2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This full-length, theory/methods paper contributes to theoretical, methodological, and methods-based conversations occurring within the engineering education research (EER) community about narrative research. During the past 40 years, narrative approaches to qualitative research have evolved and migrated from their origins in the humanities, establishing themselves within the social sciences. More recently, narrative research has garnered interest and acceptance within the field of engineering education as an approach for (a) understanding engineering student and faculty experience and (b) critiquing structures that constrain and obstruct these experiences.

While all narrative research “…revolves around an interest in life experiences as narrated by those that live them” [1], how stories and storytelling— the essence of narrative research— “show up” within the EER literature varies; these variations manifest in the ways and extent to which EER research designs espouse and implement narrative-compatible worldviews, theories, processes, and concepts. Thus, this theory/methods paper is presented to expand and deepen engagement of the EER community with the foundations of narrative research in six sections: 1) the narrative turn; 2) “narrative” definitions; 3) narrative worldviews and theory; 4) narrative methodologies; 5) narrative methods; and 6) key takeaways about narrative research in engineering education. In doing so, we add to EER’s richer understandings and implementation of the “still flourishing …still evolving” [1] philosophical commitments, theoretical underpinnings, and methods for “making and handling” [4] narrative data that cohere with broader approaches for understanding human experience and advancing personal and social change through narrative.