An Introduction to Typology and Features of Educational Narratives

Narration and storytelling are tied to the lives of all humans. It is as if every human being is a story who must be narrated in order to be understood. In the same vein, the world of education is also the world of stories and narratives. Narratives of successes and failures in teaching and learning, and stories of students, teachers, managers, and other education practitioners they've encountered in their career. Therefore, it can be said that much education knowledge is embedded in life experiences and stories. Accordingly, the purpose of the present study was to apply a document analysis approach based on objective examples to identify and classify the types of narratives in the field of education. The findings showed that narrative methods can be classified based on different criteria: In terms of interpreting experiences, three types of individual, collaborative, and dialogic; In terms of narrator type, two types of autobiography and biography; In terms of the source of the narrative, four types of daily, individual, group, and adaptive; in terms of writing style, two types of public and academic; In terms of the angle of view, three types of first person, second person and third person; and in terms of the foundation of the narrative, two types of reality-based and imagination-based. These divisions can be helpful to introduce people to a variety of educational narratives.