Layering Analytic Lenses: Considerations for Assessing the Narrative Text in Music Education – A Commentary

Kaye Ferguson uses narrative inquiry to present the stories of two preservice music teachers. Her specific interest is in exploring how participants’ self-views and beliefs filtered their teaching and learning experiences and influenced action. According to Connelly&Clandinin (2006), story is the portal by which one’s experience of the world is interpreted and made personally meaningful (p. 477). Experience can be explored and presented as/in story, and, in that process, one gains perspective on the meanings of an individual’s lived experiences. Ferguson’s focus on accessing self-views encompasses “all beliefs and feelings a person holds about herself, including identity, the part of self that tends to be defined by society” (p. 2).