A narrative inquiry of a child's musical movement: Implication to early childhood education

Connelly & Clandinin (1988) define narrative as "the making meaning from personal experience via a process of reflection in which storytelling is the key element...." (p.16). In the same (1988) work, they go on to say that narrative is "....the study of how humans make meaning of experience by endlessly telling and retelling stories about themselves that both refigure the past and create purpose in the future" (p.24). According to Connelly and Clandinin (1994), narrative is both phenomenon (lived stories) and method (story telling). The paper is a narrative study of my daughter, Chin Chin as related to her nonverbal story telling experiences of musical movement. The main focus is on her musical movement in pretend play through a continuous period of from January 21, 2001 (Chin Chin aged 23 months) to June 12, 2006 (Chin Chin aged 49 months). The aims of this paper are three-folded. First, it displays Chin Chin's lived stories of musical movement with chronicles, which are the narrative story line that connect different sequences of events in Chin Chin's lives. Secondly, in adopting Clandinin and Connelly's (2000) three-dimensional narrative inquiry space: temporality, spatiality, personal and social interaction, I discuss and analyze the development of Chin Chin's musical movement. Finally, based on Chin Chin's music-movement experiences, I draw possible implications to parents, early childhood practitioners, educators and researchers.