Do this while you watch the grain pour from a truck into the hopper at a storage elevator, and while standing in a cloud of flour dust. This is grounded knowing. The second way of knowing, technical knowing, has to do with using charts, calculations, documents, and technology to guide a harvest. Technical knowledge is important for managing resources, among other things. It can link us rationally and strategically to the larger economy, but it is grounded knowing that links us personally to the natural phases of our habitat.
Paradigmatic thought arrives at explanations based on technical knowing.
Students' experiences in schools are mostly technical and paradigmatic. The narrative mode is the stories people tell about their grounded experiences, their interpretive, unfolding autobiographies. Local cultures, according to Bruner, can help people integrate their different ways of knowing, so they can function and find meaning in what they experience. Thus, the primary way to help people learn to make good decisions is through the collective wisdom, beliefs, and values of their community, or in other words, its culture. Qualities such as learning to plan, knowing how to cooperate, recognizing and applying accuracy and precision, developing a work ethic, and understanding change are the result of culturally focused experience and thinking.