A narrative inquiry into fishermen’s experience-based knowledge

Abstract

The context of this article is a science teacher educator’s interest in experience-based learning. This led her to an exploration of the experience-based knowledge of five elderly professional fishermen in the small fishing community of Mausund in Norway. The research question guiding the article is: How can professional fishermen’s experience-based knowledge be explored through narrative inquiry? As a conclusion, embodied culture or a lived community of practice with a clear social dimension is highlighted as a way of becoming a fisherman that the use of narrative inquiry methodology helps to become articulated and thereby visible as knowledge. This embodied culture and lived community of practice with a clear social dimension has not only shaped the fishermen’s knowledge about fishing, but also their attitude to narration, to storytelling. They are brought up in a culture in which talking and telling is neither expected nor encouraged, which influences the interviews. The fishermen are not unwilling to tell, but they are not used to thinking about their own knowledge as fishermen, as knowledge. Little by little, through the interviews, their experience-based knowledge is narrated and articulated. In other words, the narrative inquiry methodology opens for embodied culture being articulated, visible as knowledge, and thereby possible to discuss as valuable within science education.