Paley’s approach to storytelling and story-acting: research and practice

Abstract

This chapter serves as an anchor for the book by presenting a focused examination of one of Vivian Gussin Paley’s advocated practices in the early childhood classroom: teachers scribing children’s stories (storytelling) and children enacting these later on the same day (story acting). We begin by tracing the approach back to its origins in the 1970s, where as an early childhood teacher in Chicago, Paley was seeking to offer routes into early education that appealed to children from diverse social and ethnic backgrounds, and with different learning needs. We discuss the affinity of her story-based practice with sociocultural theory, and consider key themes that have emerged from research evidence regarding the contribution of storytelling and story acting to young children’s narrative competence, cognitive and oral language development, and their preparedness for school. We also summarise research findings regarding how children share story elements reworked from popular culture and story books, how the approach can promote a cohesive and shared classroom culture, and how meanings are jointly constructed during storytelling and story acting through embodied actions as well as through spoken and written language. We then present an overview of the different routes that have brought teachers in the USA and England to Paley’s storytelling and story-acting curriculum, and the types of training and professional development they have been offered. Lastly, we provide background information on the diverse studies that are referred to across the chapters in this book, including their methodological and ethical stance towards the respectful conduct of research with young children.