Making Sense of the Stories of Experience: Methodology for Research and Teaching

In order to understand the work experience of information professionals, one must ask questions of meaning. This paper explores one way of learning to do qualitative research by exploring the meaning of school media specialists' work through narrative analysis of their stories of experience. The phenomenological method of collecting and reading others' and one's own stories of experience offers one way to go beyond learning the standard set of skills and values that characterize the profession. To make sense of one's work suggests beginning a stance of reflective practice.