Storytelling in Early Childhood : Enriching language, literacy and classroom culture

In accountability cultures, early childhood educators often find it hard to make space for children’s own stories. Storytelling in Early Childhood explores the multiple dimensions of storytelling and story acting and shows how they enrich language and literacy learning, to contribute to an inclusive classroom culture that embraces young children’s diverse interests and learning needs. Foregrounding the power of children’s own stories in the early years and primary classroom, it provides evidence that storytelling and story acting, a pedagogic approach first developed by Paley, affords rich opportunities to foster learning within a play-based and language rich curriculum.

Storytelling in Early Childhood is a captivating book which explores the multiple dimensions of storytelling and story acting and shows how they enrich language and literacy learning in the early years. Foregrounding the power of children’s own stories in the early and primary years, it provides evidence that storytelling and story acting, a pedagogic approach first developed by Vivian Gussin Paley, affords rich opportunities to foster learning within a play-based and language-rich curriculum. The book explores a number of themes and topics, including:

• the role of imaginary play and its dynamic relationship to narrative;
• how socially situated symbolic actions enrich the emotional, cognitive and social development of children;
• how the interrelated practices of storytelling and dramatisation enhance language and literacy learning, and contribute to an inclusive classroom culture;
• the challenges practitioners face in aligning their understanding of child literacy and learning with a narrow, mandated curriculum which focuses on measurable outcomes.

Driven by an international approach and based on new empirical studies, this volume further advances the field, offering new theoretical and practical analyses of storytelling and story acting from complementary disciplinary perspectives.

This book is a potent and engaging read for anyone intrigued by Paley’s storytelling and story acting curriculum, as well as those practitioners and students with a vested interest in early years literacy and language learning.

With contributions from Vivian Gussin Paley, Patricia ‘Patsy‘ Cooper, Dorothy Faulkner, Natalia Kucirkova, Gillian Dowley McNamee and Ageliki Nicolopoulou.