Abstract
The tertiary education environment in Aotearoa New Zealand is changing. Students coming into the Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics (ITP) sector come with increasingly complex lives which affects the relationship between them and academic staff members. This article explores the way narrative inquiry was used to analyse and present the stories and narratives of academic staff members providing pastoral care to students with a particular emphasis on the concept of participant voice. The literature around the use of narrative inquiry, as a methodological approach in education, acknowledges challenges about the presentation of an authentic voice of research participants. This article demonstrates five different ways to present narrative and participant voice authentically contributing to our understanding of the presentation of voice in academic research. The findings presented here demonstrate how participant voice can be communicated and heard in a unique way. Storytelling is an opportunity to share information that is unique to narrative inquiry, so it is important that the participant voice is heard. It is hoped that this article will encourage more early career researchers to consider narrative inquiry as a methodology and /or methodological approach.
Keywords: narrative inquiry; participant voice; narrative; educational research
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