PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Narrative understanding: Developing a theoretical context for understanding how children make meaning in classroom settings (original) (raw)

Understanding Narratives and Narrative Understanding

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2009

Understanding narratives requires an apprecia-tion of the distinct understanding that narratives supply of the events they are about. Storytelling might not be present in all cultures and at all times, but it is widespread. Stories are told in conver-sations, in myths, in dances, in ...

Accessing knowledge through narrative context

2008

In this paper we discuss how narrative may contribute to create meaningful learning contexts. Starting from a socio-constructivist and situated learning perspective, we acknowledge the crucial role of context in accessing knowledge. Then we point out the potential of narrative in education and discuss the positive role it can play in the creation of meaningful learning contexts. To this end, we focus on different examples of narrative contexts within technology-enhanced learning environments, drawn from the literature. We analyze what kind of contexts raise from different ways to set up narrative activities. Our study points out that narrative can be a powerful tool for the creation of a variety of contexts suitable for different learning situations, by stimulating learners’ direct involvement and offering a concrete starting point for reflection.

Narrative in Early Learning: Transitioning from Pre-School to Kindergarten

Engaging Imagination and Developing Creativity in Education (Second Edition)

Children’s experience and perception of narrative changes as they move into the formal learning environment of school. When children are very young, their experience of story is socially constructed and based in a multimodality that develops their imaginative, cognitive, affective, and physical capabilities through orality, imagery, interactivity, and performance. Stories create an encompassing environment that provides context for their actions and their involvement with the world around them. As children get older, and begin their formal education, the adult view that stories are structured literary entities is superimposed on their early narrative experience. This paper presents the study The Dynamic of Young Children’s Emerging Narrative Process. The study observed young children in a preschool and in a kindergarten setting with two goals in mind: first, to identify the characteristics of children’s early text narrative encounters in a contemporary setting (discussed in a separate paper), and second to identify if a change in approach to teaching narrative occurred between preschool and kindergarten (discussed here). The study revealed that a pronounced change occurred: in preschool story was used as an encompassing learning paradigm throughout the day’s activities, in kindergarten story was used predominantly to teach literary structure within the Language Arts program. The study shows that as children move into formal schooling, stories are removed as a fundamental tool from their language of learning.

Classroom literacies: young children's explorations in meaning making in the age of the literacy hour

Literacy (formerly Reading), 1999

In this article I explore contrasting approaches to literacy and learning in Key Stage One classrooms. In particular I question whether the approach to writing composition in the NLS Framework for Teaching is consistent with what we know about children's story telling and writing in the early years. Children are powerful thinkers who constantly strive to make meaningful and playful engagements with their social and cultural worlds, of which texts are an important part. Through composing and writing stories in school the children in this study are often exploring aspects of their identities, having fun in entering into adult and fantasy worlds, and working with their friends to create texts which place them in powerful roles.

Supporting the Narrative Development of Young Children

Early Childhood Education Journal, 2006

This arlicic presents the developmental continuum of children's storytelling skills and provides examples at each of five levels: labeling, listing, eonnccling. sequencing and narrating. The authors connect these developing narrative skills to eommunieation, literacy and eogiiition. Strategies to facilitate development from one level to another are described.

Narrative and educative process: a reflection on possible intersections

2007

This paper contrasts concepts of education and narrative, taking into account a personal perspective, stressing the similarities between both, through the analysis of principles that can be argued as fundamentals of both education and narrative, which are labelled here as ‘intersections’, then the intersections are analysed in contrast with educational research. This essay intends to present one possible answer to the proposed question about how an understanding of narrative can be regarded as an educative process; answer that takes into account mainly stated personal understandings of the question.

Nested Narratives: Enabling students to make sense of their learning

This article describes the development of a research method used to investigate how students make sense of their own learning in Foundation Degrees taught both online and on campus. This method uses 'nested narratives' to capture the students' own voice (both literally and metaphorically), as they make sense of their learning experience and strategies, within the gestalt of their own stories. The main aim of the research is to provide rich empirical descriptions of what students regard as important as they become practitioners in their professional field. The process of story telling is itself also a learning process.