Supporting Children's Narrative Composition: the Development and Reflection of a Visual Approach for 7-8 Year-olds Teresa Noguera A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the School of Sport and Education, Brunel University, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy November 2011 1 Statement of Original Authorship The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree or diploma at any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made. Signed: Date: 2 Dedication This thesis is dedicated to the memory of my mum‘s uncle, Jose Miguel Aldabaldetreku. He taught me the values that have shaped my whole life and showed me the importance of living with compassion, humility and generosity. This thesis is also dedicated with gratitude to ‗my‘ dear children (class 3B), and to all children, who continue to inspire vocational practitioners like myself to seek the intellectual and emotional potential within every human being, and who help us learn and become better practitioners and human beings. 3 Acknowledgements Of all the pages in this thesis, this has perhaps been the most difficult to compose. There are so many people I would like to thank, and for so many reasons, it seems hardly possible to express a small percentage of my gratitude on the space of a page. From the time I started on this journey I have been supported in a variety of ways: institutionally, financially, academically, and through the encouragement and friendship of some very special people. I would like to thank Dr. Deborah Jones and Professor Val Hay for encouraging and supporting my application to begin this PhD research with the School of Education. Furthermore, if it were not for the School‘s generosity paying for my tuition fees in my first year and offering me a bursary in the second and third years, I do not think the completion of this thesis would have been possible. My greatest academic debt is to my supervisors Professor Celia Brackenridge, Dr. Pam Alldred and Dr. Kathy Ring, with whom I have been extremely fortunate to study. My appreciation is due to all of them; to Professor Celia Brackenridge for always making herself available to talk to me and for providing invaluable direction, advice and help throughout the writing of this thesis. My respect and gratitude is also due to Dr. Pam Alldred, you have been an outstanding and kind mentor whose guidance and wisdom have been most helpful in bringing this work to life. You always showed concern about me and encouraged me to believe in my work through your relentless praise and positive feedback. Dr. Kathy Ring was also most generous with her time and patience, you repeatedly gave me constructive criticism on my work fostering this project and helping me grow. My sincerest thanks to you all also for the unfailing encouragement and guidance, for the generous contributions – i.e., careful reading, thoughtful questions and many insightful comments – and for always supporting me with both the time and space I needed to complete this journey. Another guide to whom I am eternally indebted is Randy Fromm, who was (luckily for me!) a member of the narrative listserv I approached at the beginning of my research. I owe much to this extraordinary and kind friend and educator who regularly and very generously spent many hours of his weekends answering all the questions I emailed him. Our conversations not only helped me learn about narratology and narrative, they also helped me to become a better thinker and consequently inquirer. Discussing ‗narrative‘, ‗art‘ and ‗life‘ over dinner on the last day of the Birmingham narrative conference, also his birthday, a table away from some of the greatest minds in the field of narrative, is a memory I will treasure forever. Your confidence in my work has made me more confident in myself. Your enthusiasm for my thesis topic energized me when I most 4 needed to believe that what I had to say was worth saying. I cannot thank you enough for your patience, encouragement and support. It would be impossible to list everyone else who has played a role in the completion of this thesis without making it sound like the speech of an Oscar winning actress! I have met so many wonderful friends during my time at Brunel, and their generosity has been humbling. Special thanks must be given to Dr. Kyoko Mukarami, who befriended me at the start of this process and has encouraged me all the way through, and to ICT geniuses Nalin Soni and Terry Wallace who have provided much needed support and solutions to all the messy technical and mechanical problems I encountered with my laptops and PCs. I would also like to thank the wonderful and generous children in class 3B who throughout the research and the year we were together in class 4 (in Year 1), helped me become a better learner, practitioner and person – what an honour it has been and how privileged I feel for having been with you. I shall never forget the look of puzzlement in your tiny faces every time I told you how fortunate I was to get paid to learn from 32 incredible and capable human beings, and that I felt ‗you‘ should have been the ones being remunerated. I would also like to thank the many friends and kind strangers who have given their support over these years; you are too numerous to mention, but you know who you are. I can hardly begin to articulate my gratitude to Gian, ‗lord of my heart‘, whose love, kindness, energy and intelligence have inspired and guided me in the last stages of the thesis. Thank you for being there through thick and thin, for tolerating the near-madness that accompanied those intensive periods of study and for giving me the freedom to carry on my dreams. The generous gifts of your love and friendship are impossible to ever begin to repay, and I can only hope you know that my gratitude exceeds my ability to express it. ―Te quiero con todo mi alma.‖ Lastly, I could not have made it through all of this without the love and support of my wonderful family, especially my youngest and dearest brother Ignacio. The hope, encouragement and motivation that I have got from you will long be remembered and are now fondly cherished. And, how can I thank you mum; there have been too many times when it would have been easier to quit than to continue. It has been your belief, patience, and sacrifice that have kept me going. This thesis is as much yours as it is mine, ―gracias desde lo mas profundo de mi corazon‖. 5 Abstract At the heart of present literacy, and narrative, learning paradigms are the ―literate behaviours‖ usually associated with aspects of learning to encode and decode print. These paradigms have been criticized for placing written and verbal language in a privileged position. Furthermore, whilst an increasing number of theorists and educators are asking for the inclusion of multimodal approaches to learning narrative, current curricula, and the research that informs it, continue to be founded on ―verbocentric‖ approaches and linear forms of narrative expression. Through the development and evaluation of a curricular approach to narrative learning for 7-8 year-olds based on the visual arts, this study aims to ascertain whether there is a need for broader conceptions of narrative as well as for complementary modes of narrative composition than those currently being used in primary schools. Documentation in the form of the children‘s painted narratives and transcripts of the children‘s oral accounts of their narratives was the major component of data collection. Individual and small group interviews and participant observation were supplementary sources to assist in the interpretation of the narrative paintings the children composed. The children‘s narratives were analysed using a narratological semiotic model, which divides narrative into ‗discourse‘ and ‗story‘ and distinguishes between the ‗content‘ and ‗form‘ of each of these elements. 6 Table of Contents Title page ………………………………………………………………………………………........1 Copyright ………………………………………………………………………………………….....2 Dedication ……………………………………………………………………………………….......3 Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………….......4 Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………………….......6 Table of Contents ………………………………………………………………………………......7 Figures and Tables ……………………………………………………………………………......12 Abbreviations ...………………………………………………………………………...……….....15 Notes on the text ………………………………………………………………………………......15 Chapter 1: Introduction and Rationale …………………………………......16 1.1 Introduction …………………………………………………………………………........16 1.2 Personal experiences and research ………………………………………………......16 1.3 Political context of the research …………………………………………………….....18 1.4 Aims of the study and the Research Question …………………………………........19 1.5 Organisation of the thesis ………………………………………………………….......20 Chapter 2: Literature Review: Narrative and Narratology………….........22 2.1 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………….......22 2.2 Narrative ………………………………………………………………………………....22 2.3 Describing vs defining narrative ……………………………………………………....23 2.4 Problems with definition ……………………………………………………………......23 2.5 Narrative communication ……………………………………………………………....24 2.5.1. Medium …………………………………………………………………….......26 2.6 Narrative as syntagmatic and paradigmatic structure …………………………........26 2.7 Two and three-level descriptions of narrative ……………………………………......27 2.8 A minimalist view of narrative ……………………………………………………….....29