Using the framework of critical ethnography, one that offers an insider's view to understanding processes, I entered my own kindergarten classroom and tried to place my own storytelling pedagogy under critical scrutiny. I tried to find answers to such questions as: (1) what impact my storytelling praxis had on the identity of the children, (2) how my teacher belief about storytelling and literacy learning of young children informed my classroom praxis and (3) how the children responded to this praxis. This research was conducted over ten weeks in 1994 in a small English speaking school in a mid-sized city in central Canada. Forty-two children took part in the study; twenty-five were five years old and seventeen were four years old. Twenty-six of the children were English speaking. Sixteen children were from ethnically diverse backgrounds. Each week I told the children one story, taken from my annual "Fairy Tale and Nursery Rhyme" theme. I taperecorded these tellings and demonstrated the use of the taperecorder for the children. The taperecorder was then made available to the children and they were encouraged to go and tell their own stories into it. During this time I also collected field notes and kept a reflective journal. An analysis of the data revealed a storytelling praxis rife with problems. The themes of the teacher-told stories offered a very narrow Eurocentric world view. Most child storytellers were five years old and had strong English skills. Four year old children or children with weak English skills tended to stay away from the taperecorder. Finally, while acting as both a teacher and a researcher is a creative means of bringing the classroom teacher's voice into the literature, it proved to be full of tension. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/4211 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Creators | Stewart, Sandra Rae. |
| Contributors | Masny, D., |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 154 p. |
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