Biographical-narrative conversation

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The biographical-narrative interviewing is a method that follows on from the empirical research process of the narrative interview . The method was developed by the German sociologist Fritz Schütze as part of a study on local political power relations around 1975 at Bielefeld University . These procedural principles are removed from the original scientific context and transferred, for example, to professional practice in adult education , career counseling and social work .

Narrative interview technique

The interview technique proposed by Fritz Schütze is based on findings from the sociology of language , linguistics , story theory , ethnography and folklore . At the center of his considerations is the central importance of the narrative in everyday communication and in empirical research processes. There are three ways of doing this:

  • Interview partners are asked to provide a comprehensive and detailed account of personal experiences in a given subject area. The people are not confronted with standardized questions.
  • In free telling about self-experienced events, subjective structures of meaning arise that would rather be closed to systematic questioning in an interview.
  • Stories also play a prominent role in everyday life. Because they serve the processing, accounting and evaluation of experiences; overarching contexts of action become visible; a subjective sense can be reconstructed.

Conceptions

The term biographical-narrative conversation goes back to independently created works by Gabriele Rosenthal and colleagues and Reinhard Völzke. Both approaches transfer the research method of the narrative interview to the practice of pedagogical , advisory and social work. What the concepts have in common is that the addressees of educational activities have the opportunity to reconstruct and present their own experiences narrative in a self-controlled form. Learners, those looking for advice and other clients are supported in finding their own interpretations of their experiences, checking existing evaluations, relativizing their self-image and adapting them to current circumstances. Narrative communication is a specific form of self-reflection .

Biographical-narrative conversation accompanies the autobiographical memory process in order to support the narrating person in becoming aware of their personal and social identity . At the same time, this type of conversation aims to increase the understanding of others by the person listening.

Conception according to Rosenthal

Gabriele Rosenthal's conception is closely based on the three-phase structure of the narrative interview technique according to Fritz Schütze:

  • At the beginning, the person to be advised is stimulated by input impulses to narrative exploration of a main biographical narrative. The narrator spreads his own life story in front of the listener in a self-directed form. The narrative process is promoted by a markedly cautious attitude on the part of the person listening who does not intervene in any way to influence the content presented, the completeness or consistency of the narrative.
  • In the second phase of the conversation, the person listening asks specific questions about topics or events that have already been mentioned in the main narrative. In this way, the narrator is asked to describe individual aspects of the life story in more detail.
  • In the third phase, the person listening specifically addresses those topics that have not yet been mentioned, but which, from the perspective of the person listening, could be of interest.

Because a narrative process guided in this way can take several hours, a full biographical-narrative conversation often consists of two to three sessions.

Concept according to Völzke

The second conception of the biographical-narrative interviewing comes from Reinhard Völzke, who refers to the corresponding preliminary work by Michael Schibilsky . This approach also follows on from the biographical-narrative interview that goes back to Fritz Schütze. However, it transfers the interview technique - more precisely than with the Rosenthal concept - to different educational settings in which there is sometimes only little time available. When using this technology, a distinction is made between the following current conditions:

  • Door-and-hinge situations,
  • Related to events and
  • decidedly narrative settings.

Participants in a further training seminar, clients of social counseling or other addressees of educational activities are guided by narrative-generating impulses to concretise the topic or event addressed in the current situation by telling a story they have experienced themselves. Central conversation techniques are:

  • Lowering the narrative threshold,
  • subsequent inquiries,
  • Withholding own reviews and
  • Avoid evaluative questions.

Biographical-narrative conversation is not understood as a conversation technique in the narrower sense. The concept is not realized by strictly following the rules of conversation and questioning techniques. Rather, in a fundamental attitude, the respective addressee receives a narrative space in the current interaction. Prerequisites for this are curiosity and an authentic interest in the narrated representations.

See also

literature

  • Gabriele Rosenthal: Experienced and told life story. Shape and structure of biographical self-descriptions. Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 1995, ISBN 3-593-35291-5
  • Gabriele Rosenthal, Michaela Köttig, Nicole Witte, Anne Blezinger: Biographical-narrative conversations with young people. Opportunities for understanding oneself and others. Leverkusen 2006
  • Fritz Schütze: For eliciting and analyzing narratives of thematically relevant stories in the context of sociological field research - presented in a project to research local power structures. In: Bielefeld Sociologists' Working Group: Communicative Social Research. Munich 1976, pp. 159-260
  • Fritz Schütze: Ethnography and social science methods of field research. A possible methodological orientation in the training and practice of social work? In: Norbert Groddeck, Michael Schumann: Modernization of social work through method development and reflection. Freiburg im Breisgau 1994, pp. 189-297.
  • Fritz Schütze: Curves of suffering as a research subject in interpretative sociology. In: Heinz-Hermann Krüger, Winfried Marotzki (Hrsg.): Educational Biography Research. Opladen 1995, pp. 116-157.
  • Reinhard Völzke: The method of the biographical conversation in social pedagogy. Series of publications by the Evangelical University of Applied Sciences Rhineland-Westphalia-Lippe, Bochum 1990, ISBN 3-92601312-5
  • Reinhard Völzke: Biographical-narrative advice in lifelong learning. In: Wiltrud Giesecke / Dieter Nittel (eds.): Handbook of educational advice on the lifespan , Weinheim Basel: Beltz Verlag, 2016, 457–467, ISBN 978-3-7799-3128-7
  • PM Wiedemann: Narrated reality. For the theory and evaluation of narrative interviews. Psychologie Verlag, Weinheim 1986

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gisela Jakob: The narrative interview in biography research. In: Barbara Friebertshäuser, Annedore Prengel (ed.): Handbook Qualitative Research Methods in Educational Science. Juventa, Weinheim / Munich 1997, pp. 445–458.
  2. ^ Gabriele Rosenthal: Biographical-narrative conversation. On the conditions of wholesome storytelling in a research and counseling context. In: Psychotherapie und Sozialwissenschaften, Issue 4/2002, pp. 204–227.
  3. ↑ Worksheet by Michaela Köttig and Reinhard Völzke (PDF; 77 kB)