Understanding Chinese Families' Cultural Identities and Their Children's Mathematics Learning through a Narrative Approach

Abstract

We make sense of experiences of our own and others through different forms of stories - movies, TV dramas, documentaries, books, songs, as well as stories that are told and re-told within our families and cultures. Our experiences are fragmented and happen in different places over the course of our lives. By putting stories together in a plot, we give meanings to our past. In the field of research, narrative approach has been used in conducting studies in different disciplines. It allows readers to understand the experiences of the participants in the context in which the experiences happen. It also addresses the change of experiences over a period of time. There are concerns that since our memories fade, the stories we are told by research participants cannot be trusted. By sharing the process of data collection and analysis in a research study that examined participants' lived experiences, this article aims to demonstrates how the issue of validity can be addressed. It also discusses how researcher may impact on the analysis of the data and as such his or her position needs to be fore-grounded.