Why Narrative? Why Now?

Abstract

How or whether we make good on the promise of narrative inquiry depends upon what we understand that promise to be. This essay raises many vexing questions about the nature of narrative inquiry and its significance for music education. Distinctions between narrative and story are advanced. The distinctions between meta-narrative and small or local narrative are explored. Narrative's potential complicity in both legitimation and emancipation are probed. Doubts are expressed about the compatibility between music education's methodological obsessions and an undertaking as open-ended as narrative inquiry. The essay concludes that narrative inquiry's contributions to professional knowledge in music education must not just be asserted, but demonstrated, and that the questions posed in this essay's title should be addressed explicitly by each narrative inquirer.