Narrative Competence Research Articles

SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL READINESS OF HEALTHCARE PERSONNEL FOR VOLUNTEERING

The article highlights the key socio-psychological factors of formation of healthcare personnel readiness for volunteering. The following features are emphasized on among the basic attributes of volunteering: altruistic, creative, innovative nature of activity implemented in conditions of uncertainty, volatility, various subjective and objective contradictions; diverse activities at various levels of management hierarchy; the explicit prognostic nature of the tasks to be performed; the defining role of the communicative function and the ability to work as part of a team; permanent psychological tension related to considerable responsibility for the decisions made. In this article the readiness is considered from the competence approach perspective. The personal competencies i.e., motivational (individual pursuit of self-actualization, focus on self-realization, the desire to meet the demands of society, orientation to success); intellectual (cognitive and metacognitive); communicative (general speech competence, dialogic competence, interactive competence, narrative competence); personal (self-determination, autonomy, responsibility, independence, managerial qualities, etc.) are the fundamental structural and substantive components of the socio-psychological readiness of healthcare personnel for volunteering. A diagnostic procedure was developed and the socio-psychological readiness for volunteering of healthcare personnel and healthcare system managers, who have certain experience of participating in the volunteer movement, was empirically investigated.

THE RECORD OF USING PICTURE SERIES TO DEVELOP STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILLS

Based on the observations results, the learners had difficulty in exploring their ideas. They took more time and could only write some sentences. Another barrying that students faced was that they could not write well-organized paragraphs. The students also often had difficulty in learning grammar, especially English tenses. Lack of vocabulary mastery was also the cause of writing difficulties. They stated that writing in English was difficult and complicated. That’s why the researchers used classroom action research to apply picture serias as media. It was conducted by two cycles.The subjects were seventeen students of tenth grade science student at Banyuwangi. To get the data, the researchers used observation, interview, and test. The research result could be stated that using the picture series improved the learners’ writing narrative text competence. They could improve their writing gradually from the first cycle to the second one. The picture series that implemented significantly improved their skill in English writing.

Pity as pain: Narrative Medicine and Melville's "Bartleby"

Narrative Medicine is an interdisciplinary concept that joins literary texts and theory on the one hand with medical education on the other. It suggests that specific skills can be practiced by reflecting about literature and the arts, which represent existential human experiences. These skills are narrative competence, tolerance for ambiguity, changing one's perspective, empathy, and self-care. This article describes aNarrative Medicine course and focuses on one unit in which Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener: AStory of Wall Street" was discussed. In combining participant observation and aclose reading of the short story, the article describes how students responded to the text and how "Bartleby" speaks to central topics in medical practice, such as pain management and the significance (and limits) of pity and empathy. Melville's text represents pain and empathy in complex and ambiguous ways. In presenting acompassionate narrator who ultimately fails to empathize with the pain he perceives in his employee, the story challenges readers to reflect on the complexities of dealing with the suffering of others and invites adiscussion about professionalism, personal values, and expectations. Literary texts in amedical classroom can be aproductive resource to practice and critically discuss competences identified in the National Competency-Based Learning Objective Catalogue for Medicine2.0.

Exploring Narrative Competence of Persons with Severe Intellectual Disabilities: Insights from Complementary Inclusive Analytic Frameworks

Narrating personal experiences can be challenging for persons with intellectual disabilities. However, they can, and do, participate as narrators in co-constructed stories. Our choice of narrative frameworks will influence how their skills are perceived and developed. When narrators have severe intellectual disabilities, a preoccupation with linear structure is likely to disadvantage them, and approaches designed for monologues, that focus on verbal linguistic elements, emphasise impairments rather than competence. Personal narratives told in everyday interactions have received little attention in this context. Two complementary perspectives, event structure and ethnopoetics, were used to analyse a small story shared between tenants and staff, highlighting different aspects of both narrative competence and conversational scaffolding. This analysis demonstrates that individuals with severe intellectual disabilities can make effective narrative contributions, using a range of patterned and evaluative strategies when stories are co-constructed within appropriately scaffolded interactions.

Understanding the value of art prompts in an online narrative medicine workshop: an exploratory-descriptive focus group study

Narrative medicine is an interdisciplinary field that complements and expands on conventional healthcare training by supporting narrative competence skills and creativity derived from the arts and humanities domains to address...

The contribution of mother‐father‐child interactions to children's emotion narratives

AbstractParents' sensitivity during interactions with their children has been associated with children's emotion narratives elicited using story completion tasks, but almost all of this research focused on mothers and was based on a dyadic, parent‐child focus. The goal of the present study was to expand this research by studying triadic, mother‐father‐child interactions and their associations with children's narratives. Seventy‐one families with their 4.5‐year‐old children were observed in the Lausanne Trilogue Play (LTP) procedure to assess Family Cooperation, and children were administered the MacArthur Story‐Stem Battery (MSSB) to assess Coherence, Parental Representations, and Engagement with the task. Regression analyses indicated that controlling for children's Narrative Competence and Effortful Control, children who were part of more cooperative family interactions produced narratives that were more coherent, and they were more engaged during the task. No associations were found with children's representations of parents. Directions for future studies as well as clinical implications are discussed.

Short report. Narrative competence in Italian preschool children with sex chromosome trisomies

BackgroundThe neuropsychological profile of children with sex chromosome trisomies [SCTs] is frequently characterised by delays and impairments in language development. However, no studies so far have specifically investigated their narrative competence. AimsThe aim of the study was to analyse the oral narrative competence of preschool children with SCTs due to the importance of this skill for language development and learning abilities. Methods and proceduresParticipants were 34 Italian children with SCTs one-to-one matched by age and sex to typically developing [TD] children. A storytelling task, the Narrative Competence Task, was used to assess the macrostructural and microstructural features of the children's narratives. Outcomes and resultsChildren with SCTs showed significantly lower scores than TD peers in all the narrative indices considered, except for mental state lexicon and story length in words. Conclusions and implicationsThe problems found in narrative competence confirmed the existence of difficulties in the language development of children with SCTs. Narrative difficulties could affect these children's future learning skills and academic achievements.

Narrative Competence in Pretense Play and Stories

The purpose of the present study was to explore a method for analyzing children's narratives in pretense play and replica stories. A theoretical framework was derived from Bruner (1990) and Fein (1989). This framework served to construct the Realistic-Imaginal Scale (RIS) which incorporated behavioral components appearing in the relevant empirical literature. The scale includes 17 items grouped into 4 categories and measures narratives on a realistic-imaginary continuum. A limited attempt to test the applicability of the RIS, using pretense play episodes of Israeli kindergarten children, and the replica stories of US preschoolers, revealed well-distributed scores correlated with Applebee's narrative organization scores. The scale yielded high inter-scorer reliability. Distributions of scores showed a striking resemblance between the two culturally and contextually different samples. The strong theoretical framework of the RIS makes it a promising tool for the analysis of young children's narrative competence, thus providing a potent tool for theoretical and research.

Professionalism and narrative medicine

This work is a bibliographical review of the challenges of professionalism in medical training. Medicine practiced with narrative competence, called narrative medicine, is proposed as a model for humane and effective medical practice. By virtue of the changes in the practice of medicine during the last years, professionalism values emerge as qualities that should reshape medicine. Several medical associations are redefining professionalism and insist that this issue should be included in the training curriculum. Thus, several medical education institutions are pursuing strategies to teach and assess professionalism. Modeling is still relevant as a learning strategy, but it must be tutored and directed. Also, timely and formative feedback appears as the most frequently suggested evaluative action. Both processes incorporate a personal reflective practice. Several recent studies suggest that a reflective experience is relevant for the formation of a professional identity. Narrative Medicine methodology emerges as an innovative strategy to address this issue, as it seeks to deliver valuable learning experiences to the students through reflection and the search for a new paradigm for medical practice.

Contribution of oral narrative textual competence and spelling skills to written narrative textual competence in bilingual language-minority children and monolingual peers.

This study investigates the developmental pattern and relationships between oral narrative textual skills, spelling, and written narrative textual skills in monolingual and bilingual language-minority (BLM) children, L1-Chinese and L2-Italian. The aims were to investigate in monolingual and BLM children: (1) the developmental patterns of oral and writing skills across primary school years; (2) the pattern of relationships (direct and mediated) between oral narrative textual competence, spelling skills, and written narrative textual competence with age and socio-economic status (SES) taken under control. In total, 141 primary school children from grades 2 to 5 in Central Italy (44% BLM, 56% monolinguals) aged between 7 and 11 years (M-age = 8.59, SD = 1.13; 41% girls, 59% boys) obtained scores for oral and written narrative textual competence, spelling accuracy in dictation, and written texts. One-way ANOVA and ANOVA with robust method (Welch test) analyses and Bonferroni’s correction showed that BLM children had poorer spelling skills in dictation and written narrative textual competence (i.e., text structure) than their monolingual peers. After preliminary correlation analysis, the results of hierarchical regression showed that the relationship between oral and written narrative textual competence is completely mediated by spelling accuracy in BLM children. These results suggest that adequate performance in written narrative textual competence depends on adequate spelling accuracy in writing stories. The Sobel test verified the power of this mediation. In monolinguals, the strongest predictor of written narrative textual competence is oral narrative textual competence. This relation is stronger in older children whose spelling skills are automatized. The identified pattern of relationships shows a complex network of oral and written processes. The scarce spelling skills characterizing BLM children may explain why spelling skills determine a low written narrative textual level. Scarce spelling skills absorb cognitive resources, hindering high-level cognitive processes that regulate narrative production. In monolinguals, the medium of writing does not impact narrative textual competence. Children’s oral narrative textual competence easily transfers into their written narrative productions. These findings have implications for the assessment and instruction of literacy skills in young BLM children and their monolingual peers.

Professional Profile of Communication Experts in the Public Administration in Bulgaria

This paper presents the results of a study of the professional profile of communication experts in the public administration in Bulgaria. It is part of a project focused on public communications in the public administration in the country. A review of previous local studies of the public communications of the state administration was carried out. The research was conducted in 2021 in a survey filled out by 182 respondents who work as communication experts in state structures such as the Council of Ministers, ministries, state agencies, state commissions, regional administration, municipal administration, and state medical institutions, state universities, etc. The results summarize the skills of PR experts in the state administration in the following main directions: strategic competencies, narrative competencies, and technological competencies.

Investigating Children's Ability to Express Internal States through Narratives and Drawings: Two Longitudinal Studies during Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic emergency has challenged children’s socio-affective and cognitive development. It is essential to capture the modulation of their emotional experience through ecological and children-friendly tasks, such as written narratives and drawings. This contribution investigates the impact of pandemic experience (2020–2021 waves) on the internal states and emotions of the primary school age children, according to a longitudinal research approach through narratives (study 1 n = 21) and drawing tasks (study 2 n = 117). 138 Italian children were examined during COVID-19 three (study 1) or two waves (study 2). Children’s written narratives were codified on the basis of narrative competence and psychological lexicon. Children’s drawings were codified based on social/emotional, physical, and environmental elements. Results of narrative texts showed a lower psychological lexicon relating to positive emotions and a greater psychological lexicon relating to negative emotions only in the study sample group during the first lockdown compared to the previous and subsequent periods. Children’s drawings of themselves showed a decrease of negative emotions during the third pandemic wave in comparison to the first pandemic wave. Results inform mental health services, school practitioners, and parents about the importance of written narratives and drawings for promoting well-being in the developmental age.

What Predicts Oral Narrative Competence Among African American Children? Exploring the Role of Linguistic and Cognitive Skills.

Oral narrative, or storytelling, skills may constitute a linguistic strength for African American children, with implications for academic and social well-being. Despite this possibility, few studies have examined individual differences in oral narrative skill among African American children. To address this gap in the literature, this study examined how children's linguistic and cognitive skills predicted their competence in structuring oral stories, both on average and for children with different levels of narrative skill. Fictional oral narratives were elicited from a sample of 144 typically developing African American children, aged 4-8 years, using a wordless picture book as the stimulus. The effects of children's vocabulary, complex syntax, and nonverbal cognitive skills on macrostructural performance were assessed using linear regression to test average effects and simultaneous quantile regression to test effects across different levels of narrative skill. Children's competence in using complex syntax and nonverbal cognition, but not vocabulary, was predictive of narrative production, on average and as a function of narrative skill. Syntactic complexity appeared increasingly more relevant as children's narrative skill increased, whereas nonverbal cognition emerged as the most important for children at the lower to moderate ends of the narrative skill distribution. Both linguistic and cognitive skills help explain individual differences in African American children's macrostructural competence. Promoting children's development of complex syntax and nonverbal reasoning may provide potential mechanisms for supporting oral narrative skill development.

Production of oral narratives with an app in Early Childhood Education: analysis of engagement and narrative competence

The digital storytelling applications are being implemented in schools to favor the acquisition of multiple learnings. This research analyses the narrative competence of Early Childhood Education students (N=93), based on their oral stories -created with the support of a digital storytelling app- and their engagement in the narrative task. Moreover, the contribution of the application to the development of narrative competence is analyzed, considering its immersive capacity and the potential to foster self-regulation of learning. A mixed methodology is adopted: a) qualitative, focused on the content analysis of the stories, paying attention to the indicators defining the variables narrative competence and engagement and b) quantitative, centered on the statistical treatment of the data, median contrast, and correlational analysis between variables. Thus, it is verified that hardly half of the students present a medium-high narrative competence and the 73% has a medium-high engagement. There is a significant correlation between both variables, which highlights the capacity of the app to favor self-regulation and motivation towards narrative task, and to promote the skills to create a coherent, original, and well-structured story, which confirms its high educational potential.

Public administrators as storytellers: Nurturing narrative competence to enrich their professional identity

There is growing interest in the potential of storytelling and narrative in public communication, engagement, and connection with stakeholders. Nurturing narrative competence and storytelling capacity in future public administrators will enable them to effectively utilize this essential skill in the practice of public administration. This paper discusses the relevance of storytelling and narrative in public administration, builds the metaphor of public administrator as storyteller, using professional identity theory and sensemaking as conceptual foundations, and offers ideas curated from the literature on how to build narrative competence and capacity. Theoretical, practical, and pedagogical implications for public administrator as storyteller are considered.

PSYCHOLINGUISTIC FEATURES OF DETERMINING THE FORMATION LEVEL OF PERSONALITY'S NARRATIVE COMPETENCE

The purpose of the article is to develop psycholinguistic tools for diagnosing the level of formation of narrative competence of personality as an important prerequisite for its development. Research methods. The study uses a set of author's methods: (a) modeling as a method of constructing and analyzing of a structural model of narrative competence of personality; (b) psycholinguistic methods of determining the level of formation of narrative competence of personality; (c) methods of mathematical statistics; (d) expert evaluation. Results. The structural model of narrative competence as a dynamic configuration of pre-semantic, semantic and meta-semantic levels of understanding and generation of narrative expressions by personality is developed and characterized; this model in turn became a basis for developing psycholinguistic diagnostic tools. The author proposed a method for determining formation levels of narrative competence of personality, which involves selection of texts meeting certain criteria for processing; development of diagnostic tasks for these texts; algorithm for determining a certain formation level of narrative competence of respondents depending on their results of proposed tasks. According to the results of diagnostics, three main and two transitional levels of narrative competence of respondents have been identified. The algorithm for determining of these levels is presented in the form of a structural diagnostic procedure, the validity of which is confirmed by correlations with expert evaluation. Conclusions. The proposed methods are defined as effective tools for diagnosing the level of formation of narrative competence of personality. The main advantage of these methods is the possibility of its application for diagnosing of respondents based on their processing of fiction texts without restrictions for the language they speak. Keywords: personality, narrative, narrative competence, criteria of formation of narrative competence, pre-semantic, semantic, meta-semantic levels of formation of narrative competence.

OTHR-44. Building narrative competence on the neuro-oncology team: a narrative medicine approach to fostering unity and resilience for work with pediatric brain tumor families

Narrative medicine relies on recognizing, taking in, reflecting on and responding to the stories of suffering in others. Drawing on the practice of the close reading of literature and reflection through writing, healthcare professionals gain fresh insights into their own stories and in turn connect in meaningful ways to stories of illness in their patients (Charon, 2001). The lived experience of pediatric neuro-oncology teams seesaws between hard-fought victories and stories of pain, loss, and even death. For patients who survive, many face life-long challenges that impact long-term quality of life. Learning to be an eyewitness of both beauty and pain in literature and art and writing about that witness helps teams reflect on the stories that shape them and their patients as they process the unthinkable in their work. This type of narrative competence requires what Sayantani DasGuspta refers to as narrative humility (Das Gupta, 2008). Narrative humility recognizes that stories of illness are ambiguous, contain contradictions, and belong wholly to the patient, and encourage providers to explore the role their own narrative brings to the clinician-patient relationship (Das Gupta, 2008). This narrative competence enables team members to find new ways to navigate their practice and foster team unity. Connecting to their own narrative allows them to connect to the narratives of others. They learn to be uncomfortable, to feel pain or joy, and to find power in being physically present with someone who is healed, feels marginalized, or is wounded. By listening closely to the stories of illness and loss in others and reflecting on their own stories through narrative medicine techniques, they learn to engage with the stories that define both their patients and their team dynamics. This theoretical and practical presentation explores the principles of narrative medicine and applies them to the particular experience of neuro-oncology teams.

A Way Forward in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Making the Case for Narrative Competence in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine

Each surge of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic presented new challenges to pulmonary and critical care practitioners. Although some of the initial challenges were somewhat less acute, clinicians now are left to face the physical, emotional, and mental toll of the past 2 years. The pandemic revealed a need for a more varied skillset, including space for reflection, tolerance of uncertainty, and humanism. These skills can assist clinicians who are left to heal from the difficulty of caring for patients in the absence of families who were excluded from the intensive care unit, public distrust of vaccines, and morgues overtaken by our patients. As pulmonary and critical care medicine practitioners and educators, we believe that cultivating practices, pedagogies, and institutional structures that foster narrative competence, “the ability to acknowledge, absorb, interpret, and act on the stories and plights of others,” in our ourselves, our trainees, and our colleagues, may provide a productive way forward. In addition to fostering needed skills, this practice can promote necessary healing as well. This perspective introduces the practice of narrative competence, provides evidence of support for its implementation, and suggests opportunities for curricular integration.

Narrative competence and epistemological beliefs of German Swiss prospective history teachers: A situated relationship

Few history education studies have indicated that school students’ epistemological beliefs affect their historical thinking and writing. Some research has suggested that history teaching could affect these aspects. Several history educators have assumed that (prospective) history teachers’ epistemological beliefs are related to their ways of teaching and to their ability to think historically. Yet evidence underpinning these assumptions is rare. To address this gap, we investigated how prospective German Swiss history teachers’ epistemological beliefs impacts their reading and writing abilities in terms of narrative competence. We therefore applied argumentative writing tasks to assess participants’ narrative competence and surveyed their epistemological beliefs and further contextual covariates (e.g. situational interest, number of history courses attended at university). Results show small effects of participants’ epistemological beliefs on their narrative competence, while their situational interest is more influential. Other contextual constructs (e.g. number of history courses attended at university) are also predictive. Overall, our results indicate that narrative competence and epistemological beliefs are correlated, yet situated in contextual aspects.

Interactive Generation of Oral History by a Child with Participation of an Adult

The article deals with the interactive narrative patterns that arise in the course of telling stories by children with the participation of an adult. The relevance of the study is due to the need to develop a theory of discursive development during preschool childhood as an important component of knowledge about speech ontogenesis and the features of the formation of narrative competence. The novelty of the research is seen in the fact that the theory of speech ontogenesis introduces the idea of the complex nature of the formation of narrative skills in speech ontogenesis, which are of a long-term nature and are not limited only to the assimilation of linguistic material by children, the improvement of syntax and syntactic structures. New data that receive theoretical understanding on the basis of a cognitive-discursive approach and a hypothesis about the interactive nature of narrative discourse in speech ontogenesis are introduced in the article. The concept of an interactive dialogical pattern is explained, which means dialogical constructions jointly built by an adult and a child, through which the internal experience, images, impressions of the visually presented story are analyzed and formulated by the participants in the storytelling situation. It is shown that the dialogical patterns that arise in the child's telling a story with the participation of an adult are a discursive mechanism that contributes to the creation of oral history by the child through the “mobilization” of the child's potential discursive capabilities, which are activated in the dialogue.