Storytelling in EFL primary education: Defining a sociocritical and participatory model with pre-service teachers

Abstract

This study explores the challenges faced by 25 future primary school teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) when designing a storytelling session aimed at promoting young learners’ linguistic competence—the norm in the practice of EFL storytelling—, while simultaneously activating their higher order thinking skills and raising their awareness of social justice issues. Data collection instruments included student reflective journals and recordings of the instructional sessions. The main difficulties the trainees encountered on developing this multi-faceted approach with the well-known fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood included designing tasks to successfully enhance the children's participation, encourage their critical thinking, and specifically target content related to social justice. The challenges reported in this study led to the definition of a comprehensible set of guidelines which teachers interested in conducting EFL storytelling from this expanded perspective might usefully employ with younger learners.