Il pattern che connette: epistemologia della ricerca narrativa in educazione degli adulti

The chapter presents the epistemological presuppositions and some limits of using narrative methods in adult education research, within a systemic and constructivist perspective. Research is understood itself as a learning process, and a process of communication, where knowledge and identity are built in the meeting of subjects and their frameworks. Personal engagement of the participants - both researchers and subjects of learning - is thematized here using the notion of a pact and mutual crossing of sights, entailed in all narrative settings. There is an embodied and enacted epistemology in research practices, so the researcher is invited to take responsibility for the practices and the theories he/she refers to, as well as to choose an explicit position toward the relationship he/she intends to create with the participants. In the end, a collaborative method of research, using stories in a dialogical frame, is presented and analyzed, as a way out of the shortcomings and paradoxes of narrative research.