Storied Truths

This work adopts the stance that contemporary scholarship must reflect the prevailing paradigm of knowing as participatory—as situated and distributed, and reflecting an interpretivist epistemology.

Indeed, in countering positivist and post-positivist approaches to research, the thesis aligns with current debates regarding scientific claims and evidence (e.g., Eisenhart & Towne, 2003). Our central claim is that the construction and interpretation of scientific scholarship is conducted by both the researcher and the audience; it reflects the epistemologies, experiences, and intentions of both parties. It is with the goal of advocating for a new form of scholarship, one that is both rigorous and flexible, having aspects of narrative and expository writing, that is both an art and science, and that challenges notions of author and audience that we make use of the storied truth as an important scholarly tool.

A storied truth leverages purposively selected instances and multiple modes of discourse (e.g., videos, pictures, expositions, games, quotes, etc.) to establish an invitation, in response to which readers can engage theoretical claims along with contextual particulars that reflexively illuminate a class of phenomenon. The presentation both serves as a contextual instantiation of a theoretical conjecture and, by scaffolding discussion among peers around the example, invites verification or refutation of the conjecture. It is in the “working” of the example that the design affords the likelihood of a particular resonance, illuminating the designer-intended conjectures, while simultaneously allowing for further discovery. And it is in this way that we regard worked examples as offering a scholarship not of exposition but of invitation.