https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794119851336 Qualitative Research 1–12 © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1468794119851336 journals.sagepub.com/home/qrj Q R The necessity of a relational ethics alongside Noddings’ ethics of care in narrative inquiry Vera Caine University of Alberta, Canada Simmee Chung Concordia University of Edmonton, Canada Pamela Steeves University of Alberta, Canada D. Jean Clandinin University of Alberta, Canada Abstract Amidst a winter snow storm we drove slowly and carefully to our research site. Leaving much earlier than usual we wanted to be there to greet the indigenous youth who we had come to know in the process of inquiring into their ongoing identity making. We came to know them over several months in a junior high school arts club and had developed relationships with them that were marked by care. In attending to care, Noddings (1984) offered us a way to think about ethics. Yet Noddings did not explicitly turn her attention to an ethics for research, rather her focus was on an ethics of care in moral education. Drawing on our work alongside indigenous youth we show how these four components of an ethics of care shaped our narrative inquiry and show how a relational ethics builds on, and extends, an ethics of care in narrative inquiry. Keywords ethics, ethics of care, narrative inquiry, Noddings, qualitative, relational ethics Corresponding author: Vera Caine, Professor and CIHR Investigator, Faculty of Nursing, University of Alberta, ECHA 5-021, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 1C9, Canada. Email: vera.caine@ualberta.ca 851336QRJ 0 0 10.1177/1468794119851336Qualitative ResearchCaine et al. research-article 2019 Standard Article