Narrativa y educación: indagar la experiencia escolar a través de los relatos

Abstract

Narrative is one of the characteristic ways of constructing reality in as much as it expresses, represents and puts into order the dynamic experience of human action. Applied to research on the school experience, it helps reveal how pupils interpret certain events or situations experienced at school. We will expound in this article the main perspectives from which narrative is understood within the field of social sciences: (a) As material for research, it is conceived as an experience expressed in a narrative anecdote, and primary resource for the analysis of the school context; (b) As a form of thought, it is a cognitive process through which people express and assess their experience; (c) As a research approach, it constitutes a way of constructing, exploring or analyzing individual and collective experiences. In short, though rarely used within the field of education, narrative in the form of anecdote is a technique that is suitable when inferring the beliefs, desires, values or attitudes that students hold regarding their school environment.