The workshop will support researchers, especially 2^nd and 3^rd year graduate students, in learning qualitative research techniques that are suitable for conducting equity, diversity, inclusion and respect (EDIR) work. The workshop would explore the following questions:
1) How does narrative differ from other methodologies that study experience?
2) What kinds of data collection designs and methods are commensurable with narrative?
3) How do researchers engage their positionality in doing narrative?

Narrative inquiry has been well-established as a research methodology for providing authentic understandings of experiences by displaying real-life events as a cohesive whole.¹ Specifically, counter-storytelling is a type of narrative inquiry that draws from critical race theory and is defined as sharing the stories of people whose experiences are often not centered by exposing, analyzing, and challenging Eurocentric narratives.² The field of chemical education has recently recognized the value of counter-storytelling in providing examples of student agency and rebuking deficit framing of historically minoritized students in pursuing STEM careers.³

In accordance, framing interviews as storytelling is methodologically different from doing traditional interviews because storytelling conversations are framed as relationship-building moments that generate data.⁴ Storytelling produces a dialogic relationship between the participant and researcher through listening and sharing, so researchers need to build trust with participants by engaging their positionality throughout the inquiry process. Researchers also have an answerability to participants and should address the following within their work: “Why this? Why me? Why now?” (pp.57)⁵. In answering these questions, educational research shifts to decolonizing approaches that mobilize scholarship towards praxis.

References
(1) Webster, L.; Mertova, P. Using Narrative Inquiry as a Research Method: An Introduction to Using Critical Event Narrative Analysis in Research on Learning and Teaching; Routledge, 2007.
(2) Solórzano, D. G.; Yosso, T. J. Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education Research. Qualitative Inquiry 2002, 8 (1), 23–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/107780040200800103.
(3) Wilson-Kennedy, Z. S.; Payton-Stewart, F.; Winfield, L. L. Toward Intentional Diversity, Equity, and Respect in Chemistry Research and Practice. J. Chem. Educ. 2020, 97 (8), 2041–2044. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00963.
(4) Moore, K. Exposing Hidden Relations: Storytelling, Pedagogy, and the Study of Policy. Journal of technical writing and communication 2013, 43 (1), 63–78.
(5) Patel, L. Decolonizing Educational Research: From Ownership to Answerability, 1st ed.; Routledge: New York : Routledge, 2015. | Series: Series in critical, 2015. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315658551.