Core story creation: analysing narratives to construct stories for learning

Background: Educational research uses narrative enquiry to gain and interpret people’s experiences. Narrative analysis is used to organise and make sense of acquired narrative. ‘Core story creation’ is a way of managing raw data obtained from narrative interviews to construct stories for learning.

Aim: To explain how core story creation can be used to construct stories from raw narratives obtained by interviewing parents about their neonatal experiences and then use these stories to educate learners.

Discussion: Core story creation involves reconfiguration of raw narratives. Reconfiguration includes listening to and rereading transcribed narratives, identifying elements of ‘emplotment’ and reordering these to form a constructed story. Thematic analysis is then performed on the story to draw out learning themes informed by the participants.

Conclusion: Core story creation using emplotment is a strategy of narrative reconfiguration that produces stories which can be used to develop resources relating to person-centred education about the patient experience.

Implications for practice: Stories constructed from raw narratives in the context of constructivism can provide a medium or an ‘end product’ for use in learning resource development. This can then contribute to educating students or health professionals about patients’ experiences.