The psychosocial benefits of oral storytelling in school: developing identity and empathy through narrative

The oral re-telling of traditional tales, modelled by a storyteller and taught to children in school, can be understood as ‘non-instrumental’ practice in speaking and listening that emphasises oral language over the reading and writing of stories. While oral storytelling has significant benefits to children’s education and development, it is under-utilised within Primary Education in the UK. This interview and library-based study explores participant perceptions of oral storytelling in relation to its psychosocial effects and benefits. In addition, observation of an oral storytelling initiative provides a research context through which such perceptions are understood. The findings highlight the benefits of oral storytelling to children in relation to a complex of processes tied to the opportunities afforded by oral storytelling for self-expression, identification with story characters, empathic understanding of self and others and bi-directional communication. It is suggested that the oral retelling of pre-existing stories offers children a parsimonious yet psycho-socially complex form of Speaking and Listening practice which is as rare within the classroom as it is native to human thought and interaction. It is upon the basis of the importance of talk to learning and development that its use within education needs to be viewed, to allow more opportunities for oral language practice that supports the psychosocial development of young people in school to be encouraged and actively pursued.     

Oral Storytelling,Speaking and Listening and the Hegemony of Literacy: Non-Instrumental Language Use and Transactional Talk in the Primary Classroom

The oral re-telling of traditional tales, modelled by a storyteller and taught to children in school, can be understood as ‘non-instrumental’ practice in speaking and listening that emphasises oral language over the reading and writing of stories. While oral storytelling has significant benefits to children’s education and development, it is under-utilised within Primary Education in the UK. This interview and library-based study explores participant perceptions of oral storytelling and the barriers to the utilisation of such non-instrumental practice in school. In addition, observation of an oral storytelling initiative provides a research context through which such perceptions are understood. The findings suggest that speaking and listening is implicitly devalued as a result of the elevation of instrumental literacy-based practice in the primary curriculum. In addition, enquiry into the specific effects of engaging with orality as a precursor to literacy development is lacking. It is suggested that while New Literacy Studies has enhanced our understanding of the interrelationship between the written and spoken word, it is less helpful when considering language as a ‘continuum of spontaneity’. It is concluded that spoken language that is explicitly unattached to literacy-based outcomes should be strongly encouraged in school. In addition, it is important to understand on an empirical basis whether the attachment of a written outcome affects the way that spoken language practice is engaged with in the classroom.     

Storytelling as dialogue: how teachers construct professional knowledge

This study shows how a group of English language lecturers use storytelling as a form of professional dialogue. The aim of the study is to highlight the dialogic role of storytelling in supporting the construction of lecturers' professional knowledge and not to identify lecturers' professional knowledge. In a professional development project, 12 lecturers created digital stories about their experiences of professional development. These stories were shared with colleagues who then responded with their own digital stories. A narrative framework was used to analyse stories for the types of connections lecturers made between stories. Five dialogic processes were identified: connecting, echoing, developing, questioning and constructing. Excerpts of stories are used to demonstrate how lecturers construct professional knowledge through storytelling. The study concludes by outlining the potential and limitations of storytelling as an approach to professional development and proposes further research into the dialogic capacity of storytelling in a professional development context.     

Faculty perceptions of common challenges encountered by novice doctoral writers

Although learning to write for publication is an important outcome of doctoral education, it has received surprisingly little scholarly attention. Within a socialization and supervisor pedagogy framework, this study uses narratives of faculty who regularly write with their doctoral students for publication to expose challenges students commonly encounter in the writing process. Common challenges include international students' ‘writing problem’, misconstruing the nature of disciplinary writing and not realizing that ‘public’ is part of publication.     

Leveraging reading-writing connections through three transformative reading lenses

ABSTRACT

In surveys and semi-structured interviews, Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) discussed the role of reading in their first-year composition (FYC) courses infused with ‘writing about writing’ and ‘teaching for transfer’ perspectives. Three transformative reading lenses played a pivotal role in instructors’ pedagogies – deconstructing genres, situating texts in discourse communities, and reading like a writer – that each embody a paramount threshold concept in Writing Studies: writing is a social and rhetorical activity. GTAs’ responses indicate that these transformative reading lenses facilitate students’ ability to make reading-writing connections. When students engage texts through these lenses, the act of reading becomes a tool for shaping students’ current and future writing development.     

Stories of Policing: The Role of Storytelling in Police Students’ Sensemaking of Early Work-Based Experiences

Storytelling has been shown to play a key role in transferring work experience from more experienced towards novices in a number of vocational educational practices, however previous studies have not to the same extent dealt with the role of students’ own storytelling practices for sensemaking of work experience. This study set out to examine police students’ storytelling of their first occupational experiences from a sensemaking perspective, with an analysis drawing on the concepts of enactment, selection, and retention. The study is based on participant observations of field training follow up sessions’ in the context of police education. Findings indicated that student storytelling of work experience tended to be geared towards action, extremeness and the telling of ‘war stories’. Furthermore, these type of stories functioned to enable student identification, self-enhancement and emotion management. These findings contribute to our current understanding of how students engage in sensemaking of work-based experiences and in extension how knowledge integration and learning from work placements can be structured pedagogically.     

Pirates and poachers: Fan fiction and the conventions of reading and writing

This article explores what teachers and students can learn about contemporary story‐telling from a study of fan fiction – that is, stories created by readers and viewers out of the canonical material of previously published fictions. Drawing on the example of Pirates of the Caribbean, it investigates ways in which fan fiction writers develop codes and conventions to govern themselves. For example, online litmus tests establish when a writer is self‐indulgently writing ‘Mary Sue’ characters into a story; the self‐styled Protectors of the Plot Continuum patrol the fictional limits of an imagined world to make sure that canonical information is not violated by fan fiction writers. This article makes use of such examples to investigate how quality control in fan fiction is codified, and to explore what teachers can learn from such enterprises about contemporary writing, reading and viewing. It compares these possibilities with issues of online literacy outlined by Henry Jenkins under three headings: the participation gap, the transparency problem, and the ethics challenge.     

Windows into Children’s Thinking: A Guide to Storytelling and Dramatization

Telling and dramatizing stories is an increasingly popular addition to the preschool curriculum, largely due to the attention this activity has received through the writings of Vivian Paley (Bad guys don’t have birthdays: fantasy play at four. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1988; The boy who would be a helicopter: the uses of storytelling in the kindergarten. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990; A child’s work: the importance of fantasy play. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2004). While the writings of Paley and others (Cooper, When stories come to school: telling, writing, and performing stories in the early childhood classroom. Teachers & Writers Collaborative, New York, 1993; Engel 1999) focus on the social and cognitive outcomes children experience as a result of storytelling, less has been written about the process of writing and dramatizing stories with young children. This article discusses procedures and considerations that enhance storytelling with preschool children, including effective prompts for encouraging children’s creativity, potential trouble spots such as aggression in stories, and ways that storytelling can enhance home-school relationships.     

Doctoral ‘orphans’: nurturing and supporting the success of postgraduates who have lost their supervisors

Much research into doctoral student-supervisor relations focuses on developing positive interactions. For many students, however, the research experience can be troubled by breakdowns in communication and even the loss of the supervisor(s), turning the student into a doctoral ‘orphan’ and impacting on their academic identity and ability and confidence in producing a sound doctoral-level contribution to knowledge. Our work with a range of UK- and internationally-based doctoral students looks specifically at reasons for supervisor loss and/or absence and the students' experience of being doctoral ‘orphans’ in terms of identity, confidence and progress. In focusing on those who achieve successful completion, it suggests the need for institutional and community support and highlights the development of effective strategies leading to ownership, empowerment and emotional resilience.     

‘Untold’ doctoral stories: can we move beyond cultural narratives of neglect?

This article examines the stories of 24 social sciences doctoral students in three universities, one in Canada and two in the UK, who experienced challenging roads to completion. While their stories confirm earlier findings, they also provide insight into how students' agency and personal networks of relationships may be critical, both as resources and constraints. We argue that these ‘untold stories’ of student agency coupled with supervisor narratives of students ‘not measuring up’ can contribute to a culture of institutional neglect. Pedagogies emphasizing an ethic of care and relational rather than regulatory practices are essential if these conditions are to change.     

Not writing,and giving ‘zero-f**ks’ about it: queer(y)ing doctoral ‘failure’

This article proposes that a queer reading of failure might offer opportunities to re-think the affective-political practice of doctoral writing. It examines data from one case in Aotearoa New Zealand to illustrate how a doctoral student negotiates ‘failure’ in relation to their writing practice and identity. While higher education researchers have tended to interpret failure as something to avoid, or learn from in the pursuit of normative success, queer research offers us new pathways into analysis. In this article, I argue that we can recognize ‘writing failures’ as possible modes of being and becoming doctoral. Despite being frequently associated with affective practices of guilt, shame, and disappointment, failure might also open onto alternative feelings such as relief, joy, and satisfaction. Ultimately, the article contends that queer concepts might assist higher education researchers to interrogate normative framings of failure, and to glimpse alternative possibilities for understanding ‘success’.     

Experimenting with Visual Storytelling in Students' Portfolios: Narratives of Visual Pedagogy for Pre‐Service Teacher Education

This article interprets the repercussions of visual storytelling for art education and arts‐based narrative research and, particularly, it approaches visual storytelling as a critical tool for pre‐service teacher education. After reinterpreting storytelling from the perspective of visual critical pedagogy, I will narratively reconstruct the use of visual storytelling in three learning stories taking the form of students' portfolios. As a visual narrative researcher, I will examine the tactics for writing and reading that these students have developed in creating visual stories: the first narrative analyses the role of art during the reconstruction of the learning process by incorporating autobiography and reflexivity (Tanit's portfolio); the second narrative reflects on deconstruction and intertextuality in a multimedia portfolio, which mainly interrelates opera and cinema (Eulàlia's portfolio); and the third narrative introduces virtual storytelling and connects self‐awareness/meta‐awareness with multi‐literacy in narrative learning (Sonia's portfolios). This article also views improvisations, attempts, drafts and interactions in the process of writing and reading portfolios as part of visual experimentation to fabricate learning stories, in order to analyse the opportunities that visual storytelling offers for visual narrative pedagogy.     

Writing Workshops in Teacher Education: Making a space for feeling and diversity

Telling and writing personal stories is a powerful means of fostering teachers' professional growth. However, little attention has been paid to the professional and personal growth of teacher educators/researchers who engage with students and research participants in personal storytelling and autobiographical writing. This article explores the contribution of writing to the development of personal narratives of practice among teacher educators/researchers, and considers the potential of the writing workshop as a space where diverse voices can find expression. Drawing on phenomenological and narrative methods, we examine work with both pre-service and experienced teachers, describing the ways that space was created for a 'dialogue within difference' where participants could express themselves fully. The main questions addressed are: how does personal writing enable teacher educators to understand the experience of students; how do we as teacher educators/researchers learn about ourselves through the mirror of our students' writing and our response to it; and how do the institutional contexts of university and college affect the processes by which stories are told, reflected on and re-storied?     

Look! Here’s a New Idea! Using Information Technology to Facilitate the Use of Expository Text

Talking electronic stories are now an accepted part of many infant children’s early reading experiences and research has suggested that they have benefits in terms of reading development. Linda Pagett here describes the impact on her class of children of the non-fiction equivalent of these talking stories – the simple talking topic ‘books’ produced by Sherston Software. Her favourable report suggests that simple books like these have much more potential than might at first be realised.     

Mothers’ mental-state discourse with preschoolers during storybook reading and wordless storybook telling

Recent research has shown that parents, through conversations during shared book reading, play a pivotal role in promoting children's social cognition, particularly their theory of mind (ToM). This study compared mothers’ mental-state discourse during two kinds of interactions with their children – storybook reading and wordless storybook telling. In both contexts, mothers were familiar with the books’ texts but relied to a different extent on the texts during the mother–child interactions. Participants were 72 Israeli mothers and their 4- to 6-year-old children, from an upper–middle socioeconomic level. Mothers were instructed to read or tell two stories as they normally would. Two books were used, similar in several major characteristics – author, illustrator, characters, story length, and false belief as a central theme. Main findings revealed that mothers referred to mental states in both situations, but during storytelling, mothers elaborated more, referring to characters’ cognitive states and false beliefs, than during storybook reading. Findings suggest that storytelling encourages rich discussions on important sociocognitive elements. Educators and parents should be aware of the contribution of storybook reading and storybook telling to mental-state talk and of the unique potential of storybook telling to encourage conversation on ToM-related topics.     

Exploring teachers' perceptions of children's imaginative writing at home

This study explores an area of writing that has been largely neglected – children’s imaginative writing at home. In an educational climate dominated by the standards agenda and top‐down directive discourses, this study draws inspiration from children who are creating opportunities for writing themselves and are developing agency through their writing at home. The positive approach to reading advocated in Margaret Clark’s (1976) seminal work on ‘young fluent readers’ has been very influential. Rather than reporting what children are unable to do, Clark explored the early experiences and home setting of competent pre‐school readers, posing the question: what can they teach us? Taking this lead, one of the premises of this study is that we should similarly seek to understand the experiences of young competent writers so that we can learn more about children who choose to write of their own volition outside of school. This paper presents the findings of the preliminary phase of an ongoing doctoral study. Drawing on questionnaire data, it specifically focuses upon Year 5 and 6 teachers’ views of children’s imaginative home writing, exploring problems of identification and teachers’ perceptions of their pupils as imaginative writers at home.     

Storytelling as a democratic approach to data collection: interviewing children about reading

Background Before the 1990s, an individual or medical model dominated educational research methodology with respect to younger children: the subjects of the research were usually considered untrustworthy sources of information. A subsequent shift towards an ecological model has focused on the child's perspective: however, Lewis and Lindsay have described the development of methods for conducting research with children as slow.

Purpose This paper examines how storytelling can be used as a method of collecting authentic and revealing research data from children. The method is suggested as a valuable way in which to gain insights into children's discourse, and is used in this paper in relation to children's discourse about reading.

Sample, design and methods The storytelling method was initially trialled in one school with 36 children aged between 5 and 11 years. The storytelling interview was then used in case studies over a period of a year in three schools, with a total of 88 7- and 8-year-old children. During the interviews, children were asked to tell a story entitled ‘The child who didn't like reading’. Systematic content analysis was undertaken to identify emergent cultural norms and models in the stories. Information on the children's reading practices, and their observations on reading, was also collected for the purposes of triangulation.

Results The children's storytelling gave access to their cultural models of reading. It was found that the stories demonstrated sufficient triangulation with the other data about the children's reading practices to support a sociocultural production of the children's discourse.

Conclusions Storytelling can provide a useful and credible method of collecting research data from children. It may be especially useful with poor readers as there are no literacy demands, and in this respect, affords socially inclusive research.     

Folklore epistemology: how does traditional folklore contribute to children’s thinking and concept development?

This research utilised a ‘stimulated recall’ methodology [Calderhead, J. 1981. “Stimulated Recall: A Method for Research on Teaching.” British Journal of Educational Psychology 51: 211–217] to explore the potential of African folklore, specifically Ghanaian folk stories in the development of children’s reflective thinking about social life. The research was based on Ghanaian folklore for children, which is popularly known as ‘By the Fireside Stories’, encapsulated traditionally as Anansesem or Spider stories among the Akan of Ghana. Data were collected through storytelling to a group of children and inviting them to recall their concurrent thinking during and after the storytelling. The children’s cognitive recall processes were stimulated by questions and story character dramatisation recorded on a digital video recorder and played back to the children. Findings showed major contributions to children’s learning and development related to imagination, concept formation and thinking, and beyond the self in social relationship. This paper draws attention to how traditional oral storytelling can be an important part of early childhood education to develop children’s reflective thinking about social life.     

Professional Learning and the Unfinalizable: English Educators Writing and Telling Stories Together

Standards-based education reforms and intensified accountability regimes are now a feature of most countries’ agendas to improve the quality of their teaching workforces. One of the direct consequences of these reforms is a requirement that teachers demonstrate their ongoing participation in forms of professional development or professional learning throughout their careers. Along with this, there has been a narrowing of what is acknowledged by standards-based accountability regimes as discipline-based professional knowledge and ‘valuable’ professional development. This essay is a dialogic, reflexive account of a professional learning and writing project for English teachers and teacher educators in Australia, begun in 2013, called the stella2.0 project. The project builds on the groundbreaking work of the STELLA project in Australia from the turn of the century, and some other models of teacher writing projects across the world. Drawing on Cavarero, we critically scrutinize writing and storytelling in the dialogic professional community of the stella2.0 project, and in the process ‘speak back’ to standards-based reform policies that undermine English educators’ agency and professionalism.     

Learning a practice through practise: presenting knowledge in doctoral spoken presentations

Learning to ‘become doctor’ requires PhD candidates to undertake progressive public displays – material and social – of knowledge. Knowledge in doctoral pedagogy is primarily realised textually, with speaking and writing remaining as the primary assessment rubrics of progress and of the qualification. Participating textually begins, in a public sense, with the Confirmation of Candidature presentation/paper and culminates in a Viva Voce/dissertation. Drawing on linguistic ethnographic observations and analyses, this paper uses practice-based perspectives to examine a doctoral candidate practising to present knowledge publicly in a university research centre. The paper focuses on sociomaterial shifts in the trial run and final delivery of the two presentations examining how the candidate is initiated into new actions in response to these changes. Findings reveal how the candidate engages with collective understandings of the practice of presenting knowledge provided by feedback from her doctoral ‘friends’. Learning a practice through practise highlights the importance of participating as learning and learning as participating. This is particularly so in a time of change for doctoral pedagogy, when honing a practice collectively is argued to be advantageous in a localised setting that recognises and fosters the benefits of participation.