Taking the middle ground in narrative research: how I adopted a Vygotskian lens in a narrative inquiry into teacher assessment literacy

In their seminal book on narrative inquiry, Clandinin and Connelly (2000) posit that the point of departure in narrative inquiry should be lived experience rather than a grand theory as is the case in formalistic inquiry. Simultaneously, Clandinin and Connelly (2000) emphasise the need to generate what the target audience of a study considers meaningful and socially significant findings. In this presentation, I argue that it is possible and probably advisable for novice narrative inquirers to take the middle ground: to combine the principles of narrative inquiry with a compatible grand theory so that the participants’ lived experience remains privileged, while the reader is assured of the study’s “meaning and social significance” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 130). To support this argument, I will present some preliminary findings from my PhD project — a narrative inquiry guided by Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (1978).