PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Narrative understanding: Developing a theoretical context for understanding how children make meaning in classroom settings (original) (raw)
Laying the foundations: Narrative and early learning
2016
In order to understand the developmental and educational significance of storytelling and story acting we locate this within the body of wider research on narrative. Nearly half a century ago, Moffett (1968:121) claimed that ‘young children must, for a long time, make narrative do for all’; from an early age children use narrative as a way of thinking, to construct stories and explanations. Through imaginary play and storytelling children seek to understand and make sense of their world. These significant forms of symbolic activity make a sustained impact upon children’s social, emotional and language development, and influence their identity formation (see Engel, 1999, 2005; Fox, 1993; McCabe and Bliss, 2003). By considering the nature and role of narrative, its relationship to pretend play and to creativity, and its potential to influence and support children’s early learning and literacy, this chapter seeks to lay the foundations of the book. Narrative is considered in terms of i...
Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 2019
In this contribution titled, "Narrative and Meaning: Exploring the Unexplored-How Context, Recontextualization, and Repetition Can Enlighten and Inform Living, Learning, and Leading" (drawing upon work and research from a range of fields including literary analysis, education, psychology, and business), I will offer operational definitions paired with examples from experience and practice with the aim of exploring how the stories of an individual and collective mind can be recontextualized to create different thinking, behaviors, and outcomes. Through the examples, I intend to explore how an initial understanding of how the mind works can be shaped by the experiential understanding in informing narrative. I will apply the frame of narrative to explore personal and professional experiences over time and how (even when perhaps not apparent or explicitly stated) narrative was a powerful and driving force for change. This arguably unorthodox approach is intended to invite and encourage a multi-disciplinary discussion of narrative and meaning as it relates to learning, change, and growth (and the human condition).
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.
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.