Exploring composite narratives as a methodology to understand and share research findings in engineering education

This methods paper explores the development and utility of composite narratives in engineering education research. Composite narratives combine aspects of multiple interviews into a single narrative. Researchers in engineering education are increasingly beginning to use composite narratives to enable more nuanced understandings of the phenomenon we are studying while mitigating potential issues around participant confidentiality. Because composite narratives are a relatively new methodology in engineering education and higher education more broadly, more examples of how to construct and utilize composite narratives in both research and practice are needed. In this paper, we share how we created composite narratives from interviews we collected for our work to demonstrate how others can adapt this methodology to their research projects. Based on semi-structured critical incident interviews with seventeen engineering managers about their perspectives on adaptability, we developed seven composite narratives reflecting real-life workplace situations to which engineers must adapt. We present a detailed account of how we constructed one composite narrative to demonstrate the quality and trustworthiness of the methodology and assist in the replication of the methodology by other scholars. Further, we share how we modified and enhanced these narratives to connect research to practice and impact engineering students. This approach involved creating scenarios and probing questions from the composite narratives for sharing the research findings in academic and industrial educational settings. Lastly, we discuss the benefits and limitations of this methodology, highlighting the research findings brought into focus using this methodology and comparing and contrasting these results with those that emerged using an inductive-deductive thematic analysis approach to the data also taken in this research project.