3: The Tale Wagging the Dog: Narrative and Neopragmatism in Teacher Education and Research

The question considered by a panel of education scholars at a symposium during a recent annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association was: “Should a novel count as a dissertation in education?” That question, perhaps better than any other, illustrates the ascendant role of the narrative in teacher education and research.

Two presenters debated the question and their positions were questioned by a panel of discussants. One of the presenters, Howard Gardner, rejected the proposition, saying: “I don't understand how a novel can possibly ever be accepted as research. Essentially, in a novel you can say what you want, and you are judged by how effectively you say it without any particular regard to the truth value. And it seems to me that the essence of research is effort …to find out as carefully as you can what's happening and then to report it accurately” (emphasis added; qtd. in Donmoyer, et al., 1996, p. 403). Elliot Eisner, favoring the proposition, argued that “the issue here has to do with the form in which one has learned to write, the virtues of that form for addressing the particular problem that one wants to address, and the kind of understanding that one wants to foster” (emphasis added; qtd. in Donmoyer, et al., 1996, p. 407).