Narrative inquiry and relational ethics: negotiating the lived experiences of international school teachers in China

This paper is a reflective account of using narrative inquiry and relational ethics as part of doctoral research that explored the lived experiences and identity construction of international school teachers in Shanghai, China. Specifically, it illustrates how narrative inquiry informed the whole research process by focusing on three aspects of the research process: data collection, data transcription, and data analysis. Excerpts from interviews and email correspondence with the participants are drawn on in order to illustrate how the interpretation of the interview data was negotiated through a process of dialogic member-checking. They also reveal moments where the juxtaposition of my interpretation of the data with the participants' words functioned as a form of reflexivity which bolstered ethical bonds between the researcher and the participants.