, and remain convinced that unpacking and 'making real' the practice of praxis (if we can say that!) has much more to give to those working with young children, which is a profession    where women (and it is mainly women) are not encouraged to think and act in ways that could be called 'wise'. Unfortunately, the current UK discussion of qualifications and skills in early childhood (Tickell, 2012) can leave some practitioners thinking that the 'answer' to being professional is solely about accumulating knowledge, instead of developing praxis or practical wisdom. An alternative, which helps practitioners see how thinking and action are related is needed. As I develop my own research, I feel sure that one key to insight involves understanding the mechanisms of narration, with a view of narrative as something that reflects, reshapes and guides action.