Rethinking Debates in Narrative Methods: Narrative Orthodoxy and Research Challenges with Children with Intellectual Disability

Abstract

Undertaking narrative research with children with intellectual disability is a practical, ethical and methodological challenge. Rather than the traditional focus on how this challenge can be overcome, this paper takes up an alternative position by focusing on the relationship between disability and the wider narrative research environment. The focused commentary on the literature provided interjects into narrative methods debates by questioning what this challenge teaches us about the taken-for-granted tenets of the narrative approach. The commentary draws out broad themes from existing literature and is declared from the outset as operating from the theoretical field of critical disability studies. Specifically, the review takes up Fiona Kumari Campbell's work on ableism, requiring that analysis and focus on amending problems that disability draws attention to does not remain with children with disability. Rather, a refocus towards implementing change within broader ableist practices, in this case within narrative research orthodoxy, is obligatory.

Exploring Narrative Competence of Persons with Severe Intellectual Disabilities: Insights from Complementary Inclusive Analytic Frameworks

“…Structural and linguistic skills are of course vitally important, but so too are collaborative, poetic, affective, and embodied narrative strategies. In particular, when we are looking at children and adults with severe intellectual and communication impairments, the use of assessments that emphasise cognitive organisational skills and the referential function of narratives disadvantage such individuals as potential tellers (Flynn 2019;Grove & Harwood 2022).…”

“…The implication is that these individuals cannot effectively tell stories, whether personal or imagined. Flynn (2019) discusses in-depth the exclusion and marginalisation of individuals who communicate non-conventionally or pre-verbally, recommending that narrative inquiry be framed more inclusively and that attention be paid to power relations between those eliciting the narrative and the informant. She hypothesises that some of the features traditionally said to characterise participants with intellectual disabilities (suggestibility and acquiescence) may be an artefact of discourse styles.…”

“…As Flynn (2019) points out, we need to challenge normative and ableist assumptions in the field of narrative inquiry, which is enriched when we broaden our criteria of who may or may not be considered storytellers. The choice of frameworks and tools is critical.…”

“…Structural analyses are common in investigations of narrative skills for persons with intellectual disabilities, that it is useful to consider their application with participants who present us with methodological challenges (Flynn 2019). A structural approach can illuminate which aspects of a story are accessible to which participants, as well as how the story is put together.…”

‘Obuntu Bulamu’ – Development and Testing of an Indigenous Intervention for Disability Inclusion in Uganda

“…Participatory methodologies that include children in the research process have emerged over the past decades (Goodley 2013;James & Christensen 2000: Richards & Clark 2018. Researchers have argued for a combination of traditional research methods used with adults -such as participant observation and (activity-based) interviews, and techniques considered to be more suitable for use with children (e.g., drawing, photographs, co-narration, and activity worksheets) (Eisen et al 2019;Punch 2002;Stafford 2017) -and to re-think the use of the narrative approach with children with intellectual disabilities (Flynn 2019;Stafford 2017).…”