Exploring Technology Frames through Interview Narratives

As information technology innovation becomes increasingly complex and as information technologies diffuse into new professions and institutional contexts, researchers are looking to project participants and organizational members to understand how their interpretations of technology influence change processes and outcomes. Technology frames of reference (TFR) is a well-established theoretic framework used to explore how various groups interpret technology change in organizations. TFR analysis has been primarily technology-focused. Narrative and story research, on the other hand, focuses on the narrator's personal views of an experience; stories are necessarily told from the storyteller’s point of view. We propose integrating the analysis of narratives with TFRs to paint a richer picture of how individuals make sense of and experience information technology in their professional lives, and in this way, to improve our understanding of sensemaking in the technology innovation process. We illustrate this analytic approach with a research interview narrative of a middle school teacher discussing the introduction of IT into the classroom.