Core Story Creation: Analysing narratives to construct stories for learning

Abstract
Background; Educational research uses narrative inquiry as an approach to gain and interpret people’s experiences. An integral component of this research approach is narrative analysis to organise and make sense of acquired narrative in an organised and meaningful way. Core story creation is a method to manage raw data obtained from narrative interviews to construct stories for learning.
Aim: To articulate how core story creation can be used to construct stories from raw narratives obtained by interviewing parents about their neonatal experience, in order to use them to educate learners.
Discussion: Core story creation involves reconfiguration of raw narratives illustrated by interviews with a sample of parents of preterm neonates. The process includes listening to and re-reading transcribed narratives, identifying elements of emplotment and re-ordering these to form a constructed story. Thematic analysis is then performed on the story to draw out learning themes informed by the parent participants.
Conclusion: Core story creation using emplotment principles is a strategy of narrative reconfiguration that produces storied constructs. These can be used for resource development and person-centred education about the patient or parent’s experience.
Implications for practice: Stories constructed from raw narratives in the context of underpinning constructivism can provide a medium or an ‘end-product’ to use for learning resource development. This can then contribute to the education of students and/or health professionals in relation to learning about, and understanding their patients’ experiences through narrative.
Key words: Core story creation Emplotment Narrative analysis