EP, JOYAS DE PLÁSTICO

The  use  of  narrative  inquiry  provided  a  natural  extension  to  my  quest  for   understanding  the  lived  experiences  of  students  with  a  disability  during  their   practice  education  experience.    The  emphasis  on  social  construction  as  an   “artifact  of  communal  interchange”  (Gergen,1985:266)  led  me  to  identify   some  tangible  links  between  social  constructionism  and  narrative  inquiry:    

•   social  constructionism  has  strong  links  with  narrative  inquiry  in  that  it   concerns  “stories  lived  and  told”  (Clandinin  and  Connelly,  2000:20);;    

•   the  stories  are  constructed  between  researcher  and  research  participant   (Clandinin  and  Connelly,  2000);;  

•   thematic  analysis  was  used  as  a  tool  to  seek  wider  patterns  in  data   collected  from  the  research  participants.      

I  constructed  a  series  of  composite  narratives  from  each  of  the  four  groups  of   research  participants  (presented  in  Chapter  5),  the  purpose  of  which  was  to   communicate  patterns  emerging  from  the  findings  to  enable  their  use  as  an   educational  tool  to  enhance  the  student  experience,  and  to  aid  the  reflective   processes  of  key  persons  involved  in  practice  education.    The  idea  of  

composite  narratives  was  adapted  from  the  work  of  Blickem  and  

Priyadharshini  (2007)  who  used  patient  narratives  as  a  learning  tool  for  the   education  of  healthcare  staff  in  practice.    They  explain  that  these  narratives   were  “a  composite  of  many  stories  and  therefore,  were  neither  fully  fact  nor   fully  fiction  but  situated  in  the  realm  of  plausibility”  (2007:624).    These   allowed  a  distance  from  particular  respondents  (preserving  anonymity)  and   also  allowed  readers  to  see  at-­a-­glance,  inter-­related  issues  in  their  

complexity  as  crafted  within  the  brief  narratives.    The  use  of  these  patient   narratives  was  primarily  as  a  pedagogical  tool  and  enabled  healthcare  staff   to  confront  the  (plausible)  experiences  of  patients  and  their  role  as  not  just  

professionals,  but  as  a  member  of  an  inter-­professional  team  that  needed  to   work  together  (Blickem  and  Priyadharshini,  2007).  

The  narratives  in  my  study  include  both  minor  (participant  experiences)  and   major  (themes  that  cut  across  several  experiences)  elements  to  enable  a   deeper  understanding  of  the  experiences  of  students  with  a  disability  on   placement,  in  addition  to  drawing  upon  anecdotal  evidence  from  my  role  as   Visiting  Tutor  and  Practice  Education  Coordinator.    The  actual  construction   of  the  composite  narratives,  in  other  words,  the  process,  the  ‘how  I  did  it’  is   perhaps  best  explained  by  Frank  (2000:481)  in  her  research:  “None  of  the   characters  have  an  objective  existence.    They  are  composites  and  

constructions  –  bits  and  pieces  of  myself,  of  the  people  that  I  have  known  in   these  settings…”.    This  resonates  with  how  I  composed  my  narratives,  based   on  what  I  heard  directly  or  indirectly  via  others  (including  students,  practice   educators,  visiting  tutors  and  clinical  learning  environment  leads)  involved  in   practice  education  and  also  based  on  wider  reading  in  relation  to  practice   education.    Therefore  they  were  not  drawn  from  any  one  participant  and  are   not  verbatim  quotes,  but  adapted  by  myself  to  sit  in  this  composite  narrative.       The  actual  process  of  writing  the  narratives  was  personally  cathartic  and   creative  and  facilitated  a  means  of  familiarisation  and  new  and  deeper   understandings  of  the  interview  data  as  well.    I  also  wanted  to  capture  the   ‘drama’  of  practice  education,  the  impact  of  what  it  means  to  be  a  student   with  a  disability  and  facing  potential  challenges  during  the  practice  education   experience.      

Appendix  Q  provides  examples  of  narratives  written  to  establish  issues   raised  by  each  of  the  four  stakeholder  groups.    Appendix  R  is  an  example  of   a  briefer,  composite  narrative  worked  up  to  specifically  illustrate  difficulties   with  disclosure.    It  lends  itself  for  use  as  a  pedagogical  tool  to  open  up  a   conversation  about  disclosure  amongst  both  students  and  staff.  

An  important  point  emphasised  by  Clandinin  and  Connelly  (2000:124)  is  that   narrative  inquiry  involves  “re-­search”,  in  other  words,  repeated  searching  to   enable  an  in-­depth  return  to  the  research  question  as  opposed  to  trying  to  

solve  a  problem.    This  is  what  I  experienced  in  relation  to  writing  the   narratives  as  it  enabled  me  to  return  to  the  field  notes  time  and  time  again   and  in  doing  so,  to  repeatedly  process  the  research  participant’s  voiced   experience.  This  not  only  enabled  familiarity  with  the  material  but  also  served   to  help  me  understand  the  stories  about  lived  experiences  of  students  with  a   disability  on  placement.    Wertz  et  al.  (2011:2)  assert  that:  

The  composite  first  person  narrative  is  a  reflective  story.    It  draws  a   composite  picture  of  the  phenomenon  emerging  from  the  informants.     The  composite  is  not  a  simple  re-­telling.    It  is  interpretation  by  the   researcher  in  several  important  ways:  through  her  knowledge  of  the   literature  regarding  the  phenomenon  under  enquiry,  through  listening   and  hearing  the  stories  told  by  the  informants,  and  through  her  own   reflexivity  during  the  process.        

Furthermore,  Wertz  et  al.  (2011)  highlight  the  first  person,  in  other  words,  the   use  of  the  word  ‘I’  to  facilitate  the  phenomenon  as  a  contextual  entity.    

Brinkmann  and  Kvale  (2015)  appear  to  furnish  a  similar  definition  of   composite  narrative  to  that  of  Wertz  et  al.  (2011)  except  that  they  use  the   term  “narrative  analysis”.    Narrative  analysis,  according  to  Brinkmann  and   Kvale  (2015:254),  is  defined  thus:    

Narrative  analysis  focuses  on  the  stories  told  during  an  interview  and   works  out  their  structures  and  their  plots.    If  no  stories  are  told  

spontaneously,  a  coherent  narrative  may  be  constructed  from  the   many  episodes  spread  throughout  an  interview.    The  analysis  may   also  be  a  reconstruction  of  the  many  tales  told  by  the  different   subjects  into  a  ‘typical’  narrative  as  a  richer,  more  condensed  and   coherent  story  than  the  scattered  stories  of  single  interviews.        

An  additional  point  of  note  in  relation  to  the  use  of  narratives  (Brinkmann  and   Kvale,  2015)  is  the  need  to  remain  within  the  vernacular  and  this  is  what  I   attempted  to  do;;  for  example,  trying  to  capture  the  way  that  a  student  with  a   disability  might  phrase  a  sentence  such  as  my  educator  was  really  horrible.     As  well,  narratives  are  powerful  in  that  they  add  a  temporal  and  social   dimension  with  regard  to  context-­setting  according  to  Brinkmann  and  Kvale   (2015).    This  then  captures  for  the  reader  a  sense  of  the  lived  experience  of   students  with  a  disability  during  their  time  on  placement.    Indeed,  Blickem   and  Priyadharshini  (2007)  comment  on  the  use  of  the  first  person  narrative  

as  eliciting  an  affective  as  opposed  to  a  cognitive  response  which  afforded   deeper  insights  into  patient  experiences  of  being  in  hospital.    What  is  also   useful  is  the  authors’  claim  of  the  patient  narratives  in  enabling  the  

healthcare  professionals  to  recognise  the  interdependent  nature  of  their   ‘team’  practice  which  had  not  been  foregrounded  as  strongly  before.      

It  seems  appropriate  to  conclude  my  paradigmatic  beliefs  thus  far  with  the   following  quote  by  Gergen  (1985:272-­3)  which  illustrates  the  importance  of   being  aware  that  no  matter  how  rigorous  my  chosen  methodology,  any  quest   for  the  absolute  truth  to  answer  my  research  question  will  never  be  fully   realised.    

By  the  same  token,  social  constructionism  offers  no  "truth  through   method."  In  large  degree  the  sciences  have  been  enchanted  by  the   myth  that  the  assiduous  application  of  rigorous  method  will  yield   sound  fact  as  if  empirical  methodology  were  some  form  of  meat   grinder  from  which  truth  could  be  turned  out  like  so  many  sausages.      

My  approach  is  not  of  a  metaphorical  meat-­grinder  but  rather  one  of  

attempting  to  understand  -­  through  interviews,  based  on  narrative  inquiry,  the   worldview  of  students  with  a  disability  in  the  context  of  practice  education.