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Book: Understanding and Interaction in Clinical and Educational Settings

Chapter: Process Narratives

DOI: 10.1558/equinox.32325

Blurb:

A brief overview of Part One.

Part One shows that understandings involve people developing brief chains of information, which express various types of relationships among linguistic terms, physical objects, images, and actions. It examines how those process narratives distill information and concepts into a memorable form. Process narratives are a nexus of individual or collaborative interpretation activities, information resources, and culturally shaped patterns of interac- tion. The category, ‘process narrative’, pertains to the processes of interpret- ing human interaction and environmental information resources that result in any type of understanding. Studying process narratives emphasizes the rela- tionships among the various types of interpretation activities and information resources that lead to understandings – during the initial production of the understandings and during their subsequent recall and application. Analysis of the development and use of process narratives exposes the social and indi- vidual interpretation activities that sustain beliefs and ideologies. It clari es aspects of understanding that have been considered in terms of categorical distinctions such as context and content, tacit knowledge, functional xed- ness, and oracular reasoning.

Chapter Contributors

  • Barry Saferstein ([email protected] - bsaferstein) 'California State University San Marcos'