Storytelling Pedagogy in Australia & Asia 9811640084, 9789811640087

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Storytelling Pedagogy in Australia & Asia Edited by Louise Gwenneth Phillips · Thao Thi Phuong Nguyen

Storytelling Pedagogy in Australia & Asia

Louise Gwenneth Phillips · Thao Thi Phuong Nguyen Editors

Storytelling Pedagogy in Australia & Asia

Editors Louise Gwenneth Phillips Southern Cross University Gold Coast, QLD, Australia

Thao Thi Phuong Nguyen University of Foreign Language Studies Danang, Vietnam

ISBN 978-981-16-4008-7 ISBN 978-981-16-4009-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4009-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Maram_shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

During the publication process of this book, esteemed Thai/Lao storyteller Dr. Wajuppa Tossa (lead author of Chapter 3), suddenly passed away on the 13th September 2021. The global storytelling community is shaken in losing such an esteemed and much loved storyteller, who significantly led the revitalization of storytelling in Asia. We dedicate this collection of storytelling pedagogy experience and insight to the extraordinary storytelling legacy of Wajuppa and hope that this book further contributes to the revitalization of storytelling in education across Asia and Australia.

Foreword

Stories add richness to our lives. We can be at one with the characters, walking with them in their story. We learn of places in which stories are set, imagining colours and sounds and the tactile sensation of being in place. Emotions are brought to the surface, energised, reminding us of wonder, empathy and loss. What is a world without stories? Would we not be less? Teaching through story is both valuable and liberating. It makes clear the values through which we live, through which we aspire to be human, for all our frailties and strengths. Enjoy these stories and be sated. Ngugi/Wakka Wakka woman, Professor Tracey Bunda Academic Director Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Unit The University of Queensland, Australia

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the legacy and wisdom of all storytellers who have taught across this planet. The crafting of this book is rooted in their collective wisdom. Each of the authors in this book has learnt from storytellers that have come before them and we hope this book sustains storytellers yet to be.

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Contents

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Introduction: The What, How and Why of Storytelling Pedagogy Louise Gwenneth Phillips and Thao Thi Phuong Nguyen

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2

Since the Dreamtime Michael Jarrett

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3

The Pedagogical Uses of Storytelling in Thailand Wajuppa Tossa and Prasong Saihong

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Adaptation and Application of Indian Stories in Classrooms Anamika Bhati and Nupur Aggarwal

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The Pedagogical Uses of Kamishibai, the Paper Theatre, in Asia Karine Lespinasse, Eiko Matsui, and Etsuko Nozaka

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Storytelling as Pedagogy for Chinese Language Learning Swee Yean Wong

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Storytelling and Imagination Thao Thi Phuong Nguyen

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CONTENTS

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Storytelling for Sustainability Education, Cultural Learning and Social Change Anna Jarrett

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Storytelling Pedagogy for Active Citizenship Louise Gwenneth Phillips

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Bringing Storytelling Pedagogy Ideas Together Thao Thi Phuong Nguyen and Louise Gwenneth Phillips

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Index

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List of Contributors

Nupur Aggarwal Storywallahs, Hyderabad, India Anamika Bhati Stories with Anamika, Singapore Anna Jarrett Long Beach, NSW, Australia Michael Jarrett NSW Department of Education, Sydney, NSW, Australia Karine Lespinasse Lecturer, Education Department, Founder and Managing Director of Polylinguo.xyz, James Cook University, Singapore Eiko Matsui Muralist, Supervisor of the International Kamishibai Association of Japan (IKAJA), Tokyo, Japan Thao Thi Phuong Nguyen Department of Foreign Language Teacher Education, University of Foreign Language Studies, Danang, Vietnam Etsuko Nozaka International Project Supervisor of the International Kamishibai Association of Japan (IKAJA), Tokyo, Japan; Translator, Writer and Lecturer at Shirayuri University, Chofu, Japan Louise Gwenneth Phillips Faculty of Education, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia; James Cook University, Singapore Prasong Saihong Faculty of Education, Mahasarakham University, Mahasarakham, Thailand xiii

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Wajuppa Tossa Mahasarakham University, Mahasarakham, Thailand Swee Yean Wong Storytelling Association, Singapore

List of Figures

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

2.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1 5.2 5.3

Fig. 5.4 Fig. 5.5 Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

5.6 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 7.1 7.2 8.1 8.2

Michael Jarrett storytelling on Gumbaynggirr country The front cover of the picturebook, Turtle & the C(r)ow First page of the conclusion of the story Second page of the conclusion of the story Student drawing of the ghost with light as his head Anamika telling a story Nupur telling a story Anamika using vocal expression Nupur asking quesion during storytelling How to perform Kamishibai Special features of Kamishibai Okiku okiku okiku na-are (grow grow grow bigger! 1983) by Noriko Matsui Yasashii mamono wapper (The kind monster wapper, 2009) Kuishinbonomanmaruoni (The hungry round ogres) (Matsui, 2002) Nidoto (never again) Swee Yean Wong telling Swee telling Mr Wiggle and Mr Waggle Swee telling end of Mr Wiggle and Waggle story Swee telling using her eyes, expression and puppets Jack uses his hand gesture for a new word “snap” Joyous learning moment Anna Jarrett The birds, the sea & me by Jarrett and Sydenham, 2016

22 39 40 41 45 54 55 62 66 81 82 86 87 89 90 104 110 113 114 126 131 140 146

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 8.3 Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

8.4 8.5 9.1 9.2

Children writing and drawing about the shorebirds near their habitat Gallery of children’s drawings from shorebird project A child’s single page illustration and story Louise telling a story of her ancestral roots (Phillips, 2018) Children’s conservation signs for the Coxen’s fig parrot

148 150 151 160 169

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The What, How and Why of Storytelling Pedagogy Louise Gwenneth Phillips

and Thao Thi Phuong Nguyen

Have I Got a Story to Tell You… We are sure you have heard this offer before, from friends, family members, teachers and (of course) storytellers. Humans have told stories to each other since the inception of language. Stories are how people

L. G. Phillips (B) Faculty of Education, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] URL: https://louptales.education James Cook University, Singapore e-mail: [email protected] T. T. P. Nguyen Department of Foreign Language Teacher Education, University of Foreign Language Studies, Danang, Vietnam e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 L. G. Phillips and T. T. P. Nguyen (eds.), Storytelling Pedagogy in Australia & Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4009-4_1

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communicate what it means to be human. They tell of emplaced, relational tragedies, challenges and joys of living. Stories are spoken, gestured, danced, dramatised, painted, drawn, etched, sculpted, woven, stitched, filmed, written and any combination of these modes and more (Phillips & Bunda, 2018, p. 3). The word story emerged in English in the 1200s, derived from the Latin word historia, referring to an account of what had happened. The roots of story are embedded in the sharing of life’s happenings (Smith, 2007). Storytelling is understood as human instinct; “a survival impulse like the drives for nourishment, shelter, and procreation” (Leeming, 1997, p. 3). The term storytelling has come to be used across the arts. In this book, we look to storytelling as the oral art form where a teller performs a story with a live audience. Both teller and listener experience the story together in the same place at the same time. In this understanding there is no bound book or screen present to separate the relationship between the teller and the listener. The storyteller holds the story in her mind and uses words and gesture to bring the story alive in response to the listeners. German Jewish philosopher, Walter Benjamin (1955/1999) described the act of storytelling as the storyteller drawing from her experience or that of others and “making it the experience of those who are listening to the tale” (p. 87). Louise:

In my practice as a storyteller, this is exactly the intention that drives my storytelling: to make the story the lived experience of the audience—that they feel that they are in the story.

Listeners can connect with the characters and accompany the teller on the journey of experience, then emerge with new insight and understandings. To fairy tale scholar, Jack Zipes (2005), the storyteller is “an actor, an agent, a translator, an animator, and …a thief who robs treasures to give something substantive to the poor” (p. 17). The treasures are the collective pool of stories of humanity. Storytellers hear or read stories and take what they like, then transform them with their personal and ideological viewpoints to perform (verbally and kinaesthetically) a substantive tale for their chosen audience. Unfortunately, Western stories and Western scholarship of storytelling dominate. Such as Thai Master Storyteller Wajuppa Tossa noted, when she asked Isan children in Northeast Thailand to list folktales, most

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listed Western fairytales, such as “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Cinderella” (Tossa, 1999, p. 148). This is indeed a tragedy, as it is through stories that we come to understand our own cultural identities, and then through immersion in stories from cultures other than our own that we broaden our intercultural understanding. We argue that children need to know the stories of their own culture and of others to grow with open-mindedness and empathy as a global citizen. In particular, we claim space for the stories and teachings of the East1 from many of the world’s oldest cultures, including the longest living culture, Aboriginal Australians, along with Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Vietnamese and Thai cultures. All of these cultures have rich oral storytelling traditions. Aboriginal Australian creation stories, named by English anthropologists as Dreaming stories or Dreamtime stories,2 hold a unique name in each of the hundreds of Aboriginal languages (e.g., Jukurrpa in Walpirri language (Goddard & Wierzbicka, 2015)) have been told across tens of thousands of years, telling of life with giant marsupials and changing land formations (Cane, 2013). The spirituality and lore of Australian Aboriginality are taught through stories ritually passed on across hundreds of generations (Turner, 2010). In India, the great epic works of the Ramayana and the Mahabaratha are kept alive through storytelling from generation to generation (Parthasarathy, 1998). For thousands of years in India, different cultures, religions and languages have been interwoven through written and told stories that are context-focussed (Ramanujan, 1989). The long history of Chinese oral and written literature and storytelling traditions (see Campany, 2015; Miller, 2000; Shepherd, 2007) are particularly influenced by Confucius and the Taoist classics of Lao Tzu (Leeming, 1997). Across the varied provinces of China different public storytelling genres have emerged over generations (such as pingshu from the North: Ningxia, Sichuan, Hubei provinces; to the kwv txhiaj from 1 East, here is used as originally defined—geographically east from the Old world. Australia (though then named New Holland) is included in the East with the Hindoostan (India), China, Japan, Siam (Thailand) and Cochin China (Vietnam) as seen in John Wilkes 1796 map of Modern Asia. Such notions of West and East grew out of European colonising thinking. Colonised Australia has often since been categorised as part of the West, because the construction of Australia as a nation was dominated by European (in particular English) cultural thinking, practices and societal structures. 2 Unfortunately, the dream-related terminology serves to make light of the complexities of the concepts in Aboriginal Australian creation stories, “by emphasising their putatively magical, fantastic and illusory attributes” (Nicholls, 2014).

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Southwest: Yunnan province) (Miller, 2000). The earliest Japanese stories, are origin/creation stories—explaining how the universe came to be, like the Aboriginal Australian creation stories, and were recorded in the oldest Japanese book, the Kojiki: an anthology of cosmology, mythology and genealogy (Leeming, 1997). Zen koan folktales of Japan have long been told to teach new senses of reality (Leeming, 1997), through profound provocations, such as listen to the sound of one hand clapping. Storytelling traditions of Thailand are also steeped in moral lessons and spirituality, in particular Buddhism. Folk tales and legends have long been told by elders to instil beliefs in younger generations (All Good Tales, 2018). The storytelling tradition in Vietnam is known as kê chuyê.n and is believed to have existed and been passed on for more than three thousand years, through myths and legends shared by the ancient Vietnamese people, from V˘an Lang, and the people of the land—La.c Viê.t. It is believed that people told tales about the Gods of the Sun, the Earth, and the Rice Plant, the River, the Mountain; however, very rare documents were kept for retrieval and restoration as a collection of stories (Dinh, 2019). Kê chuyê.n has continued across the millennia, sharing historical tales, community and family values, moral lessons, sacrifice, nation-building and patriotism. We grow with storytelling in the moonlight, around the fire or flames of candles or oil lamps. As story and storytelling are located, this book brings together a range of relative geographical neighbours to share the wisdom of teaching through storytelling: the pedagogy of storytelling in Australia and Asia. Storytelling across this region is about cultural values and practices, social changes, places and language. Aboriginal Dreaming stories express deep spiritual connection to specific places of country, as Kakadu Elder, Bill Neidjie (1986) describes: ij

ij

“Our story is in the land… It is written in those sacred places”.

And these ancient stories are passed on within language groups by delegated custodians of the story. Tamil folktales begin with “in a special place” (Blackburn, 2001). In the epic Indian stories, such as Ramayana and the Mahabaratha, there are stories inside stories, where the story within illustrates the larger story and vice versa (Henricsson & Claesson, 2020). As Indian folklorist and scholar Ramanujan (1989) explains “there is a continuity, a constant flow of substance from context to object from non-self to self, in eating, breathing, sex, sensation, perception, thought,

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art, or religious experience” (p. 52). Stories born in the East don’t have the same focus on protagonists that stories born in the West do, as broadly speaking thinking in the west is framed on individualism, whereas thinking in the east is framed on collectivism (Haytova, 2020). We do not intend to set up a binary, but rather alert to broader awareness of story genres and styles across the world. In particular, chapter authors will share the rich storytelling cultures they draw from in the Asia–Pacific region.

Storytelling as Pedagogy Before the written word, oral storytelling was the key method of communicating how the local flora and fauna and landscapes came to be, and cultural values and historical events. Such as the Dreaming stories of Aboriginal Australia (e.g., see Andrews, 2020; Noonuccal, 1994) and the Panchatantra of India (to teach five [pancha in Sanskrit] treatises [tantra in Sanskrit] of wisdom) (Henricsson & Claesson, 2020). There is a strong tradition of oral storytelling as education, though Zipes (1995) surmised that much of the research on the tradition of oral storytellers is speculative as little was written about storytellers until the nineteenth century. Zipes surmises that tellers came from all sectors of society and told purposeful and functional stories that fitted with their situation. Stories “were disseminated to instruct, warn, satirize, amuse, parody, preach, question, illustrate, explain, and enjoy” (p. 20). The intent of meaning depended on the teller and the situation. Czech philosopher Comenius (2002) of the seventeenth century, considered the father of modern education, argued for storytelling in teaching as a practical tool because a story can “teach, engage and entertain at the same time” (p. 193). This tradition of oral storytelling for educational purposes occurred and continues to occur across cultures according to cultural genres and values (Kramsch, 1998). For example, from the Vedic age (approximately 1500–800 BC) to colonisation, a Gurukul education system was widely practised across India, in which shishyas (students) were taught orally (largely through story) by gurus (teachers) in their home. Mohandas K Gandhi described the Gurukul system as a beautiful tree that was destroyed during the British rule (Rao, 2020). Storytelling has sustained status as a provocative educator for thousands of years perhaps as German Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt (1970) explains: “storytelling reveals meaning without the error of defining it” (p. 105). By this Arendt inferred that the meaning of a story

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is never definitive, as listeners will create meanings applicable to their lives and experiences. The nature of story and storytelling allows listeners to form multiple possible meanings. To Walter Benjamin (1955/1999), the possibility of multiple meanings is half of the art of storytelling, that is, “to keep a story free from explanation as one reproduces it” (p. 89). Although a storyteller will paint incredible detail of the extraordinary and the ordinary for the listener, the psychological connection of the events is not forced on the listener. This is why Benjamin claimed that story achieves a fullness of understanding that information lacks, because it is up to the listener to interpret the content of the story in the way she understands it. There is scope through story for the listener to make personal connections, an exchange of experience that Benjamin called Erfahrung , when one learns something about oneself and the world. Further to this idea of multiplicity of meanings, Fisher (1987) claimed that there is no story that is not embedded in other stories and the meaning and merit of a story is determined through its positioning against other stories. This shared experience of meaning is heightened in the collective context of live oral storytelling as opposed to the individual experience of story fixed through text or new media technologies. Story provides a way for humans to frame their understanding of the world, giving shape and order to it (Fisher, 1987). To American educational psychologist Jerome Bruner (1986), story is defined as a way of knowing, and that “‘great’ storytelling is about compelling human plights that are accessible to ‘readers’” (p. 35). The accessibility of stories is his key point. Connection with a story is necessary to be affected. Yet, Bruner clarified that the story still needs to allow space for the reader’s (or listener’s) imagination so she can make the story her own. Each person can experience the same story differently. A story will trigger different personal connections, different messages and different levels of meaning for each person in different contexts at different times. Through storytelling, our experiences, desires and anxieties can be made evident to us and to others. Saxby (1994) and Dyson and Genishi (1994) acknowledge that young children in particular possess a disposition to explain and explore both their inner and outer worlds through story. In early childhood education, storytelling is recognised as a core component of the kindergarten curriculum proposed by German pedagogue, Friedrich Froebel (Weber, 1984). Many educators acknowledge long lists of benefits of storytelling in early childhood education (e.g., Barton & Booth, 1990; P. J. Cooper et al., 1994; Egan, 1986;

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Hamilton & Weiss, 1990; Jaffe, 2000; Paley, 1991, 1997; Phillips, 2000, 2012a, 2013; Rosen, 1988; Trostle Brand & Donato, 2001). These include qualities such as stimulating imagination, improving listening, aiding critical thinking, building an understanding of emotions and forming a strong learning community. American educator Nina Jaffe claimed storytelling could be a vehicle “for effective communication of curriculum content, with long-lasting repercussions for children as learners and participants in a complex and demanding world” (p. 175). According to Kuyvenhoven (2009), these benefits account for storytelling as a teaching method, as a tool. What is absent in the literature is a rationale for storytelling itself to affect the entire teaching process, not just as a tool on an ad hoc basis. Both Rosen and Kuyvenhoven have expressed frustration at not being able to source an educational theory of storytelling. Although much is written on the beneficial nature of storytelling in education, storytelling as pedagogy has not adequately been theorised. The use of storytelling as an engaging and meaningful teaching methodology in the literature is most notable in the work of Kieren Egan (1986, 2005) and Vivian Paley (1991, 1997). Egan (2005) proposed that teachers approach a unit of learning as a story to be told. He built his argument on the notion that “children’s imaginations are the most powerful and energetic learning tools” (p. 2) and that stories are an activity that engages children ‘s imaginations. Egan drew on the power of the story form for teaching. He argued that carefully crafted stories enable children to acquire higher levels of meaning of abstract concepts of humanity, such as death, love, honour and courage. However, few teachers have fully embraced Egan’s storytelling approach to the curriculum (Mello, 2001). While, Paley provides detailed accounts of story as the pillar of the kindergarten curriculum. She positioned children as storytellers through a curriculum that consists largely of children dictating stories that are then acted out (P. M. Cooper, 2005). Globalisation has brought stories from one culture into another, and storytelling methods from one culture into another, such as telling Thai folktales through Japanese kamishibai storytelling3 (Tossa, 2012). Kamishibai storytelling tradition is used as an integrated approach to learning drama, visual arts, literacy skills, reviving language and promoting bilingualism (McGowan, 2015). Storytelling in education has 3 Japanese storytelling through miniature box paper theatre. See Chapter Six for discussion and illustration.

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pockets of enthusiasts across Asia and Australia. For example, storytelling has been employed to revitalise Indigenous languages (e.g., Poetsch et al., 2019; Tossa, 1999, 2008, 2012) and as a teaching method in second/foreign language education (Vale & Feunteun, 1995). Michael Jarrett, Gumbaynggir storyteller, revitalises Gumbaynggir language through storytelling across the mid-North coast of New South Wales, Australia (Australian Government, 2020). Teaching Gumbaynggirr in schools benefits the whole community. It breaks down barriers, leads to a better understanding of Aboriginal people, and brings Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people together. This kind of sharing is our cultural way. (Jarrett, 2021)

Storyteller Wajuppa Tossa found that through the storytelling project she led across many years in Northeastern Thailand to revitalise Lao, Khmer, Thai Khorat, Yo and Phutai languages through a team of trained storytellers sharing Isan folktales, that participating children’s interest and pride in their local dialect grew as a result of the project. Storytelling for second language acquisition has been found to improve vocabulary knowledge for young English as a foreign language learners (e.g., see Kalantari & Hashemian, 2015; Li & Seedhouse, 2010). In addition, some research on storytelling in foreign language learning contexts identifies benefits such as understanding the narratives and developing their vocabulary and comprehension in Japan (Uchiyama, 2011), becoming aware of cultural values, and becoming self-confident (Mokhtar et al., 2011) and young foreign language learner’s making meaning language through storytelling pedagogy (Nguyen, 2019).

Key Principles of Storytelling Pedagogy To define and inspire further storytelling pedagogy, we describe four key principles that we see capture the essence of teaching through storytelling. Louise and Thao identified these principles through the careful reflection of their own storytelling practice and discussion with other storytellers, including those in this book. The principles of relationality, responsiveness, empathetic imagination and knowledge creation define the pedagogical attributes that storytelling offers. The following describes these principles through discussion with storytelling scholarship, along

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with Louise and Thao’s storytelling experience of each principle. Resonance of these principles will appear across the chapters of this book, further illustrating how they work in education in Asia and Australia. Relationality Storytelling is the embodied sharing of stories between people, provoking relationality with others. For storytelling, we gather together, moving closer to hear and see the storyteller. A community is immediately created for the story. Everyone gathered, is in the moment being with the story. The process is defined as being “fully engaged in a story” (Green et al., 2004), with “transportation into the narrative world” (Green & Brock, 2000). Storytelling enables connection with others. Even though storytellers may share a story that is not their personal experience, a good storyteller will always share something of herself through the intimacy of connection with her audience. Walter Benjamin (1955/1999) describes this quality of storytelling as: “traces of the storyteller cling to the story the way the handprints of the potter cling to the clay vessel” (p. 91). In many ways, this personal sharing creates intimacy and thereby draws the listener in, as she identifies her life with that of the storyteller. There are points of connection that resonate with listeners, for they may have had similar experiences or they can imagine that the same could happen to them. Relationships with others are at the core of live oral storytelling. It is not a lone experience; there must be tellers and listeners. This significant feature sets it apart from reading literature. In her work on Hannah Arendt, Julia Kristeva (2001) described live oral storytelling as an experience of “inter-being” (p. 15). The fate of the story depends on being with others. To Kristeva, the co-implication of selves and others is in the loop of storytelling. When Louise tells stories, those who she tells of are with her, she carefully holds their lived experiences in her hands, gently breathing life into them through embodied performative retelling. As Wajuppa Tossa (2012) explains “effective storytelling is a form of communication from the heart of the storyteller to the heart of the listener. The story, the storyteller, and the audience are equally important in any storytelling performance” (p. 200). Folklorist Katherine Galloway Young (2011) explains the relationality that storytelling evokes by drawing from Merleau Ponty’s (1962/1995) notion of intercorporeity, as a sensibility shared between bodies. Stories are made emotional and visible in and through

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the storyteller’s body (Young, 2002), so that “the story inhabits the whole body and the body inhabits the story” to evoke a pedagogical experience of “being-with” (Henricsson & Claesson, 2020, pp. 252, 264). By being with others holistically, as more than the cognitive exchange of didactic teaching, storytelling nurtures teacher–student bonding (Kuyvenhoven, 2009). Storytelling implies an existence of community because it requires storytellers and audiences who listen and respond to each other. For Thao, her language teaching through storytelling speaks volumes of how storytelling nurtures deep relationality as an integration of language, mind, body and value. She senses the relationality in the act of telling and listeners responding. The relationships and connections are built up between her and the children. Thao pays more attention to this principle as “Performance is not the heart of the storytelling process; relationship is” (Heckler & Birch, 1997, p. 14). This synergy between the children and herself in teaching and learning diminishes the hierarchical roles in a classroom and school community where children can expand a sense of possible selves. Relationality is seen through an ongoing interest, a shift from shyness to smiling and talking and a desire for knowledge and understanding. This is important because “when you instil the desire in children, they will begin to be the best they can be” (Small, 2003, p. 40). When Thao tells stories, relationality shapes values of being. Responsiveness Storytellers respond to their audiences; they customise their stories for the audience and customise how they tell the story in response to how the audience responds. Storytellers choose the story to tell based on what they read as significant for the audience to hear, and what the audience hears as significant (Stephens, 1992). Louise has previously likened this responsiveness to tailoring: the cutting and fitting clothing to fit the wearer’s body, so too does the storyteller shape a story to fit the listener’s lives and minds (Phillips, 2012b). Historically tailors travelled from house to house and village to village seeking trade and in turn being carriers of news, gossip and stories. Because of these work conditions, tailors became storytellers (Haase, 2008). A storyteller responding to an audience is somewhat like a tailor listening, measuring and attending to the requests of the client to fashion garments that fit comfortably and offer new ways of being. Sometimes stores fit some listeners better than others. Story-tailoring, as Louise suggests, brings attention to sustaining

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openness through careful listening and responsiveness. It is not about crafting the perfect story, but about inquiring with others through story. Storytelling is a highly responsive pedagogy. This may be because “stories simultaneously remind people of what is universal while celebrating what is unique to a culture” (Heckler & Birch, 1997, p. 9). Therefore, listeners always have something to respond to. “It is responsive to the needs of the people who own it” (Livo & Rietz, 1986, p. 18). Thao sees responsiveness as a harmonious process of mutual understanding between herself and the children. Louise and Thao recognise storytelling as a responsive pedagogy when they respond to children’s cognitive, emotional and imaginative dimensions in storytelling. Empathetic Imagination In storytelling, we imagine other places, beings and times. Storytellers want listeners to imagine that they are there in the story. As noted earlier “making it the experience of those who are listening to the tale” (Benjamin, 1955, 1999, p. 87). Being drawn into a told story can be like walking in the shoes of another: a metaphor for felt engagement with another (Phillips, 2012b). According to American Philosopher Martha Nussbaum (1997), sympathetic responses to stories require imagination and emotional receptivity, and demonstration of “a capacity for openness and responsiveness” (p. 98) what she referred to as sympathetic imagination. If we look to the etymology of sympathy—sym means together, and pathos means feeling. So sympathetic imagination implies imagining feeling together with the story characters. Storytellers such as Estes (1992) refer to this ability of storytelling to provoke an emergence of the mind with another reality as “sympathetic magic” (p. 387). Whereas we see that with the imagination that storytelling evokes, empathy is aroused, that is, being “in” (em) the feelings with the characters, aka, being in the shoes of another. Young (1987) describes this as experiencing the taleworld, in which as the story unfolds, the listener loses her sense of felt time and space merging intersubjectively with the characters as co-inhabitants. Nussbaum claimed story was particularly useful for children to nurture understanding of others because the complexities of humanity are not always visible in everyday interactions for children to view and understand readily. Understandings of humanity are only reached according to Nussbaum, via the training of the imagination that storytelling fosters. People

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in stories are imagined, then understood “as spacious and deep, with qualitative differences from oneself and hidden places worthy of respect” (p. 90). To Nussbaum, storytelling cultivates a deeper understanding of difference that nurtures respect for others. She proposed that as children grasp the complexities of humanity (such as perseverance and unfairness) by learning their dynamics through story in particular tragedies, they become capable of compassion. To be compassionate Nussbaum claimed, requires “a sense of one’s own vulnerability to misfortune” (p. 91). This involves imagining that this suffering could be happening to yourself. She proposed that stories are not simply shared to provoke compassion, but that stories are deliberated and critiqued as if the story is a friend.4 From this view Nussbaum suggested we ask “What does this friendship do to my mind? What does this new friend ask me to notice, to desire, to care about? How does he or she invite me to view my fellow human beings?” (p. 100). Such questioning offers a means to promote or provoke enriched understanding of being human. Storytelling is understood to have a unique capacity to cultivate empathetic imagination, to imagine and feel another’s feelings and build a greater understanding of the complexities of humanity. Knowledge Creation Storytelling has been used pedagogically for thousands of years across cultures, to teach new concepts, language, cautions and sage advice. Benjamin (1955/1999), Arendt (1958/1998) and Kristeva (2001) all claim that in storytelling, meaning rests with the listeners. The experience of meaning-making in storytelling is distinguished from reading by Benjamin, who explains that story is consumed collectively, whereas a novel is devoured selfishly. Each listener makes sense of the story in relation to their lived experiences, prior knowledge and values. Listeners create meanings applicable to their lives and experiences. Storytelling thus has the capacity to activate plurality of possible meanings that multiplies significance, yet resists closure. In storytelling, Thao holds a view that knowledge is produced through social interaction in local contexts “with shared experience, dialogue, feedback, and exchange with others” (Heron & Reason, 1997, p. 283). 4 Nussbaum adopted this idea from Booth (1988), who suggested viewing a literary work as a friend.

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That is, through collaboration in learning with others and joint reflection in an expanded community based on a shared context, storytellers can gain insights into storytelling and how storytellers and listeners perceive the world together. To Leeming (1997), “Stories are told, after all, to convey knowledge” (p. 4). Storytelling helps create knowledge by passing it on from generation to generation. Storytellers Norma J. Livo and Sandra Rietz (1986) recognise that “storytelling constructs ‘cosmic consciousness’” (p. 18) by which such means we can learn, confirm and even transform our understanding of the universe through storytelling. Knowledge is transactional, based on practice and experience (Lincoln, Lynham, & Guba, 2011). Thao is not interested in the value of “knowledge for its own sake” but knowledge created through pedagogies that promote values and recognise human rights. The “reality” in stories is not separate from us but rather constructed and co-constructed and as subjective–objective reality, co-created by the mind in engagement with the universe (Guba & Lincoln, 2005, p. 195; Lincoln et al., 2011, p. 102) through both conceptual and practical activity, such as storytelling. When a story is told, shared knowledge manifests.

Book Overview This book aims to share the rich storytelling pedagogies taking place in Australia and Asia. Practising storytellers from the region were invited to contribute a chapter on their storytelling pedagogy practice to illustrate different cultural traditions of storytelling and storytelling pedagogy purposes. The collation of the eight chapters of practice is by no means comprehensive of storytelling pedagogies in Australia and Asia, but rather a sample enabled through our connections. Each of the authors has responded to the chapter invitation differently reflecting their lived realities and interests in storytelling as a pedagogy. The book offers a mix of detailed insights of practice along with theoretical explanations of storytelling pedagogy, to meet the range of reader needs and interests at different points in time. Authors have endeavoured to write as if speaking directly to you, sharing insights of storytelling practice as storytelling muses. We are all storytellers, so our preferred mode is oral performative communication. We have tried to translate the same intimate relationality that storytelling nurtures into written words. At times co-authors are in conversation with each other, and at times authors are in storied conversations with child audiences or co-tellers (formatted like a playscript). We

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want the chapters to come alive in your minds so you can see and feel the possibilities of storytelling pedagogy, and are encouraged to weave storytelling pedagogy into your teaching practice, wherever that be. The following chapters tell of storytelling across ages to cultivate intercultural understanding, imagination, active citizenship, conservation and language and literacy learning. Each chapter includes told stories, and suggested pedagogical implications to guide and inspire readers in the art of storytelling pedagogy in Australian and Asian contexts. We begin with the great privilege of Gumbaynggirr storyteller Michael Jarrett (from mid-North coast region of New South Wales, Australia) sharing storytelling pedagogy wisdom from the longest living culture (Chapter 2). Through his storytelling pedagogy he revitalises the Indigenous language of Gumbaynggirr. In Chapter 3, esteemed Thai storyteller, Wajuppa Tossa with Prasong Saihong explain their pedagogical practice of storytelling of preserving Isan language along with English language teaching, literary studies, early childhood education and intervention and special education for children with disabilities. In Chapter 4, storytellers of Indian heritage, Anamika Bhati and Nupur Aggarwal, share the rich storytelling traditions of India and their practices of storytelling pedagogy through the story, The Monkeys and the hat seller. In Chapter 5, French educator Karine Lespinasse, with co-founders of the International Kamishibai Association of Japan, Etsuko Nozaka and Eiko Matsui, showcase kamishibai storytelling as a broad reaching pedagogical resource born in Japan to engage with Japanese concept of kyokan (to feel with). In Chapter 6, Swee Yean Wong, Singaporean storyteller of Chinese heritage describes how she has come to know more about her Chinese heritage through storytelling, which has led her to find meaningful and playful ways to teach the Chinese language through storytelling. In Chapter 7, Thao Thi Phuong Nguyen explains how storytelling provokes the working of imaginations to enhance English as a foreign language learning with primary school students in Vietnam. In Chapter 8, Anna Jarrett relays her storytelling pedagogy work in endangered shorebird education for primary school students on the South Coast of New South Wales, and creative relational storytelling education for children and families living in outback communities, Australia. In Chapter 9, Louise Phillips shares her storytelling pedagogy encounters of igniting active citizenship with young children in Australia, from

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stories crafted on a Stolen Generation5 experience, an endangered bird and child labour. We bring key resounding ideas of storytelling pedagogy together in the closing Chapter 10, noting that each of our storytelling practices is value driven and shaped by particular ways of knowing and being. We hope you enjoy this rich invitation to teach and learn through storytelling across Asia and Australia.

References AIATSIS (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies). (2021). The Stolen generations. https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/stolen-genera tions All Good Tales. (2018). Storytelling traditions across the world: Thailand. https://allgoodtales.com/storytelling-traditions-across-world-thailand/ Andrews, M. (2020). Journey into dreamtime. Ultimate World Publishing. Arendt, H. (1958/1998). The human condition (2nd ed.). The University of Chicago Press. Arendt, H. (1970). Men in dark times. Cape. Australian Government (2020, June 4). Baga Baga the bend in the Nambucca River—This place. https://www.indigenous.gov.au/news-and-media/stories/ baga-baga-bend-nambucca-river-place Barton, B., & Booth, D. (1990). Stories in the classroom: Storytelling, reading aloud and role-playing with children. Heinemann. Benjamin, W. (1955/1999). Illuminations (H. Zorn, Trans.). Pimlico. Blackburn, S. (2001). Moral Fictions—Tamil Folktales from Oral Tradition. Academia Scientiarum Fennica. Booth, W.C., (1988). The company we keep: An ethics of fiction. University of California Press. Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge University Press. Campany, R. F. (2015). A garden of marvels: Tales of wonder from early medieval China. University of Hawaii Press. Cane, S. (2013). First footprints: The epic story of the first Australians. Allen & Unwin. Comenius, J. A. (2002). Didactica Magna Stora Undervisningslaran (The Great Teaching doctrine). Studentlitteratur.

5 Stolen Generation is the term used to refer to Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were forcibly removed under the guise of white colonising law, policy and practice from their families and communities to be raised in institutions, fostered out or adopted by non-Indigenous families (AIATSIS, 2021).

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Cooper, P. J., Collins, R., & Saxby, M. (1994). The power of story. Macmillan. Cooper, P. M. (2005). Literary learning and pedagogical purpose in Vivian Paley’s storytelling curriculum. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 5(3), 229–250. Dinh, K. G. (Ed.) (2019). Giáo trình v˘an ho.c dân gian Viê.t Nam [Vietnamese oral literature] (2nd ed.). Viet Nam Education Publishing House. Dyson, A. H., & Genishi, C. (1994). Introduction: The need for story. In A. H. Dyson & C. Genishi (Eds.), The need for story: Cultural diversity in classroom and community (pp. 1–7). National Council of Teachers of English. Egan, K. (1986). Teaching as storytelling: An alternative approach to teaching and curriculum in the elementary school. University of Chicago Press. Egan, K. (2005). An imaginative approach to teaching. Jossey-Bass. Estes, C. P. (1992). Women who run with the wolves: Contacting the power of the wild woman. Rider. Fisher, W. R. (1987). Human communication as narration. University of South Carolina Press. Goddard, C., & Wierzbicka, A. (2015). What does Jukurrpa (‘Dreamtime’, ‘the Dreaming’) mean? A semantic and conceptual journey of discovery. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1, 43–65. Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701–721. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.79.5.701 Green, M. C., Brock, T. C., & Kaufman, G. F. (2004). Understanding media enjoyment: The role of transportation into narrative worlds. Communication Theory, 14(4), 311–327. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2004. tb00317.x Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions, and emerging confluences. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 191–215). Sage. Haase, D. (2008). The Greenwood encyclopaedia of folktales and fairytales. Greenwood Publishing Group. Hamilton, M., & Weiss, M. (1990). Children tell stories: A teaching guide. Richard C. Owen Publishers Inc. Haytova, N. (2020). The differences between Western and Eastern storytelling. Pulse of Asia. https://www.1stopasia.com/blog/the-differences-between-wes tern-and-eastern-storytelling/ Heckler, M., & Birch, C. (1997). Building bridges with stories. In D. A. Leeming & M. Sader (Eds.), Storytelling encyclopedia: Historical, cultural, and multiethnic approaches to oral traditions around the world (pp. 8–15). Oryx Press.

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Henricsson, O., & Claesson, S. (2020). Everyday storytelling as teaching: Indian teachers’ experiences of telling stories in teaching. Storytelling, Self, Society, 15(2), 246–269. Heron, J., & Reason, P. (1997). A participatory inquiry paradigm. Qualitative Inquiry, 3(3), 274–294. Jaffe, N. (2000). Bringing storytelling and folk narrative into classroom life. In N. Nager & E. K. Shapiro (Eds.), Revisiting a progressive pedagogy: The developmental-interaction approach (pp. 161–178). State University of New York Press. Jarrett, M., quoted in (2021). Australian curriculum: Framework for Aboriginal languages and TorresStrait Islander languages. https://www.australiancurri culum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/languages/framework-for-aboriginal-langua ges-and-torres-strait-islander-languages/rationale/ Kalantari, F., & Hashemian, M. (2015). A story-telling approach to teaching English to young EFL Iranian learners. English Language Teaching, 9(1), 221. Kramsch, C. (1998). Language and culture. Oxford University Press. Kristeva, J. (2001). Hannah Arendt: Life is a narrative (R. Guberman, Trans.). Columbia University Press. Kuyvenhoven, J. C. (2009). In the presence of each other: A pedagogy of storytelling. University of Toronto Press. Leeming, D. A. (1997). Once upon a time. In D. A. Leeming & M. Sader (Eds.), Storytelling encyclopedia: Historical, cultural, and multiethnic approaches to oral traditions around the world (pp. 3–7). Oryx Press. Li, C.-Y., & Seedhouse, P. (2010). Classroom interaction in story-based lessons with young learners. Asian EFL Journal, 12(2), 288–312. Lincoln, Y. S., Lynham, S. A., & Guba, E. G. (2011). Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions, and emerging confluences, revisited. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (4th ed., pp. 97– 128). Sage. Livo, N., & Rietz, S. (1986). Storytelling: Process and practice. Libraries Unlimited. McGowan, T. (2015). Performing kamishibai: An emerging new literacy for a global audience. Taylor & Francis. Mello, R. (2001). The power of storytelling: How oral narrative influences children’s relationships in classrooms. International Journal of Education and the Arts, 2(1). http://www.ijea.org/v2n1/index.html Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962/1995). The phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). Routledge. Miller, E. (2000). Continuity and change in Chinese storytelling. World Storytelling Institute. https://www.storytellinginstitute.org/

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Mokhtar, N. H., Halim, M. F. A., & Kamarulzaman, S. Z. S. (2011). The effectiveness of storytelling in enhancing communicative skills. Procedia— Social and Behavioral Sciences, 18, 163–169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbs pro.2011.05.024 Neidjie, B. (1986). Australia’s Kakadu man: Bill Neidjie. Resource Managers. Nguyen, T. P. T. (2019). Storytelling as pedagogy to facilitate meaning-making in English learning as a foreign language for young learners. The University of Queensland, School of Education. Nicholls, C. J. (2014, January 29). ‘Dreamtime’ and ‘The Dreaming’: Who dreamed up these terms? The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/dre amtime-and-the-dreaming-who-dreamed-up-these-terms-20835 Noonuccal, O. (1994). Dreamtime: Aboriginal stories. William Morrow Publishing. Nussbaum, M. (1997). Cultivating humanity: A classical defense of reform in liberal education. Harvard University Press. Paley, V. G. (1991). The boy who would be a helicopter: The uses of storytelling in the classroom. Harvard University Press. Paley, V. G. (1997). The girl with the brown crayon: Children use stories to shape their lives. Harvard University Press. Parthasarathy, R. (1998). Indian Oral Traditions. In J. M. Foley (Ed.), Teaching oral tradition (pp. 239–249). Modern Language Association of America. Phillips, L. G. (2013). Storytelling as pedagogy. Literacy Learning: THe Middle Years, 21(2), ii–iii. Phillips, L. G. (2012a). Retribution and rebellion: Children’s meaning making of justice through storytelling. International Journal of Early Childhood, 44(2), 141–156. Phillips, L. G. (2012b). Emergent motifs of social justice storytelling as pedagogy. Storytelling, Self, Society, 8, 108–125. Phillips, L. G. (2000). Storytelling: The seeds of children’s creativity. Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 25(3), 1–5. Phillips, L. G., & Bunda, T. (2018). Research through, with and as storying. Routledge. Poetsch, S., Jarrett, M., & Angelo, D. (2019). Learning and teaching Gumbaynggirr through story: Behind the scenes of professional learning workshops for teachers of an Aboriginal language. Language Documentation and Conservation, 13, 231–252. Ramanujan, A. K. (1989). Is there an Indian way of thinking? An informal Essay. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 23(1), 41–58. Rao, V. J. N. (2020, May 31). Wasting away of ‘The Beautiful Tree’. Millennium Post. http://www.millenniumpost.in/sundaypost/inland/ wasting-away-of-the-beautiful-tree-409678

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Rosen, B. (1988). And none of it was nonsense: The power of storytelling in school. Mary Glasgow Publications Ltd. Saxby, M. (1994). Introduction. In P. J. Cooper & R. Collins (Eds.), The power of story: Teaching through storytelling. Macmillan. Shepherd, E. (2007). A pedagogy of storytelling based on Chinese storytelling traditions (Electronic Thesis or Dissertation), The Ohio State University, Ohio. https://etd.ohiolink.edu/ Small, G. (2003). Joyful learning: No one ever wants to go to recess. Scarecrow Education. Smith, W. (2007). Origin of the word ‘story’. http://www.waitsel.com/screenwri ting/Story.html Stephens, J. (1992). Language and ideology in children’s fiction. Longman. Tossa, W. (1999). Storytelling: A means to maintain a disappearing language and culture in Northeast Thailand. In M. R. MacDonald (Ed.), Traditional storytelling today: An international sourcebook (pp. 144–152). Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. Tossa, W. (2008). Storytelling: A means to revitalize a disappearing language and culture in Northeast Thailand (Isan). Knowledge Quest, 36(5), 50–56. Tossa, W. (2012). Global storytelling and local cultural preservation and revitalization. Storytelling, Self, Society, 8(3), 194–201. Trostle Brand, S., & Donato, J. M. (2001). Storytelling in emergent literacy: Fostering multiple intelligences. Delmar, Thomson Learning. Turner, M. K., with McDonald, B., & Dobson, V. P. (Trans.) (2010). Iwenhe Tyerrtye: What it means to be an Aboriginal person. IAD Press. Uchiyama, T. (2011). Reading versus telling of stories in the development of English vocabulary and comprehension in young second language learners. Reading Improvement, 48(4), 168–178. Vale, D., & Feunteun, A. (1995). Teaching children English. Cambridge University Press. Weber, E. (1984). Ideas influencing early childhood education: A theoretical analysis. Teachers College University Press. Wilkes, J. (1796). Modern Asia map. https://www.wdl.org/en/item/154/ Young, K. G. (2011). Gestures, intercorporeity, and the fate of phenomenology in folklore. Journal of American Folklore, 124(492), 55–87. Young, K. G. (2002). Gestures and the phenomenology of emotion. Narrative Semiotica, 131(1/2), 79–112. Young, K. G. (1987). Taleworlds and storyrealms: The phenomenology of narrative. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Zipes, J. (1995). Creative storytelling: Building community, changing lives. Routledge. Zipes, J. (2005). To eat or be eaten: The survival of traditional storytelling. Storytelling, Self, Society, 2(1), 1–20.

CHAPTER 2

Since the Dreamtime Michael Jarrett

Becoming a Storyteller I grew up on an Aboriginal reserve and in an Aboriginal culture where stories were passed on orally. There was no written stuff, and no documentation of how old people told stories. Living on the Aboriginal Reserve as children, we became very familiar with storytelling, and we told stories ourselves around the campfire. And as I have come to learn my culture and my language again, I find that telling a story is a good way to capture the audience so that they can learn some of the language and learn a little bit about the Gumbaynggirr people. And with time, I noticed that I like to involve the audience when I’m telling a story. Also I like to engage my voice to make it go up and down, and I use a lot of body language. I developed it through storytelling, and seeing if something will work or something won’t by trying different dramatic techniques. It all depends on what the story is about, as well the audience. You choose the props you can use and the voices that you can bring in. Learning my culture and learning about the stories is what prompted me, because

M. Jarrett (B) NSW Department of Education, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 L. G. Phillips and T. T. P. Nguyen (eds.), Storytelling Pedagogy in Australia & Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4009-4_2

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Fig. 2.1 Michael Jarrett storytelling on Gumbaynggirr country

our language is being revitalised through story. So, this prompted me to become a storyteller and keep our language and stories alive (Fig. 2.1).

Storytelling in Early Childhood Education I trained as an early childhood teacher back in 1997, or even before that when I studied at Armidale TAFE for my Associate Diploma in early childhood and I was working on the Aboriginal reserve in Nambucca Heads at the Aboriginal Preschool. And I was teaching there and at the same time I was learning my Gumbaynggirr language and culture back at Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Cooperative (https://muu rrbay.org.au/), which is just next door. So, I could just bring it into the

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preschool right away. We have children’s stories that are appropriate for these kids, for example the one on how the echidna got their quills, how the kangaroo got his tail and so on. I found that children aged between three to five years old they have a short attention span, but engaging them by using your face and using your hands, children begin to wonder: “What’s going on with this guy?” and they begin to listen to the story and then think “Oh, I like this.” And sometimes I would use a puppet. I would hide the puppet under my shirt, and squeeze it under my shirt and say “Oh, it’s a little bit scared, you gotta come out, you got to be quiet. Wait.” You know when the kids are quiet and you let out the dog puppet say “Giinagay” (hello).

Learning from Elders The old people, they are the storytellers. They were different storytellers, you know. They would go—ayyyyyyyyy. Using this one long word in the story and then they just went on to emphasise these certain words. The old people, they had our attention, the really old ones. They didn’t say that much. You sat down with them and you felt their presence, you would just be still in their presence and they just had a certain calmness about themselves. You know, you can make a connection with people without even saying a word. It’s amazing. You can really download when you sit still. You know if you go to the beach, you sit there, you go to the bush you sit there, by the river or somewhere on the mountain or summit, you can download this if you sit still and listen, listen to all the sounds, you know these downloads will go straight through you. I can make a story up from just looking at something in the environment or something that happened on that day. And when I start rolling out the story, it just keeps coming and coming and I can go this way with the story or that – as I make the story up. Yes, you can just make these stories up. I’ve made up so many stories but I haven’t written them down (yet).

Teaching Gumbaynggirr Language Through Storytelling One way I do it, is to get the children to act out the story. For example, there is a story about Yuludarla, the creator. Then I will ask three people

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to come to act those characters in the story. So as I am telling the story, I am giving the directions and at the same time they are doing the actions while I am telling the story. And I will put Aboriginal languages into the story as well. A way you can tell a story in language is by using sign language or gestures. “Miimigu yaarri yarraang buwaarr (Mother says Bye bye, baby) and I wave my hand using gestures to support meaning, like through the teaching method TPR (total physical response). I ask the children to jaganyji (stand up) jaganyji, ngayinggi (sit down), guungguway (sleep). So, you can teach all that by demonstrating it and using body language. Once you know these TPR movements, you then can put these movements into a story and then that’s teaching them the language at the same time. You can use pictures, for example by creating a storyline and then you can bring in the language. You can have a man and a woman walking to the mountain, for example, and show this in a picture. Or you can have a picture of a mountain with trees hanging at the wall and you say juluum, jaliigida, here is the mountain, the tree, bindarray the river and so on. Then you can use TPR storytelling, and you can have little stickers and stick them on that picture or move them around. You can say in Gumbaynggirr something like “The man and the woman walked to the mountain”, slowly building up Gumbaynggirr language use. I teach Gumbaynggirr language through story from Nambucca Heads at the southern end of the Gumbaynggirr Nation to the northern end in Grafton and then out to Guyra. These are the 6000 square kilometres of Gumbaynggirr Territory and all the schools that are in that area. I train 10 adult educators in language and I teach them songs and stories and how to teach language, the songs and the stories. These educators go to the schools all around the Gumbaynggirr area and teach Gumbaynggirr language and culture in the schools. My role is to train these educators and I work for the Department of Education, New South Wales, Australia, which I have been doing since 2014. I was in early childhood education before that and in primary school and high school.

Teaching Gumbaynggirr Culture Through Storytelling The best way to teach stories about Indigenous culture, about Indigenous Dreamtime stories is to take people to the place where the story is about,

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for example it could be a mountain, it could be a bend in the river, it could be a part of the headland, it could be the ocean, it could be the stars. Then you can talk about the story in real time. This land is Gumbaynggirr land because this is the region where this language was installed in the landscape by Yuludarla, the Dreamtime Hero-Ancestor, as he moved south along the coast. Gumbaynggirr people are Gumbaynggirr because they are linked to places to which the Gumbaynggirr language is also linked. Listen… One day a warrior saw someone coming towards the hill he was on, so he climbed up the hill and watched him coming. “Hey! Well, who’s that coming along? I’ve never seen anyone like that before! Who’s that coming? What’s he doing?” He said this, watching. Then he went and had a closer look. “Well! He’s shining like the sun!” he cried. The man skirted around and ran down till he came home and told the others in the camp, “I’ve just seen this very different looking man. He was handsome; he looked just like the sun. You know, when you see the sun coming? Well that’s just how he acted” “Where was he?” The others asked. “He was going towards the sea over in the East.” Quickly, then, the young men went after him. Uphill they kept going and chased him. They almost caught him; but as soon as they got near him he would command a river to be made, and then he cut himself a canoe to cross over it. Some of the men who were following him then swam across each time, so he (Yuludarla) said, “Let me confuse their languages completely! Those who have crossed this river are to speak Banyjalang. Here, you first people will start talking Banyjalang.” Some men kept on chasing him however, trying to catch him, so he made them all different by telling them, as each group crossed a river that he had made, he told them that they would be a different tribe, “You will be Gambalamam!” He left them, but some kept on following him south. Then he came to Nambucca. The men crossed over the river he had made there and went along the sand and up a hill. Again and again they failed to catch Yuludarla. They came up on him and almost did catch him here, but he again put down a river and cut up and tied up a canoe for himself. There he crossed over, but some followed him again. To these he gave the following languages with each new river that he made.

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All You There Will be … Gumbaynggirr! All You There Will be … Janggadi! All You There Will be … Ngambaa! That’s what Yuludarla said. And that is where he left the Ngambaa and Janggadi people.

Another story Wijirrjagi, we made into a play with one of the schools, and put music in it. Wijirrjagi was a cannibal woman and she ate the three brothers but the fourth (oldest) brother then killed her. The children had so much fun and it wasn’t just a traditional Gumbaynggirr story, we brought in contemporary culture too by adding contemporary music to it. When one of the brothers got killed in the story we played the Queen song “and another one bites the dust, another one bites” (Deacon, 1980). And then when the fourth brother kills the Wijirrjagi we played the music “Ding Dong, the wicked witch is dead” (Harburg & Arlen, 1939). All the kids were dancing around the stage. It’s a Gumbaynggirr Dreamtime story, but by also playing with contemporary music it worked well.

Telling to Different Audiences Everybody likes a good story. You can be 90 years old and still like a good story. To be a storyteller is to be an actor. You are the story, you know. Sometimes people just want to watch me being silly. And yes, this is true for all ages. Also, I learned very early that for little preschool children you can’t tell them really scary stuff. For them to feel safe and secure, it is better to have happy endings. Then I change it all depending on who the story is for, you know, the audience. When I am teaching older children I change my methodology in telling stories. Adults too, they love being entertained and listen to a story. It just takes them away. Most people have never heard the story before that I want to tell. They’ve never heard it. So, I slow down and make sure that everything I am saying is understood by the audience. To make sure I ask them: “Do you understand what I’m saying?” It has also happened before that I forgot something in the story. Then I’ve got to go back to that part in the story and add the missing details. No two tellings are ever the same. Sometimes, if I haven’t got their attention, I lower my voice and they go “uh uh?” and I raise my eyes to the audience. Some of those

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Gumbaynggirr stories are really scary, you know, really vicious and sometimes I have to modify the story too, for example if children are present. I can tell adults the true story, but I have to modify it for the little fellas. I also use props. Though as storyteller you got to be careful not to put too many props in the way. You know, you just put the right amount of props in there. Just enough so that you can get the audience to understand what you are talking about. And night-time around the fire is a good time for a story.

Bringing Everyone Together for Story First of all, because we’re still learning the language, I’ll speak language and that draws the audience in (relationality). When I started learning language, I wore a brace on my leg. And I would say this is a yanggaay, a shark (showing the shark totem on my arm). I have a yanggaay, a shark as a totem and I told the story about a boy being stubborn and not listening to the elders. I would say I jumped into the ocean and a shark bit my leg off. Then I would tap the brace on my leg like that, getting a knocking sound. And then when they heard that sound they would ask “What? Show your leg, show your leg.” This way I really got all their attention at once. Sometimes I bring the group to gather in a circle in the classroom a circle is good and also out on the beach. But I also like telling a story where they are all huddled around in front of me. If I sit in a circle then I have to sit back a little so that I can see everyone. But with the little ones, if they are 20 or so, I like it when they’re all huddled in front of me. Then I can see all the children’s faces and expressions. It all depends what the setting is, and how many people are there.

Feeling with the Story To help people empathise (empathetic imagination) with characters in the stories, I ask questions during the story, like “What do you think?, How do you think they felt?, Why do you think he went over there?” And I use facial expressions like Gurraam Poor fella! (whilst showing a sad face). I use body language and ask questions to find out whether they are understanding the story and they are in there, in the story.

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Responding to the Audience Once I’m involved and you get them involved it can happen that I am being led by the audience. Or somebody can say something, or do something and then you are focusing on that person and what they did and what the question was (responsiveness ). That’s another way to involve the audience and say “Oh, wow, I didn’t think that way.”

Learning Through Storytelling In a story if there is something like a shark, like the yanggaay, I will talk to them about the shark and the totem of the shark. I will then go on and talk about totems and what a totem means to me. That could lead to another story. You start off with a story, and then you end up with another story. You can start off telling one story and end with a different story, and that’s good because then you know that the audience had an impact on the story. The students often direct me through the story that I am telling them and they give me new hints and cues. But for the culturally important content for learning the language, I go over and over it and make sure that they understand it (knowledge creation).

Telling on Country1 One day, I took a group of people on a trip to tell them the stories of the Gumbaynggirr Dreaming Time. We started up north on the new Clarence River and we ended up down south at South West Rocks where there is Birrugan’s tomb. And I showed them all the important landmarks on the way down whilst telling them the stories. This is what happened here and this is what happened there - all the way from the Clarence and Grafton down to South West Rocks. And I told them you know, the mountain over there is called Nunguu Miirlarl, Nunguu meaning a kangaroo and Miirlarl a sacred place, a Sacred Place of the Kangaroo. Then I told the story about the golden kangaroo and how he became the mountain and added the song. I then sang the song of the mountain so that they 1 Country to Aboriginal Australian peoples, described by Professor Mick Dodson means “homeland, or tribal or clan area and we might mean more than just a place on the map. For us, Country is a word for all the values, places, resources, stories and cultural obligations associated with that area and its features. It describes the entirety of our ancestral domains” (Welcome to country, 2020).

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understand the significance of that mountain. You know, it was an initiation place for young men. So, they’re getting cultural knowledge, they’re getting a story, and a song on top of that all to do with one mountain.

To Be a Storytelling Teacher You Need to Be gentle, be genuine, be you, enjoy what you’re doing. Also, learn the story and try out different ways to tell one story and maybe different places too. Storytelling is a great, great way to communicate with people. For storytelling you don’t really need anything. You just need your voice and your body. And on top of that it’s free. You don’t have to look at a screen either. I tell my stories in my language to keep my language alive and my stories. When you want to start to tell stories, tell stories about the past, your childhood, your family. That’s the way to keep your past alive as well.

Storytellings Tips and Suggestions • • • •

Know your audience. Use your voice and facial expressions. Be ready to be led by the listeners. Have fun.

Resources Muurbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Cooperative. https://muu rrbay.org.au/. Gumbaynggirr language. https://muurrbay.org.au/languages/gum baynggirr/.

References Deacon, J., & Queen (1980). Another one bites the dust. The Game. EMI Records. Dodson, M. (2017). Welcome to and Acknowledgement of Country. Reconciliation Australia. https://www.reconciliation.org.au/wp-content/uploads/ 2017/11/Welcome-to-and-Acknowledgement-of-Country.pdf

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Harburg, E.Y., & Arlen, H. (1939). Ding-Dong! The witch is dead. The Wizard of Oz. MGM. Welcome to country. (2020). Welcome to Country vs. Acknowledgement of Country. https://www.welcometocountry.com/blog/welcome-to-countryvs-acknowledgement-of-country/

CHAPTER 3

The Pedagogical Uses of Storytelling in Thailand Wajuppa Tossa and Prasong Saihong

Who We Are as Storytellers Wajuppa Tossa was an Associate Professor of English from the Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty, Mahasarakham University in Northeast Thailand. After retirement, she established a non-profit educational foundation, Folktales and the Arts of Storytelling Foundation (FASF)1 Prasong continues to lead this foundation, in Wajuppa’s legacy. Wajuppa, of a Thai/Lao cultural background, came from a family of storytellers in Thatphanom, Nakhonphanom, Northeast Thailand.2 Her maternal grandmother loved to read old folktales from ancient palm leaf manuscripts. 1 For more information, please go to https://www.facebook.com/sarakhamstoryhouse. The mailing address of FASF is The Story House / Wajuppa Tossa 48 Mu 14 Tambon Koeng, Amphoe Muang, Mahasarakham 44000, Thailand. Telephone +66 89 570 9463. 2 For Wajuppa’s hometown, go to the link, https://www.facebook.com/That-PhanomNakhon-Phanom-Thailand-190033681007184/.

W. Tossa · P. Saihong (B) Faculty of Education, Mahasarakham University, Mahasarakham, Thailand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 L. G. Phillips and T. T. P. Nguyen (eds.), Storytelling Pedagogy in Australia & Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4009-4_3

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Her mother loved to tell those old folktales to Wajuppa and her sisters night after night sitting on the veranda of their rented house. Each day, the three girls could hardly wait for the sun to go down. They would spread the mat on the veranda, lying down counting stars awaiting their mother’s storytelling after finishing her housework. She took them to the wondrous lands full of adventures, mixed with raw humour, which brought much joy and fun to their lives. Wajuppa’s father told stories during the day. His stories were folktales he heard from his father, his personal stories or adventures when he was young. With a strong background in traditional storytelling at home, Wajuppa used folktales and storytelling in her teaching career. Her heavy use of folktales and storytelling grew from her devotion to the storytelling project she founded between 1992 and 1998. In 1995, Wajuppa began a project titled Storytelling: a Means to Maintain a Disappearing Language and Culture in Northeast Thailand and that’s when Prasong (At that time, he was a third-year undergraduate student, majoring in English at Mahasarakham University) joined the project. Prasong Saihong is of a Thai/Lao cultural background as well. He was born in Ban Don Ngooluem Villiage, Rasisalai district, Sisaket.3 Prasong is an Assistant Professor in Early Childhood and Special Education, Education Faculty, Mahasarakham University. He began his involvement in the use of storytelling in his life and career when he joined the storytelling project in his third year undergraduate student at Mahasarakham University. He was the most active member of the group, trained by Dr Margaret Read MacDonald. For his Master’s degree study in Cultural Anthropology at Northern Illinois University, he wrote his thesis on Storytellers in Northeast Thailand where he searched for traditional storytellers in Mahasarakham, Roiet, and Sisaket, the northeast of Thailand and interviewed them. He collected more than one hundred folktales. In his PhD study of early childhood and intervention education at the University of Oregon, Prasong used folktales and storytelling with special education children who were physically and mentally challenged. He found that these children showed some development in many ways. After graduation, Prasong began a teaching position at Mahasarakham University and continues to use storytelling with his teacher training students. He also works on several storytelling projects in various settings including telling stories in tandem with Dr Wajuppa Tossa at festivals around the world. He 3 https://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g2237574-Rasi_Salai_Sisaket_Province-Vacati ons.html.

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is currently the vice president of the Folktales and the Arts of Storytelling Foundation, organizing international storytelling conferences, workshops, and festivals. In this chapter, we share our experiences in the use of storytelling as a pedagogy to maintain the disappearing language and culture of northeast Thailand. We also share our experiences in using storytelling in language teaching, literature courses, and early childhood education and intervention and special education for children with disabilities.

Cultural Preservation via Folktales and Storytelling Wajuppa Tossa initiated the storytelling project Storytelling: a Means to Maintain a Disappearing Language and Culture in Northeast Thailand as she found out two distressing facts in 1992. First, she could not understand the Lao language in Phya Khankhaak, The Toad King, an ancient myth she was translating for a Fulbright grant in 1991–1992, even though Lao is her first language from home. Second, she found that children in Northeast Thailand refused to speak Lao and they hardly knew any folktales of the region. “More than 50% of these children [first graders as the subjects of her research project from 23 provincial schools in 19 provinces in northeast Thailand] do not understand the Isan local language, and less than 20% could recognise the titles of works of Isan literature” (Tossa, 1999, p. 148). She knew that if the local language were not spoken, it would disappear and die. Cultural nuances inherent in the language would also die. Thus, she began the project to maintain the Lao language and other dialects, and literature of Northeast Thailand. Wajuppa received support from the Fulbright Thailand grant to send Dr Margaret Read MacDonald, a renowned folklorist, children’s literature specialist, and storyteller to train university students to collect, select, adapt, and retell the local folktales in the local language. Prasong was among the first group of 20 students to join the project. After training this original group, Wajuppa and Margaret together with the studentstorytellers went to 23 provincial schools to tell stories to the first graders. They used local folktales and the local dialect spoken by most people in each of the 19 provinces. The project was most successful; folktales and storytelling did help maintain a disappearing language and culture in northeast Thailand (Tossa, 1999, pp. 150–152). From the original project came other related activities: an annual storytelling workshop for

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teachers, educators, and interested persons, an annual storytelling camp for children, an annual storytelling festival with storytelling contests, and school visits for storytelling performances. We have found storytelling is a productive pedagogy in cultural preservation.

English Language Teaching Through Tandem Telling in Two Languages Wajuppa taught English and Literature at the Western Languages and Linguistics Department, Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty, Mahasarakham University for 37 years, retiring in 2016. Because she worked as an English teacher, whatever projects she conducted would be related to English teaching. In her project Storytelling: a means to maintain a disappearing language and culture in Northeast Thailand (1995–1998), she aimed to train university students to tell stories in the local languages so that these students could tell the stories again in the provincial schools in 19 provinces in Northeast Thailand as mentioned above. There was nothing in the project specifically designed for English teaching. However, these students enhanced their English language knowledge through listening to the stories Margaret told, because Margaret shared her model stories in English. Although Margaret could speak some Thai, it was not enough to tell the stories in Thai language. The majority of the students in the project were majoring in English, though some were majoring in Thai Language and Literature, Social Studies, and biology. Thus, Wajuppa had to translate Margaret’s telling into Lao, her first language. Because Margaret wanted to make sure that these students understood the instructions, the stories, and the techniques, she requested that Wajuppa translate her telling sentence by sentence. After a while, Margaret and Wajuppa developed a new way of tandem storytelling in two languages. Wajuppa did not just translate the stories into Thai/Lao, but she also kept up with the pacing, mood, and emotional expressions of the telling. The tandem telling was special as the storyteller and the translator kept their energies at the same level and pace. Their energies were bouncing back and forth throughout the storytelling performance. In this way, the students learned simultaneous translation techniques as well as English listening skills. The steps of teaching went this way.

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Step 1: MacDonald and Wajuppa told a Thai folktale from Thai Tales: Folktales from Thailand (Vathanaprida et al., 1994). Students would work either in pairs or in groups, retelling the same story in their local languages. After some practice, they retold the story for the entire class. Step 2: Students then went to interview local storytellers (in local dialect) or read collections of folktales from Northeast Thailand (written in Thai). The purpose of this step of training was to collect as many stories as we could. As our students came from many provinces, it was likely that we could pick the right ones appropriate for each school that we would visit. Step 3: Students shared the folktales in class in pairs, one told in Thai or in their local language and one translated into English in tandem style, as in the example of Margaret and Wajuppa’s telling. Step 4: When Margaret wanted to do research on Thai/Isan folktales in the library, she would request some students’ assistance with translating the stories into English. In Steps 3 and 4, students learned spoken English through translating Thai tales for sharing and translating Thai/Isan (Isan is another word calling people or the language in northeast Thailand) tales for Margaret.

Storytelling Tours in Schools in Northeast Thailand and English Teaching Lessons After training the students to collect, select, adapt, and tell the folktales from the original tales, the storytelling troupe were ready to travel to 23 schools in 19 provinces in Northeast Thailand. In these schools, there was a demand for telling stories in English as well. However, this was not the original objective of the project. The troupe were not quite ready as the training emphasized local languages, but Margaret and Wajuppa could serve the schools’ needs. During the period of school visits, Margaret and Wajuppa continued the training in the evening. At this time, some students with a better command of English would tell stories in English as well as in local languages. It took almost a year to cover every school in the project. In the next series of school visits, which was one year apart, all the students had opportunities to hone their English speaking skills.

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New Courses at Mahasarakham University for Students in the Project and for All The students in the project were most enthusiastic about attending the training classes. This was evident in their regular attendance in the evening after their usual classes. Many faculty members in the English department also attended the sessions. They encouraged Wajuppa and Margaret to award the students with credit courses, relating to folktales and storytelling. The first course was Children’s Literature, which included analysis of outstanding literary works for children, including fairy tales, journeys, adventures, and science fiction, which was very relevant. Students had opportunities to read picturebooks and children’s literature in English (Syllabus, Western languages and Linguistics Department, Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty, Mahasarakham University, 1995). The second course offered to students in the project was Independent Study in Literature which involved the study and analysis of literature with emphasis on one particular topic (Syllabus, Western languages and Linguistics Department, Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty, Mahasarakham University, 1995). The course description is quite broad so the instructor can narrow the content to suit his or her specialty and to suit the needs of the students registered. For the storytelling project, we proposed the topic Folktales and Storytelling. The students were to learn the following: definitions of folktales, types of folktales, how to collect folktales, types of storytelling, storytelling techniques, collecting folktales from reading, interviewing storytellers, selecting stories from folktale collections for performances, how to translate folktales, and practice translating folktales from student collections. The two courses above were open to other students as free elective courses. Thus, the courses continued at the Western Languages and Linguistics Department, Humanities and Social sciences Faculty, Mahasarakham University. The course on folktales and storytelling continued to be offered for 21 years, from 1995 to 2016 until Wajuppa’s retirement.

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Integration of Children’s Literature and Independent Study in Literature: Folktales and Storytelling The Western Languages and Linguistics Department offered these two courses every semester for 21 years in a row. Most students registered in either Children’s Literature or Independent Study in Literature (Folktales and Storytelling). In the last year of Wajuppa’s teaching, a group of students enrolled in the two courses in one semester. This was when the two courses integrated. This time, Wajuppa took the group of students to a few communities to meet local traditional storytellers and interview them for folktales. For Independent Study in Literature, students collected folktales and biographical sketches of the storytellers. After that, they needed to choose three folktales to adapt in a ‘ready-to-tell’ format and then translate them into English. Students could tell in either Thai or local language and in English. For Children’s literature, students would take the adapted stories to design pictures or illustrations for a complete picturebook, splitting the text into 16 pages, as in the example following. For the storytelling class, a group of students collected folktales from the elders in a village in Surin. One of the elders told the following story. Once a crow and a turtle were good friends. They lived in the forest, (which is now called Thung Gula Ronghai.). Every day they would go out together to find food. The crow would fly high in the sky to find food deep in the forest. The turtle did not go very far, because he walked slowly with heavy shell on his back. But in the evening, they would come to stay together again. Turtle always wanted to go far to find food like his friend, Crow. He kept thinking of how he could go up in the sky with his friend. One day, he asked Crow. “Friend Crow, I would like to go up in the sky and go to find food far from here like you. Can you please take me with you?” Crow thought about it before answering, “Taking you flying in the sky is very difficult, but let me think about this for a while.” The next day, Crow came up with a good plan. He carried a stick in his beak and said to Turtle, “Turtle, I can take you in the sky with me. You just bite hard on one end of the stick and I will bite hard on the other end. Then I can take you flying up high in the sky.” Turtle was so excited, “Yes, let’s go now. I can’t wait.” He readily bit on one end of the stick. But Crow said, “Oh, Friend Turtle, you must promise me to bite hard on the stick and never let go of it, no matter what happens.” Turtle was so eager to fly, he nodded his head as a promise. Crow bit on the other end, and began to flap his

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wings and fly up in the sky. He went higher and higher. Turtle was so happy. He thought, “My dream has finally come true.” He was enjoying the green forest beneath him, but he kept his mouth shut. Unfortunately, a cow grazing in the field below looked up and saw the turtle in the sky. He shouted loud and clear, “Turtle, why are you up there in the sky. You are a reptile. You are supposed to be down here, not up there. Don’t you know that?” Hearing that, Turtle was so angry. He did not even think about the promise he gave to Crow. He opened his mouth to reply to the cow. As he was opening his mouth, the stick fell down from his mouth. His body fell down, down, down, very fast, and hit the ground, with his shell on the ground, not too far from where the cow was. The stick fell down and hit the cow’s mouth hard, so hard that all the cow’s front teeth came out. The cow was so furious; he ran to Turtle’s body, flipped Turtle’s body right side up and shouted loudly and angrily. “You, Stupid Turtle. You make me lose my front teeth. I am taking revenge on you now.” Cow angrily and heavily stepped on Turtle’s back. “Here, here, here. Step, step, step.” Turtle cried out in pain, “Ouch, ouch, ouch.” Since that time, Cow has no front teeth. And Turtle got large spots, like cow’s footprints on his back. (Retold by Mr. Boonmee Sophang, Rattanaburi, Surin, northeast Thailand)

The group of students worked on the story and made a picturebook with beautiful illustrations. Daffodil International University Press, Dhaka, Bangladesh published the book in 2017. Figure 3.1 is the book cover and Figs. 3.2 and 3.3 are the conclusion from the picturebook.

Storytelling Tours in the English Speaking Setting and English Teaching Lessons The students in the project learned to tell Thai folktales in English, yet they were not confident. To boost the students’ confidence, Dr MacDonald offered to provide the students with opportunities to tell stories in English speaking settings for ten days. Wajuppa discussed this in the article, “Global Storytelling and Local Cultural Preservation and Revitalization” (Tossa, 2012). In 1996, we received funding from the John F. Kennedy Foundation of Thailand to bring four students from our project to tell stories in English in the Pacific Northwest. Dr MacDonald provided food and accommodation in her own home as well as organizing programs for us.

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Fig. 3.1 The front cover of the picturebook, Turtle & the C(r)ow

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Fig. 3.2 First page of the conclusion of the story

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Fig. 3.3 Second page of the conclusion of the story

The students returned to Thailand with a better command of English and with confidence because they could tell stories in English to the audience of different age groups and their performances were popular. After the first group of students’ tour of the United States, two more

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groups of students toured to the U.S.A. The students in the second group were less confident in telling stories in English in front of the English speaking audience than the first one. However, with vigorous practice, the students were brave enough to give several performances. They returned home with confidence. Altogether, 8 out of 20 students had chances to use English in authentic settings. These eight students graduated with high honours. Most of them become English teachers and some of them become administrators in schools. We have found that storytelling pedagogy works well to teach English and to boost learner confidence in the use of the language in authentic settings. In storytelling performances, student-storytellers learned the stories that have been adapted and polished using correct English. With a lot of practice, they remember correct English and use it in real life. In the actual performances, however, they do not deliver the stories through rote memory, as they need to solicit responses from the audience. This is how storytelling evokes more natural English usage. When the students can do that, they feel confident that the English that they learn from the stories works.

The Aftermath of Teaching English via Folktales and Storytelling The project Storytelling: a Means to Maintain a Disappearing Language and Culture in Northeast Thailand ended in 1998, but the use of folktales and storytelling at Mahasarakham University continued. The two courses originally aiming at the students in the project during 1995–1998 were offered to all students as the required courses for students in the Western Languages and Linguistics Department and free elective courses for students from other majors. As part of the course Independent Study in Literature, students were to search for traditional storytellers in their communities and interview them for more folktales. Thus, Wajuppa, her colleagues and students collected more folktales year after year until 2016 when she retired. Students taking these two courses would work in both local language and English, as they were required to translate at least three collected tales from their own collections into English. For students taking the Children’s Literature course, they partly had to translate and retell at least one of their collected folktales. As part of their final project for the course, students had to work on one picture book of 16 pages. Thus, the collection of folktales grew.

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After her retirement, Wajuppa became president of the Folktales and the Arts of Storytelling Foundation. She sets up the Story House where she houses many volumes of books relating to folklore, children’s literature, picturebooks (commercial ones and homemade ones by her former students). These items are available to the public. Interested people or children could come to use the space for reading and learning to tell stories, or to attend academic programs relating to the preservation of local folktales and the art of storytelling, children’s literature, and more. In the past three years, the foundation also welcomed young international storytellers to spend time telling stories in town and in the nearby schools. The foundation provided room and board and domestic travels. The Folktales and the Arts of Storytelling Foundation and the Story House have been in use from 2016 to the present. However, during the COVID 19 pandemic, they have been idle. Once COVID 19 is under control, they will become active again.

The Use of Folktales and Storytelling in Other Courses During 2013 and 2015, Wajuppa received funding from Mahasarakham University to conduct a cultural project titled, One Program One Culture to enable her to bring students to visit one community each year to collect folktales from elders in the community. One condition of the fund was the project leader had to integrate the findings with other courses in the department. Thus, Wajuppa applied folktales and storytelling in other classes that she taught. In Introduction to Literature and Poetry, Wajuppa taught simple poetry writing. She told stories and had the students draw pictures from what they heard. After that, they would write a poem to describe their pictures. Here is an example. The story was from the area called Thung Gula Ronghai4 which is a land that is so vast that it covers five provinces in northeast Thailand

4 In the old times, the land was so vast that it took so long to walk before reaching any village or inhabitant. One time the Gula people (one of the many ethnic groups from Myanmar) walked in the hot sun across the land to sell goods, but they could not find any living soul. They became so hopeless that they sat down and cried. The land was called Thung Gula Ronghai that means the land on which the Gula people cried.

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– Roiet, Mahasarakham, Surin, Yasothon, and Sisaket, an area of approximately 377, 358 acres.5 The story Wajuppa told the students came from Mr Phaijit Wasantasenanon from Ban Muang Bua, Roiet. Here is the summary of the folktale. Once a man went to a festival in one village on the other side of the Thung Gula Ronghai. After the festival was over, he had to walk in the dark across the Thung Gula Ronghai alone. As he was walking, perhaps, midway, all of a sudden, he saw bright light not so far from where he stood. When he looked beside him, he saw that the light came from the neck of an embodiment of a man, an ancient man, without a head. He was so scared, but he remembered a message passed on for generations that if you see a ghost with the light as his head in the Thung Gula Ronghai, you must stay as calm as possible and speak politely to the ghost. The words are “Dear Thao Hahdkhampong, Thank you for accompanying me, but please keep a little distance. Don’t come too close. I am afraid.” The ghost would walk a little farther, but continued accompanying the man. When the man was about to reach his village, he spoke to the ghost again, “If you are searching for your loved one, Nang Khamphaeng, she is not in the village. Please go look for her somewhere else.” After saying that, the light disappeared.6

After retelling the story, here is an example of a student’s poetic response and drawing (Fig. 3.4). One dark night in Thung Gula I felt like something following me. 5 From Thailand’s Land Development Department’s information. https://www.ldd.go. th/EFiles_html/main%20project/main_page.htm#6.%20Tung%20Kula%20Rong%20Hai% 20Development%20Project(Phase. 6 The ghost is that of a heart broken man, Thao Hahdkhampong and his friend, Thao Thon. Thao Thon and Thao Hahdkhampong were good friends; they fell in love with twin sisters, daughters of a city ruler. Thao Hahdkhampong fell in love with Nang Khamphaeng and Thao Thon fell in love with Nang Saengsee, but he also liked Nang Khamphaeng. Thao Thon learned some magic incantations. He lured the two sisters to come to him by using magic. They became his wives. Thao Hahdkhampong went to ask Thao Thon to give him his loved one, Nang Khamphaeng, but Thao Thon refused to give her back. They fought and Thao Thon cut off Thao Hahdkhampong’s head. Before he died, he vowed to search for his loved one, Nang Khamphaeng. Blood flowed up from his neck and the blood became light. So he was called Phi Hua Saeng, the ghost with light as his head.

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Fig. 3.4 Student drawing of the ghost with light as his head

It was shining in the dark brightly, “The ghost with light as his head!” I tried to calm down and talked politely; No answer, but it went on following me. When I arrived at my village, I said thanks and it was gone.

With the initial goals to revitalise and preserve local language and culture, Prasong has transpired folktales and storytelling in special education for children with disabilities. Grove (2013) describes storytelling as

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an educational approach to “open new worlds for learners with or without special educational needs” (p. ii). In great efforts, Wajuppa and Prasong have pedagogically innovated storytelling and folktales to assist children and adults in communities. They have inspired university students to join and contribute to the project as strength gathering to sow love and hope for special needs children in the local schools.

Storytelling in Special Education There are many types of special education settings in Thailand. Prasong has provided academic services for several settings. They include an early intervention program in Mahasarakham Rajabhat University, and a school for individuals with hearing impairment. In both Khonkaen, and Kalasin, there is a school for individuals with cognitive impairment, and a special school in Kalasin. Prasong found out that these schools did not include storytelling programs for their students. Prasong thought the students may have improved learning experiences with storytelling as it is recognized as a core component of the kindergarten curriculum proposed by Froebel (Weber, 1984). Storytelling can stimulate imagination, improve listening, aid critical thinking, build an understanding of emotions and form a strong learning community (as Louise and Thao note in Chapter One). So Prasong introduced storytelling sessions in these schools. Prior to the use of storytelling in special education in Thailand, Prasong worked on several projects, experimenting on the use of storytelling with special education children at the University of Oregon where he undertook his PhD study in Early Childhood and Intervention Education.

Experiment on the Use of Storytelling in Special Education at the University of Oregon During his PhD degree study at the University of Oregon, Prasong conducted a storytelling project for improving three children with autistic spectrum disorders. He arranged the storytelling sessions for them three times a week to observe their language proficiency. At the end of the project, all three children had improved their language skills along with improved positive behaviours. They could speak using full sentences or three-word phrases and expressed great enjoyment of the stories. Moreover, they could respond to the questions and express their emotions during the sessions. After graduation, Prasong continues bringing the power of storytelling to his present work.

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Storytelling for Early Childhood Children in Early Intervention Program Prasong started his work at the Faculty of Education, Mahasarakham University in 2009. His work involves early childhood education and special education teacher training programs. He has conducted storytelling programs for the children with disabilities at the Special Education Unit of Mahasarakham Rajabhat University. In the activities, his students were instructed to use various kinds of storytelling such as tandem telling, story-theatre, picturebook reading, drawing and telling stories, finger play storytelling, storytelling with objects, role-play, to name a few. He and his students introduce storytelling in circle time in the morning. The children had never had a chance to join in storytelling before. The storytelling activities gave the children opportunities to share their happiness and enjoyment with stories. The children played roles in the stories, expressed their feelings of love and care for people in their lives, and learned simple rules such as turn-taking, following traffic signs, self-cleaning, or cleaning places. In these sessions, Prasong also provided the children with picturebook reading, tandem storytelling, and short and repetitious stories.

Storytelling for Children with Cognitive Disabilities In the teacher-training program, Prasong together with his students visited the schools to learn about children with disabilities. His students had to prepare learning activities relating to arts, science activities, and storytelling activities. Prasong trained his students to use storytelling for these children. He taught his students to tell stories in tandem style and picturebook reading. He also added the techniques of using storytelling for children with disabilities, such as how to do prompts, how to ask and listen to the children, and how to moderate pace to gain children’s interest in the storytelling. In the storytelling activities for the children with cognitive disabilities, children also learned by also reading the same story as a picturebook. They could see the pictures with animated voices of the student-storytellers. The children really enjoyed the sessions and learned to express their feelings.

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Storytelling for Children with Hearing Disabilities Prasong worked with students in the special education program, Mahasarakham University when he led a project at a special school. One of the schools was for individuals with hearing impairment in Khon Kaen. Children at the school enjoyed storytelling activities using storytelling as pedagogy. In the storytelling activities, Prasong worked with a sign language translator. The students learned, laughed and were engaged in the storytelling. Like Louise and Thao note in Chapter One, Prasong finds that storytelling is a responsive pedagogy. Storytelling is a powerful tool, which teachers and educators can use to help students with disabilities to learn and expand their knowledge.

Principles of Storytelling Pedagogy in Our Practices Employing storytelling in the work of cultural preservation, language teaching, and special education, Wajuppa and Prasong see that relationality, responsiveness , empathetic imagination, and knowledge creation are present in every step of their work. Relationality In training the original group of students in the project Storytelling: a Means to Maintain a Disappearing Language and Culture in Northeast Thailand (1995–1998), Wajuppa and Prasong see that relationality was key through the special storytelling community created. Students who attended the evening sessions after their regular classes formed a special bond. Margaret, the trainer, gave equal attention to everyone. Every session emphasised sharing. Margaret shared her stories, Thai folktales from the book she edited, plus a few other Thai tales that she researched during the time she spent in Mahasarakham. Students learned these tales and practice retelling them. In every session, students also shared their stories they collected from their communities as in Step 2 of the training. The entire class then helped each other to select stories, adapt them for the school visits, and tell the stories in various styles. Some would choose to tell solo, some in pairs or tandem telling, and some in groups as storytheatre style. In tandem telling, two students would take the roles of

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storytellers and of the two characters in the story. For example, in the story of Elephants and Bees, one student would take a role of the Elephant and the other one as the Bee (like Swee & Karen did in Chapter Five). In story-theatre, a group of 3–5 students would tell a story together. One student would be a storyteller, the others would take roles as characters in the story. In the story of If It Belongs to Us, It Will Come to Us, one student would be a storyteller, one student would take a role of husband, one student would take a role of the wife, and two students take the role of the buffalo traders. All provide rich experience of relating with others. Responsiveness In working on stories to tell to children, Margaret and Wajuppa envisioned the responses the children would have after listening to the selected stories. The use of language, actions, and movements in the storytelling aimed to arouse certain responses from the children. Audience participation in the process of storytelling is key to arouse responsiveness. The use of body movements, chorus, repetition of short simple verses, and songs worked well. Margaret and Wajuppa trained the students to be responsive to the children’s needs while listening to stories. For older children, the stories can be a little longer and more complicated. For younger children, the stories are shorter and less complicated as their attention span may be shorter. Students also observe the reactions of the children as well. If they become restless or noisy, the students need to change the pace of telling or to get the children to participate in the storytelling somehow. For example, one time the children were noisy and restless, the students asked them to act as flowers in the garden in the story of Crow and Peacock. The children then stood still, as flowers could not move around. After each school visit, they discussed what worked and what did not work and tried to find ways to improve their storytelling for the next school visits. Responsiveness also comes into play in the process of teaching poetry and children’s literature by using folktales and storytelling. In poetry classes, Wajuppa would tell a folktale collected from elders in communities to her poetry students. The students’ responses came in twofold, by drawing illustrations of the stories and writing a poem to describe their illustration.

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Empathetic Imagination In the process of teaching students to create a picturebook from a folktale they collected, the students had to extend their empathetic imagination to other time and places because the folktales took place long time ago, not this modern time in the life of the students. They need to use their knowledge and understanding of the setting in the old times. After that, they transferred their understanding into sets of pictures to create a coherent picturebook. In training students to tell stories to children with disabilities, the students had to understand how disabled children felt so that they could engage them in their storytelling. Knowledge Creation In the process of the work of the project Storytelling: a Means to Maintain a Disappearing Language and Culture in Northeast Thailand (1995– 1998), it is clear that storytelling can sustain language and culture in Northeast Thailand. Storytelling could convince children and teachers in schools that it is important to maintain local languages. The students in the project learned that by learning to tell stories, their command of English became better. The students in the Children’s Literature class learned the arts of picturebook production by using folktales. Students telling stories to special education children learned to shape their stories to be appropriate for the special education children’s needs.

Conclusion Storytelling is a powerful tool in various ways. In this chapter, we have discussed storytelling as a pedagogy to preserve and revitalise a disappearing language and culture in Northeast Thailand. Storytelling as pedagogy can also be appropriate for language teaching by boosting confidence in learners of English and enhancing students’ command of English. Storytelling can be effective in teaching poetry, children’s literature, and folk literature. It can also be applicable to the teaching of children with special educational needs. Teachers of many subjects may apply storytelling to their subjects.

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Suggestions for Teachers and Storytellers In general … • It is important that teachers and storytellers collect as many folktales from elders in the community as possible. If not, these tales may be lost as elders fade with age. • It is important that teachers and storytellers select appropriate tales that suit the type of audience. Some tales are appropriate for older children and some may be appropriate for younger children. • In telling stories, teachers and storytellers must be responsive to the reactions of the children and adjust the stories, the pace of telling, and the type of participation to make the performance work. • Teachers and storytellers must also learn to tell stories in various interesting ways. They could tell in solo, tandem, or story-theatre styles. They could use simple objects as props. They could use finger play, role-play, drawing illustrations, mimes, songs, and games, in their telling or as additional storytelling activities. • Teachers and storytellers must be open-minded and accept the responses of the children. Use positive reinforcement (and not be judgmental) in commenting on children’s works. Attend to children’s needs, and care for their feelings. • In all activities, teachers and storytellers must make it fun and enjoyable for the children. Audience participation in storytelling is one way to keep the children interested. For children with disabilities … • Storytellers must know the type of disability of the audience. For example, for the audience with hearing disabilities, a sign language interpreter is necessary. The storytellers and sign language interpreters must work together in preparation for each story that is used. For children with cognitive disabilities, storytellers must prepare easy and short stories with many repetitions. That will keep the audience interested in the storytelling. • When telling stories, it is useful to have assistants who can help maintain children’s behaviours.

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• Storytelling time should not be longer than 30 minutes. After the storytelling time, storytellers should prepare activities relating to the stories they told. • During storytelling time, if children show any sign of disinterest or boredom, storytellers should bring up active activities such as movement games, exercise games, body movements. That would alert children, give them more energy, and be ready for the next stories. • Storytellers should remember to prepare extra activities to use if their session is more than 30 minutes. The activities could include games, drawing, role-play, finger play, songs, or movements. • At the end of the storytelling time, storytellers should call the children to sit in a circle and require children to share what they have learned from the extra activities. Ask them to talk about their works, so they can use skills of communication.

References Grove, N. (Eds.). (2013). Using storytelling to support children and adults with special needs: Transforming lives through telling tales. Routledge. Sophang, B. (retold by), Tossa, W. (Ed.), Wichiansri, F., Muntrikaeo, K., Chiangpruek, P., Phraisin, T. (Ills.) (2017). The turtle, and the c(r)ow. Daffodil International University Press. Tossa, W. (1996). Phya Khankhaak, the Toad King: A translation of an Isan fertility myth in verse. Bucknell University Press. Tossa, W. (1999). Storytelling: A means to maintain a disappearing language and culture in Northeast Thailand. Traditional Storytelling Today, 144–152. Tossa, W. (2012). Global storytelling and local cultural preservation and revitalization. Storytelling, Self, Society, 8(3), 194–201. Vathanaprida, S. MacDonald, M. R., (Eds.) & Rohitasuke, B. (Ill.) (1994). Thai tales: Folktales of Thailand. Libraries Unlimited. Weber, E. (1984). Ideas influencing early childhood education: A theoretical analysis. Teachers College University Press. Western Languages and Linguistics Department, Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty, Mahasarakham University. (1995). B.A. (English) Syllabus.

CHAPTER 4

Adaptation and Application of Indian Stories in Classrooms Anamika Bhati and Nupur Aggarwal

Who We are as Storytellers I, Anamika (see Fig. 4.1), feel people try to make sense of the world through stories and the storyteller in me has the power to make learning fun by using the most appropriate narration to connect with the audience. I use a range of tools such as facial expressions, movement, role play, music and at times drawings to evoke audience participation. I enjoy listening to stories and the joy I get when my grandmother tells me a story even today is just incredible. My Bhaba hukum (grandmother) is my biggest inspiration to storytelling. She was a writer herself in her younger days. I learnt how to make tea and ran errands for her because of the

A. Bhati (B) Stories with Anamika, Singapore N. Aggarwal Storywallahs, Hyderabad, India e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 L. G. Phillips and T. T. P. Nguyen (eds.), Storytelling Pedagogy in Australia & Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4009-4_4

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Fig. 4.1 Anamika telling a story

love for stories. Every time, I did a chore she rewarded me with a story. I always enjoyed telling stories at family picnics and gatherings. My love for storytelling continued into motherhood when I gave birth to my first child. I had undivided attention and I made full use of the opportunity to read out bedtime stories or to narrate one while feeding my child. Following my enthusiasm for stories, the importance of the oral literature in knowledge building and realising my passion for working with children, I became a speech and drama trainer and a professional storyteller. I, Nupur (see Fig. 4.2), am a nutritionist by education, I now provide nourishment and nutrition for the soul through a carefully chosen and healthy diet of stories. As a mother of two, I discovered the effectiveness and simplicity of storytelling while interacting with my own children. I delved into the world of stories in 2012, as a performing storyteller (see Storyteller Nupur, 2021). Ever since, I have been using storytelling to nurture imagination and fuel creativity. In my many years of public storytelling, I have observed the power of stories to touch and heal hearts. I work as a Story Consultant with Storywallahs, a Bangalore based

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Fig. 4.2 Nupur telling a story

storytelling organization that helps business leaders, start-up founders, teachers, brand managers, educators and change makers leverage storytelling. I run several storytelling workshops for educators, parents and children. My specialisation lies in teacher training and coaching. I am currently engaged as a story consultant with some leading schools in India helping them in storification of the curriculum. The most outstanding reason I see for storytelling in education is the sheer joy it brings to everyone.

The Roots of Storytelling Pedagogy in India We agree with Sheila Dailey (1994) that “A story is a beautiful method of teaching religion, values, history, traditions, and customs; a creative method of introducing characters and places; an imaginative way to instil hope and resourceful thinking. Stories help us understand who we are and show us what legacies to transmit to future generations” (p. 176). Nupur: Stories have been part of Indian culture since millennia, the oldest recorded story being from the Vedic period between 1700-1100 BC

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(Kulkarni, 2013). Stories and storytelling were an essential teaching tool in ancient India when young children were sent with their gurus (teachers) to gurukul, a traditional school where a shishya (student) lived near or with the guru in the same house as a family. Gurukuls were the backbone of the education system across India till the coming of colonial rule. Everything from science to language to maths was taught through stories. Historians and other scholars have found that in between 300–500 BC, in India, stories and animal fables were narrated for educating students with a special purpose of making them learned within a short period of six months. The collection of these stories is known as Panchatantra (Kulkarni, 2013).

The origin of Panchatantra makes for an interesting story. A long time back, in ancient India, there was a kingdom called “Mahila Ropya” ruled by king Amarshakti. The king had three dull headed sons. The king was always worried regarding their studies and their future as his successors. Seeing the king so worried, the prime minister suggested that the king appoint Pandit Vishnu Sharma as the official instructor for the princes. Vishnu Sharma was known to be a master in all the Shastras (work of sacred scriptures) and the theory of politics and diplomacy. Amarshakti listened to his minister’s suggestion and called upon Vishnu Sharma who accepted the princes as his disciples. He took an oath to make them welllearned within six months. Vishnu Sharma, however, realized that it was difficult to teach his new students through conventional means, and there was a need for a creative way of teaching. Therefore, he composed many short charming, captivating animal stories, each with a lesson, and tied them in five parts, called “tantras”. After listening to and understanding these stories, the three princes became highly knowledgeable in politics and became able administrators. Thus, the Panchatantra came into origin. Panchatantra comes from the individual words, “Pancha” and “tantra”. While Pancha refers to the number five, tantra refers to ways or strategies related to inner fulfilment. Tales of greed, treachery, stupidity, deceit and other human qualities are unravelled like a matryoshka (a succession of Russian dolls-within-dolls). Centuries later, the Panchatantra was written down and translated and re-translated, becoming a literary text with simple animal stories, each story with a philosophical theme and moral (Kulkarni, 2013). Anamika: India is a diverse country rich in culture and traditions. The country is divided into several states and each state has its own unique

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way of narrating a story and passing on the tradition to the next generations (Bairy, 2017). For instance, a popular form of storytelling in Marwar (current Rajasthan state), known as “Kaavads” dates back to the sixteenth century and was popular in Western India. In this form of storytelling, the Kaavadiya Bhats (storyteller) tailor-made the story to suit the audience. The Bhat practiced by going door to door in villages, telling patrons stories of Gods, Goddesses, and Indian mythological epics such as Ramayana and Mahabharata. They would connect stories to the genealogy of the patron family along with epic stories associated with their heritage to keep the family interested (Bairy, 2017). This form of storytelling involved a high level of customisation in the choice of story and method of narration to match with the audience and their curiosity in family heritage.

Drawing from ancient wisdom presented in Panchatantra stories and continuing with the tradition of oral storytelling, we as contemporary storytellers find, adapt and deliver stories to meet the needs of our target audience. As an increasing number of schools are waking up to the power of this ancient wisdom, we have had many opportunities to unravel the magic of stories (particularly from Indian culture) in early years classrooms with amazing feedback and results. In this chapter, we use an adapted version of a Panchatantra story, The Monkeys and the hat seller, to explain the principles of storytelling in pedagogy in early years classrooms.

The Story: Monkeys and the Hat Seller---An Adaptation of a Panchatantra Story Once in a small town there lived a hat seller whose name was Bhola. Bhola would make and sell hats, hats in all colours, sizes and shapes. If you happened to go to his house, you would see the variety he made. There were violet, indigo, blue, red, orange, yellow and hats in green too. Bhola made them out of all sorts of materials. Some he would make with fur, some with paper, some with straw and at times he would use wool and feathers too. He made tall hats, short hats, big and small hats, hats with spots and hats with stripes, hats with squares that looked so bright. He made these hats day in and day out. He would then take these hats to the nearby town to sell them off singing all the way along—

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Hats, hats, all kinds of hats, Tall and short, Those with spots, Few with a feather, Some for all weather, Hats, hats, all kinds of hats.

One hot afternoon, he set from home wearing his favourite hat and carrying on his back, a sack full of hats to sell in the town. He had to cross a forest to reach the town. As it was a hot day, he decided to take a quick nap in the forest. He sat under a tree and placed the sack of hats next to him. Soon, he fell asleep. There were some monkeys on that tree. These monkeys spotted the sack. One monkey climbed down the tree, opened the sack and found the colourful hats inside. He picked a red striped hat and put it on his head. Another monkey saw that and he too climbed down the tree and pulled out a yellow hat with spots on it. Soon, the other monkeys joined in and in no time, each one of them had pulled a hat out of the sack. They all quickly climbed the tree looking their best in their newly acquired hats. After a while, Bhola woke up feeling refreshed and rested. He was ready to move on. As he picked up his sack, he realized it was empty. He was shocked. He wondered who would have taken his hats. He looked all around. He looked to his right. The hats were not there. He looked to his left. The hats were not there. He looked behind the tree. The hats were not there. Then, he looked up into the tree and guess what he saw? On every branch of that tree, there was a monkey and each one of them was wearing one of his hats: the red hat, the violet hat, the green hat, yellow hat, the one with spots, the one with stripes, the one with squares that looked bright. Bhola was shocked, “Oh no! Those are my hats.” The monkeys called back, “Oh no! Those are my hats.” “Quiet. They are mine,” said Bhola. “Quiet. They are mine,” said the monkeys. Bhola was angry. “Give me my hats back.” The monkeys were amused. “Give me my hats back,” they shouted back. This made Bhola mad. He shook a finger at the monkeys and said “You monkeys give me my hat back now or else…...” The monkeys shook their finger back at him and said “Give me my hat back now or else...” “Those hats belong to me,” Bhola yelled louder.

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“Those hats belong to me,” shouted back the monkeys. “I have made those hats” “I have made those hats” “Quiet” “Quiet” “Uhhhhhh” “Uhhhhhhh” “Why are you copying me?” yelled Bhola once more. “Why are you copying me?” replied the monkeys once more. “Stop it!” “Stop it!” “You are making fun of me,” said Bhola who was now furious. “You are making fun of me,” said the monkeys who were amused. Bhola was so frustrated. He picked a few stones and threw them at the monkeys. The monkeys plucked fruits from that tree and threw them at Bhola.

Now Bhola was getting tired. He felt frustrated and threw his own hat on the ground. When the monkeys saw Bhola do this, they too threw their hats on the ground, the red hat, the blue hat, the orange hat, the yellow hat, the one with spots, the one with stripes, the one with squares that looked bright. All these hats now lay on the ground right where Bhola stood. He quickly picked up his hats and some fruits, put them in his sack and waved at the monkeys. The monkeys waved back. Bhola walked away singing his song: Hats, hats, all kinds of hats, Tall and short, Those with spots, Few with a feather, Some for all weather, Hats, hats, all kinds of hats.

Our Approach to Storytelling When it comes to using stories in classrooms, selecting an age-appropriate story is an important step. Early on in the introductory chapter, Louise draws a parallel between storytelling and tailoring. Taking off from there, Nupur expands that just as it is critical for tailors to select the right fabric for the garment to shape and work well, a teacher has to be mindful of

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picking the right story to ensure it meets the learning goals and students’ life worlds. Just like one size doesn’t fit all, so does one story. Several factors come into play while selecting the right story. For the teacher to be sensitive and aware of the cultural diversity in the classroom while choosing the story is of utmost importance. In early years classrooms, the stories need to be short, value laden, employ age-appropriate vocabulary and have good rhythm and repetition. The purpose behind using the story should be clearly identified for the story to create the desired impact. Lastly and most importantly the teacher should select a story she likes and feels at one with. We feel that every story needs work and is always a work in progress. Once the right story has been found, it needs to be tailored to suit the audience (children) demographics and context. Simmons (2015) notes that “Storytelling is about attracting attention to what is most important or building perspective that makes some data more meaningful than the rest” (p. 88). Thus, in order to enhance meaning making, it is important to customise/adapt the story. At the time of introducing a new concept or theme, Anamika asks children their understanding of specific terms of the social/cultural context in the story. It helps to clarify children’s relatability to the story. Even using story aids helps children make meaning and connect with the story. From Anamika’s storytelling experience in Singapore, she notices that children of Indian heritage relate better to a story on Deepavali (Hindu festival) than other children who haven’t had a cultural exposure to this festival. In addition to narrating the story, Anamika brings diya (earthen lamp) and/or rangoli powder (coloured rice powder), dresses in traditional outfits and brings along traditional food items (if sharing is allowed). She may even play a song to dance. Anamika varies children’s engagement from “show and tell” to “touch and feel” or “listen, eat, dance”, depending on the situation and operational guidelines of the preschool or school. Such involvement with authentic cultural artefacts helps broaden children’s knowledge of the subject matter and their exposure to cultural nuances (knowledge creation) .

How We Tell The Monkeys and The Hat Seller We adapted The Monkeys and The Hat Seller story to emphasize on the tantra of wisdom to help children build critical thinking to navigate through life challenges—how to solve a problem with a clever yet simple

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solution. Being a tale from Panchatantra which uses animals as characters we are able to meet the learning goals to expose children to animal behaviour; and other goals such as: enable children to identify different colours and build vocabulary for sizes and geometric patterns. Repetition was brought in through an exchange of dialogues between the hat seller and the monkeys. To add colour to the storyline and characters, a song was introduced in the beginning and end. Rhyming words, opposites, colours, patterns made their way into the story. Props (jacket for the hat seller, various kinds of hats) are an integral part of the story to engage listeners and establish their connection with the story. Delivering a story well is another prerequisite. At the start of a story session, Anamika engages the audience and chats with the audience about some house rules everyone should follow in order for the story to be effective, entertaining and achieve its intended outcome. In the story, The Monkeys and the Hat Seller, Anamika uses hats as her props. She informs the children that she will share her hats with them but they need to handle the hats gently. At the time of handling the hats, Anamika demonstrates the correct way to handle them. Nupur believes in telling a story and not speaking it loudly to keep up with the tradition of oral storytelling. In her teacher training, she tells teachers not to sit still in a chair but to let themselves loose and bring their whole selves into storytelling. Storytelling being a shared experience, is necessary for a teacher to recognize the visceral responses that children tend to give while listening to a story and incorporate these responses and modify the delivery accordingly (responsiveness ) . At times, when Anamika is telling, she notices that some children get scared of big animals. These could be a lion or a crocodile or maybe a shark. In such instances, as Anamika tells the story, at the mention of these animals, she improvises from giving a scary expression and deep voice tone (that she may otherwise use) to a softer expression and modulated voice like a friendly voice for shark or maybe just smile at the end of the sentence to reassure the child. In the story, The Monkeys and the Hat Seller, when Anamika takes the role of Bhola, the hat vendor getting angry at the monkeys, she may start off cautiously and depending on children’s visceral responses, modulate her speech and drama (responsiveness ). Using vocal variety (see Fig. 4.3) brings out the emotions of the characters and also creates moments of suspense and excitement. It helps the children visualize the scenes and thereby deepens their understanding and connection with the story. When there is a moment of suspense in this

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Fig. 4.3 Anamika using vocal expression

story, that is, when the hat seller wakes up to find his hats missing, Nupur moves or leans closer to the audience, and delivers the dialogue in a low volume. Sometimes Anamika plays recorded music or uses sound effects to enhance mood or lend a soundscape to the story. A story when delivered well, triggers sympathetic imagination in children. Nupur: When we listen to stories, we go on a mental journey where we link one thing to another. We are transported to a place which is magical, mysterious and exciting, a place very different from our everyday lives. Through the characters in the story, we get an opportunity to live a life other than our own. We end up mirroring the emotions of the characters we empathize with. For example, when they are angry, we feel angry. When they are excited, we feel excited. Anamika: The telling should be powerful enough to capture and hold children’s attention and transport them into the characters’ world. To trigger emotional empathy in children, before introducing the story The Monkeys and the Hat Seller, I may bring in pictures of different expressions showing different emotions such as happy, sad, scared, shocked,

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confused and angry to name a few. I may ask the children to identify the emotions or hold up one of the pictures and act out a character showing one of the expressions/emotions in the pictures. For instance, sometimes I raise my voice in a heavier tone and show an angry expression while speaking aloud the sentence “I feel angry because my baby sister took my toy”. This way I communicate the emotion of anger. I encourage children to do the same. Nupur: The voice modulation is an effective strategy to generate empathy in a story. The way one modulates his/her voice portrays the emotions and this generates a reactive emotion in the audience and it is at this stage that the audience gets drawn into the story. The distinct character voices, changing tone, varied volumes, dramatic pauses, that a storyteller attempts while telling a story, pulls the listeners into the story. When I perform The Monkey and the Hat Seller story, I try to use varied tones to show the range of emotions the hat seller goes through in the story. I may start with a happy cheerful tone when he sets out selling hats and move to an angry tone in his interaction with the monkeys. While the narrator’s natural voice could fit well for the hat seller, the mischievous character of the monkeys can be highlighted through a nasal voice. Anamika: Dramatization and role play can also be very effective strategies to help children empathise with the characters in a story. Brown and Pleydell (1999) enacted the character of Bhola, showing the varied emotions he goes through in the story through facial expressions and gestures, can help children understand Bhola’s emotions. Children happily sing the song “Hats, hats, all kinds of hats, Tall and short …” along with me at the beginning of the story. At this point in the story, they are in a happy situation with Bhola who is excited and looking forward to selling his hats. The children sense that through my facial expressions and body movements. Similarly, towards the end of the story when there is a spat between the hat seller and monkeys, my facial expressions and body movements help children identify the characters’ emotions. The children perform different character roles during the dramatization of the story. At times children could be keen to play a specific role or be reluctant to role-play which is perfectly acceptable. For instance, in one storytelling session, there was a girl who insisted on becoming a bird while the rest were happy and excited to role-play as monkeys.

Asking probing questions post-story like Why was Bhola angry with the monkeys? Why was he feeling tired? What shocked him? Why was he happy in the end? can further help build empathetic imagination in children.

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How We Teach Through Storytelling? Nupur: The gift of stories is the most special gift young children receive from their teachers. When the teacher brings alive the characters through exaggerated body movements, gestures and facial expressions, the students repeat the act with a lot of enthusiasm regardless of their developmental level. Everyone in the classroom gets to live the same moment. They have fun together hence share the same emotional experience. The story enactment increases the chances of peer interaction and collaboration thereby, creating a strong sense of community. “Storytelling drama incorporates the pretend play that children thrive on, but yet includes the ideas, participation, and cooperation of the class as a whole group—all of which are important components to community building” (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009). In order to empower students to achieve their highest potential and for the story to work its magic, it is important for a teacher to create surroundings where students are willing to open their minds and express their opinions without fear. Anamika: It is important to build relationships with the children for them to trust and believe in you. Children will be open to learning when they feel comfortable and safe in the learning environment.

The first step in creating a trusting environment is to acknowledge a student’s presence with a simple greeting as they walk into the classroom or hall. When Nupur meets students for the first time, she plays an icebreaker with them to build a certain familiarity, make the group alert and active and prepared to receive the story. For Anamika a name game works particularly well at the start of the term, as it helps children to get to know and understand one another. Nupur: For the story, The Monkeys and the Hat Seller, I gather the children and invite them to sit close to me making sure I am visible and audible to everyone. I narrate the story with exaggerated facial expressions and voice modulation to bring the characters and scenes alive and children respond with non-verbal cues. They may smile, nod, frown, stare or laugh, making storytime a shared experience.

Encouraging the children to chime in the story, whenever an opportunity presents itself, is an effective strategy to build relationality. In this story, the song that the hat seller sings while selling the hats, and the dialogue between the hat seller and the monkeys are two good opportunities for relationality. Informing the children of their expected

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participation before starting the story helps set the expectations and build preparedness and comfort. While encouraging students to participate, it’s good to motivate them to express themselves freely and aim at creating a learning environment which does not have a right or wrong response. By celebrating all students, a teacher fosters an open environment filled with happiness and creativity. Anamika believes asking questions allows children to contribute to the story and feel their opinion matters. In The Monkeys and the Hat Seller, when she comes to the part “he had hats of different colours …” she asks the students to share the colour of their hat or of one they would like, thus, allowing them to connect with a personal experience and in turn relate to the story better. When Nupur tells The Monkeys and the Hat Seller, she engages in a more dramatic telling of the story where she dresses up like a hat seller with a bagful of hats. She uses hats of different shapes, sizes, colours as props. Nupur encourages students to play the characters of the monkeys. They are given their dialogues and are encouraged to act out their characters using their imagination and creativity. The storytelling teacher might have to create extra roles, dialogues, actions to include the entire class. Anamika feels that a good practice is to include simple actions to go with the songs as it makes it easy for the children to follow and remember. From our many years of training and coaching and using stories in classrooms, we feel that stories facilitate learning at multiple levels and cater to all kinds of learners. This realization becomes stronger for us when we see children participating in a story irrespective of their literacy skills and developmental level. This participation is brought about in a number of innovative ways to ensure that it has something for all kinds of learners. In The Monkeys and the Hat Seller story, Nupur says that whenever children hear the song in the beginning of the story, there is a natural urge she sees in children to sing along with her. Anamika has also experienced this moment when children join her in refrains during the story narration. Asking questions has always been an effective strategy for us (see Fig. 4.4). We ask questions to engage children in storytelling and to test and build their knowledge about what is being said or taught (knowledge creation) . The children are usually invited to reflect or interpret the following questions after the story ends. • Who was selling the hats?

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Fig. 4.4 Nupur asking quesion during storytelling

• • • • •

What were the colours of the hats? Where did the hat seller take a nap? How did the hat seller lose his hats? Why did the monkeys take away the hats? What did the hat seller do to get the hats back?

Asking questions is also a way to turn children from passive to active listeners during the storytelling. The children could be asked questions like “How many hats is the Hat seller carrying?”, “How do you think the hat seller is feeling?”, or “Oh no! What’s happening now?” Using open questions can also encourage children to share their ideas like asking “What else could the hat seller have done to get the hats from the monkeys?” To check whether children are understanding the story, the teacher can ask probing questions such as How do you know that? We can test children’s prior knowledge by asking factual questions like Where do monkeys live? and What sound do monkeys make? By telling stories in classrooms, teachers introduce children to story structure. They let children know that a story has characters, settings,

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plot, problems and resolutions. It also enhances children’s ability to sequence events in a logical order. The teachers can help children use this knowledge to co-construct stories with her, giving children an opportunity to practice telling stories themselves (knowledge creation). One such storytelling game that both of us commonly use in classrooms is called “Let’s spin a story”. We start the game by introducing the characters and setting along with the plot. The students are encouraged to continue the story by adding only one sentence to the story on their turn. This is a good strategy to build community in the classroom by making the entire class own the story and impart the story language such as “Once upon a time” or “Long, long ago” to the children. Concept development and vocabulary is an important aspect of using stories in classrooms. The Monkeys and Hat seller story introduces children to the concept of character building, numbers 1–10, colour identification, pattern learning, opposites, emotions, different kinds of hats, conflict resolution and concept of day and night. While using a story in classrooms, the focus should be both on academic content and dramatics to keep the learning whole. For the story to work its magic and to make students own the story, a storyteller should be ready to incorporate the children’s responses to her questions which may change the course of the story. After all, storytelling is a shared experience. Using shared narratives is an effective strategy to build positive classroom culture to reinforce social emotional skills thereby easing pressure off the educators for whom managing a room full of young children is hard and challenging. Research has shown that storytelling is a useful practice to promote learning, class relationships, a sense of belonging, independence and a space for self-reflection (Caminotti & Gray, 2012; Cleverley-Thompson, 2018; Parmegiani, 2014; Pour-Khorshid, 2018). Storytelling with children is an effective way to enhance the language of children, including vocabulary, grammar and narrative skills (Isbell et al., 2004; Nicolopoulou, 2015). Bruner (1986) observed that storytelling allows us to use language to “create possible and imaginary worlds through words” (p. 156).

Conclusion Modern India is witnessing an ever-growing interest among educators to use stories as a pedagogical tool. Its perception is shifting from being a

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means of casual entertainment to a means of bringing in holistic development of a child’s social, emotional, cognitive and physical needs in order to build a solid foundation for lifelong learning and wellbeing. With the knowledge that storytelling is a shared experience, it is enjoyable, creative, flexible and inclusive, Indian educators are embracing stories to turn around the classroom experience. There is a shift happening from “What to learn” to “How to learn”. Stories are finding their way not just in alternate education but are being interwoven in the fabric of mainstream education with the aim of making learning enjoyable and memorable just as Vishnu Sharma did centuries ago. But there still lies a long road ahead to be taken to transform education through storytelling. As storytellers, we are positive that one such day will come when stories will replace rote learning in classrooms. As Emily Dickinson said “One step at a time is all it takes you to get there” and as a trainer, coach, storytellers we see many educators take that step.

Storytelling Tips and Suggestions From our storytelling experience we have put together some pointers on creating a successful storytelling experience. Here we are sharing a few with you. Find the right story to tell. Pick the one you can relate to and feel at one with. • Look for stories from different cultures. It’s the best way to introduce children to different customs, religions, ideas, beliefs and traditions followed by people around the world. • Every story needs work. Adapt the story based on the needs of the target audience. Keep the story short and simple for early years. • Make the character “relatable”. The character should “feel” real. He or she shouldn’t be perfect but have weaknesses and talents just like we all do. • The story should be “believable”. Do not use coincidences to solve the problems in the story. • Use vivid language that children can understand. • Pay attention to the opening and closing of the story. Enter and exit a story gracefully. • Bring out the emotions through voice modulation. Play around with different voices for different characters.

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• Use vocal variety while narrating a story. Using the right tone, taking dramatic pauses, altering the speed of telling helps in lighting up the story. • Allow the body to reflect the story being told through gestures, expressions, movements and eye contact. • Invite participation. Ask questions. Let children join you in a refrain. It is however helpful to set some ground rules beforehand for a better class control and a smoother storytelling experience. • An effective approach to build excitement and bring energy into storytelling is to draw out answers from the children especially when trying to find a solution to the problem. This encourages creative thinking and problem solving. • Use props extensively in early years classrooms. Use simple and easy to handle props. Pay attention to the size of the props. Do not take all props out at once. This can be distracting. Enlist the help of children when using props.

Storytelling Resources Storyweaver.org.in Designed to provide children with reading resources, Storyweaver is a digital gateway to thousands of richly illustrated, open-licensed children’s stories in mother tongue languages. There’s more to Storyweaver than just reading. It is also a first-of-itskind platform that provides easy-to-use tools to create, adapt and translate new stories for children. It’s the ideal place for parents, educators, writers, translators and illustrators to come together to weave new stories for children and help to create a pathway to nurture the next generation of readers! The world of Indian Stories includes an overview of Indian telling; the basics of storytelling; stories from all the states and tips on how to tell; over 50 activities covering visual art, writing, craft and discussion; interesting and replicable black and white illustrations based on folk styles; unique story map; ways to find other stories to tell; discussion on storytelling in schools; and further resources, story sources and reading. Spagnoli, C. (2001). Terrific trickster tales from Asia.Alleyside Press. Introduces youth to the fascinating folklore and culture of Asia using 26 authentic universal trickster tales from 17 different nations. This

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resource can be used for storytelling sessions, programming or to teach storytelling skills to young people. Spagnoli, C. (1999). Jasmine and Coconuts: South Indian Tales . Libraries Unlimited. Tales of tricksters, heroes and sages as well as modern jokes, true stories and teaching stories—42 tales total, balanced in length, mood and age appeal can be found in this unique anthology. With the stories, the authors give a historical overview of the region and detailed storytelling notes. Colour photos and elegant line drawings complement the text, as does a resource listing of books, centres, websites and a calendar of South Indian festivals. A beautiful introduction to a fascinating culture and people. Spagnoli, C. (2007). World of Asian Stories: A teaching resource. Tulika Books. This omnibus of stories and storytelling traditions from 43 countries across Asia provides an overview of methods and the multitude of stylistic variations. Raghunath, J. (2014). Stories I like to tell. Tulika Publishers. A compilation of Jeeva’s favourite tales. At the end of each tale is a note that makes fascinating connections with similar stories from other cultures. FEAST (Federation of Asian Storytellers) https://feast.wildapricot. org/FEASTstore They have 3 series of Asian folktales published in their name. Each of the anthologies come with a retelling guide. • A feast of Stories: Collection of 15 folktales from Asia devoted to the theme of food. • Royal: Wise and Otherwise: Collection of 27 traditional Asian tales on the theme of royalty. • Hiss, Roar, Squeak: Collection of 17 delightful Asian tales on animal theme. Amarchitrakatha.com This comic series is the best place to find stories about mythology Puranas, ancient history, medieval or modern times or folktales, fables and legends in literature. Anant Pai teamed up with a publishing team and launched Amar Chitra Katha. When in 1997 he watched a quiz where children in

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India were not able to answer a simple question from Ramayana. He was concerned that at this rate Indian culture and heritage will be forgotten if something was not done soon. And till date new comics are still being created and printed by AMK (Amar Chitra Kathka) aimed to educate the young. Tell-a-tale.com This website is by a blogger, it has 40 Panchatantra stories, along with folktales, poetry, interviews of storytellers, book releases and book reviews. A platform for young and old, it also gives story writers a space to get feedback. Below is another story from Panchatantra that we use in our classrooms. An adaptation of Panchatantra story: The Blue Jackal All the animals in the jungle lived close to their kind. As the saying goes, “united we stand divided we fall”, the animals helped each other, calling out if someone was lost or if danger was close by. The deer would stay in a herd, the lionesses would stay in their pride, the troop of monkeys would eat together, even the elephants stayed together in a herd. At times it got very noisy in the jungle. One could hear: (ask the children to name the animals as you make the sounds). “Grrrrrrrr …” from the lion, “ooh ooh aah aa…” from the monkey, “awoo awoo…” from the wolves, “hehee hehee he…” from the hyenas, “hoot hoot hoot…” from the owls.

Now among them lived a pack of jackals that would eat, sleep and hunt together. But there was this one jackal who was very lazy, he looked for leftovers and didn’t want to go hunting. “It so hot! or my leg is paining, my head hurts, I will help tomorrow…,” he always had an excuse.

His pack got angry one day and decided to teach him a lesson. “Today’s hunt was not good we don’t have any food for you to eat,” said the pack leader.

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The jackal was very hungry he started looking around for food but couldn’t find anything. He kept walking until he reached the end of the forest. Without realising he strayed into a village. The Rangrej’s1 house was just at edge of the village. Every day he would prepare big tubs with colours that he wanted to use for the clothes. Sometimes red, or green, or yellow or pink, as he dyed the material, he would sing a song “Dip it dip it dip it in, Now you dip it 3 more times, Once the colour comes out right All it needs, is, to drrrrrry……” (to the tune of twinkle twinkle little star poem).

Today as he dyed the cloths and went off to dry them, the jackal stepped into the backyard. “Woof woof woof …….the Rangrej’s dogs started to chase him.

He started to run as fast as he could right into the Rangrej’s house. …la la la la la la la ala a la la la la aaaaaalalal… … la la la la la la la ala a la la la la aaaaaalalal…

SPLASH! He fell into a blue dye tub, and was stained from head to toe by the time he managed to get out of the tub, he was all blue. Somehow, he escaped the dogs and ran back into the jungle. He noticed all the animals looked at him in a strange way but didn’t think much of it. “Why is everyone looking at me?” he thought.

When he went to drink water, he saw his reflection in the river and realized he was all blue. At that time, he got an idea.

1 Rangrej- a person who dyes cloths for a living.

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“Listen one and listen all, I’m the one and only one who has been sent to you, by Lord Indra,2 to guard you from the humans. They are taking our trees and shrinking our jungle” he told all the animals.

The animals feared losing their home and were happy to hear that help was here. He started to boss them around. He gave duties to all the animals, some were in charge of getting him food, others had to make sure he was comfortable. He sent all the jackals far far away from where he was, saying they had to guard the jungle. He knew if they stayed close to him, they would recognize him. He was leading a perfect life of luxury. One day a pack of jackals at a distance were calling out to fellow jackals “O loo, O loo, O loo, O loo”. As it was natural for all jackals to reply, our blue jackal too called out without thinking “O loo, O loo, O loo, O loo”. As soon as he howled the other animals recognized him, and realized he had lied to them, and they had been tricked. “You are not sent by Lord Indra; you are that lazy Jackal ” shouted out the angry animals.

Hearing this the jackal knew he was in trouble. He started to run and the animals started to chase him …la la la la la la la ala a la la la la aaaaaalalal… …la la la la la la la ala a la la la la aaaaaalalal… …he ran away as far as he could, never to return to the jungle.

References Bairy, M. (2017). Kaavads: The essence of stories from Rajasthan. https://www. tell-a-tale.com/kaavads-essence-stories-rajasthan/. Brown, V., & Pleydell, S. (1999). The dramatic difference: Drama in preschool and kindergarten classrooms. Heinemann. Bruner, J. S. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Harvard University Press. Caminotti, E., & Gray, J. (2012). The effectiveness of storytelling on adult learning. Journal of Workplace Learning, 24(6), 430–438. 2 Lord Indra- he is the king of Gods.

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Cleverley, S. (2018). Teaching storytelling as a leadership practice. Journal of Leadership Education., 17 (1), 132–140. Copple, C., & Bredekamp, S. (2009). Developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood programs. National Association for the Education of Young Children. Dailey, S. (1994). Tales as tools: The power of story in the classroom. The National Storytelling Press. Isbell, R., Sobol, J., Lindauer, L., & Lowrance, A. (2004). The effects of storytelling and story reading on the oral language complexity and story comprehension of young children. Early Childhood Education Journal, 32, 157–163. Kulkarni, S. ( 2013). Panchatantra: An example of using narratives in teaching in ancient Indian education. Tampere University Press. Nicolopoulou, A. (2015). Using a narrative-and play-based activity to promote low-income preschoolers’ oral language, emergent literacy, and social competence. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 31, 147–162. Parmegiani, A. (2014). Bridging literacy practices through storytelling, translanguaging, and an ethnographic partnership: A Case study of Dominican students at Bronx Community College. Journal of Basic Writing, 33(1), 23–51. Pour-, F. (2018). Cultivating sacred spaces: A racial affinity group approach to support critical educators of color. Teaching Education, 4, 318–329. Simmons, A. (2015). Whoever tells the best story wins (2nd ed.). AMACOM. Storyteller Nupur. (2021). https://www.youtube/c/storytellernupur.

CHAPTER 5

The Pedagogical Uses of Kamishibai, the Paper Theatre, in Asia Karine Lespinasse, Eiko Matsui, and Etsuko Nozaka

Who We Are as Kamishibai Storytellers? I, Karine, am a French educator, who trained in kamishibai tradition of storytelling in Tokyo in 2010 when I was researching additional pedagogical resources while creating a youth library for the French Alliance in Singapore. I continue to apply storytelling in my current role as a teacher librarian at an international school in Singapore. I met Eiko-san and Etsuko-san at the IKAJA annual event in 2010 and was honoured to be the International Guest of Honour for the 20th anniversary of IKAJA in 2012. I kept in touch with Etsuko, supervisor of

K. Lespinasse (B) Lecturer, Education Department, Founder and Managing Director of Polylinguo.xyz, James Cook University, Singapore e-mail: [email protected] E. Matsui Muralist, Supervisor of the International Kamishibai Association of Japan (IKAJA), Tokyo, Japan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 L. G. Phillips and T. T. P. Nguyen (eds.), Storytelling Pedagogy in Australia & Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4009-4_5

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the international members of the International Kamishibai Association of Japan knowing a collaboration opportunity would arise one day. I, Etsuko Nozaka, am a Japanese writer and translator. I live in Japan, but I have also lived in Europe for five years. Since 2001, I have been active as a performer and educator about kamishibai at seminars of the International Kamishibai Association of Japan (IKAJA) in Tokyo. I am also responsible for workshops overseas and often attend international congresses. I, Eiko Matsui, am a muralist, with over 150 murals in Japan. I cofounded IKAJA along with Etsuko and other colleagues. My kamishibai Nido to (Never Again, 2005) was selected by the International Youth Library in Munich for their “Hello, Dear Enemy” exhibit. I perform and give lectures about kamishibai overseas, as well as seminars in schools and universities in Japan. IKAJA has been aiming at supporting a wider use of kamishibai and its kyokan effect (“sharing of feelings”) (likened to empathetic imagination) as well as promoting the study of the subject from a cultural perspective and establishing kamishibai as a world-wide art since 1992. However, kamishibai is an art form that started earlier, in the 1930s in Tokyo, based on older traditions.

What Is “Kamishibai?” According to Kamichi (1997), Japanese kamishibai has its early roots in picture scrolls (emakimono, twelfth century, Heian period), which were viewed while listening to a storyteller. The Buddhist practice of using mandalas and hanging scrolls or wall charts for etoki (explanation by means of pictures; thirteenth-fifteenth centuries, Kamakura/Muromachi periods) was closer to kamishibai, in that people listened as a group in order to comprehend an illustrated lesson.

E. Nozaka International Project Supervisor of the International Kamishibai Association of Japan (IKAJA), Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] Translator, Writer and Lecturer at Shirayuri University, Chofu, Japan

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Later, nozoki karakuri appeared (seventeenth-nineteenth centuries, Edo/Meiji/Taisho periods); looking into the small opening of a box in which karakuri dolls and illustrations appeared and moved, viewers could experience a story in time to speech, sing, and dance. The same period saw the popularity of utsushie, storytelling while projecting illustrations on a washi paper screen. Movies then usurped utsushie; subsequently, tachie (standing pictures) were invented (twentieth century, Showa period). Illustrations of a character in two poses were pasted back-to-back and mounted on a bamboo stick, to be moved about with other characters on a small stage. As this theatre involved dolls made of paper, it was sometimes called kamishibai; kami means paper, and shibai means theatre or drama. After tachie came hirae (flat pictures) in the same form as today’s kamishibai (twentieth century, Showa period).1 Kamishibai’s history can be further outlined through a few main transition periods (IKAJA, 2017). Kamishibai in its current form originated around 1930 as street-corner kamishibai, performed with hand-drawn illustrations in the working-class areas of Tokyo. Street-corner kamishibai functioned as a tool to summon children to buy cheap sweets, so the works themselves did not stem from authors pouring their lives into them. As Japan invaded other countries, kamishibai’s feature of eliciting shared feeling (kyokan) among listeners was exploited, with numerous kamishibai published to encourage cooperation with the war effort. After World War II, a new kamishibai movement began that centred on peace, love for children, and affirming the value of life. Published kamishibai that explored the meaning and wonder of life became mainstream. In 1957, Doshinsha was founded as a publisher of kamishibai. Kamishibai creators began avidly pursuing not superficial entertainment and sensationalism, but joy based on a culture of affirming life. Kamishibai genres expanded to include folktales, fiction, science/knowledge, daily life/events, peace, and environment, among others. In 1998, a fundamental work of kamishibai theory, Kamishibai—kyokan no yorokobi (Kamishibai: The Joy of Kyokan), was published. 2001 saw the founding of the International Kamishibai Association of Japan, or IKAJA, which continues to study kamishibai and encourage its practice in Japan and abroad. “In this way, kamishibai began to develop in the 1950s as a

1 The foregoing two paragraphs were contributed by Shigeko Kusakabe, former adjunct professor of Tokyo Seitoku University.

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published artistic form, grew established as a culture for children, and is now becoming known around the world” (Matsui, 2008).

The 5Ws of Kamishibai With a kamishibai in hand, anyone can perform it anywhere, anytime. Here is a who, what, when, where, how of typical kamishibai activities in Japan (IKAJA, 2017, pp. 126–35). Who can use it: childcare workers, librarians, teachers, booksellers, editors, authors, illustrators, translators, university professors, lawyers, business people, volunteer… What kamishibai to use: mostly published kamishibai, occasionally handmade kamishibai. When: during daycare or school; in the course of lectures, events or gatherings; when at home. As an introduction to kamishibai itself; as therapy; as activism for peace. Where: in kindergartens, nurseries, schools, universities, libraries, bookstores, child-rearing support centres, eldercare facilities, public cultural facilities, community halls, squares, parks, homes… How: with a three-door stage (butai) facing the audience, in an environment where the audience can concentrate on the kamishibai.

Comparison with Other Storytelling Modes In working with early years students, teachers create and use visual props or even backdrops to enable students to relate to or envision the unfamiliar concepts in the stories. With the kamishibai, the visual and oral storytelling modes are combined making it an ideal educational resource. Colonna d’Istria et al., (2013, p. 8) proposed the following comparison between the three storytelling modes consisting of reading a picture book, storytelling in a traditional way and storytelling with kamishibai. Table 5.1 below draws on the multiple literacies and engagement induced in utilising a kamishibai with students. It can also be argued that the audience is always watching (the images on the book, the storyteller). In the kamishibai storytelling, however, the audience is immersed in the images that take up the whole space of the box. The point made about illustrations can also be nuanced, as in post-modern picture books, text and illustrations are designed in tandem.

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Table 5.1 Comparison of the characteristics of three types of storytelling Read a picture book

Storytelling

Kamishibai storytelling

The position of the storyteller

Indifferent Backward Reads the text

Facing the public Invisible Reads the text, possible adaptations

The audience

Limited interaction with the audience Listening

Facing the public In an acting position Appropriation of the text beforehand Possible interaction with the audience Listening

Text contents

Text written for a particular audience

Illustrations

Independent of the text

Respect for a structure around which the “storyteller” can improvise Expression and gestures of the storyteller

Possible interaction with the audience Watching and listening Created in relation to visual effects Created in interaction with the illustrations The next sheet appears by merging with the previous scene

Kamishibai Theory and Its Unique Mechanics The following theory of kamishibai is based on the foundational ideas of Noriko Matsui (1934–2017), a writer, illustrator of children’s books and kamishibai, and principal founder of the International Kamishibai Association of Japan (IKAJA). Kamishibai is not only telling a story but also requires a set of sturdy illustrated sheets, a wooden stage (butai), and some particular motions. It is an art to perform, so hereafter the term performer is used in place of storyteller. Format and Key Features Kamishibai is not bound. On each thick sheet of every kamishibai work, the illustration is printed on the front and the text is printed on the back. To perform, a series of separate sheets is put into a stage, slid out one by one, and slid back in, while reading the text on the back aloud. The kamishibai story proceeds as this process is repeated. Since the text is

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on the back, a performer is needed, and the performer must face the audience. This unique format leads to two key features of kamishibai. The first key feature is that the story world emerges and extends into the real world, where the audience is. This occurs primarily through the sliding-out motion. The role of the stage is also important: because the stage, the story world, and real world are distinct. The second key feature is concentration and communication. When you start sliding out the present picture, the new picture appears. With this change, the audience concentrates on the new illustration. The slidingin movement also makes the audience concentrate on the picture in the stage. Facing the audience gives the performer a distinct presence, establishing communication between the performer and the audience. Through the above two key features, kyokan (literally “the sharing of feelings”) unique to kamishibai is born. The essence of kamishibai is expressed by this term kyokan. Figure 5.1 illustrates this process. How to Perform Kamishibai The basic method of performance can be illustrated in Fig. 5.2 according to the theory above (IKAJA, 2017, pp. 18–27). Through performance, kamishibai creates a sense of shared reality among the audience, which in turn stimulates empathetic imagination and mutual responsiveness. Its Popularity How did this cultural product, specific to Japan, where it grew extremely popular between 1920 and 1950, and is still very common in the Japanese public libraries today for the storytelling programmes, become globally popular? And in what way is it a remarkable pedagogical tool? Several features contribute: its spatial setting; its flexibility; the high level of focus it creates; the ease with which transdisciplinary projects can be set up with a kamishibai at their core. The kamishibai is indeed at the service of literacy, by servicing the skills of reading, speaking, writing, and image analysis. It also encourages listening, creation, and cooperation. In addition, during the rehearsals and performances, the students learn to develop a spectator’s behaviour capable of attentive and respectful listening, but also of participating,

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Fig. 5.1 How to perform Kamishibai

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Fig. 5.2 Special features of Kamishibai

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depending on the story, and even criticising in the process of elaborating the story. The spatial setting refers to the movement of the sheets pulled out and pushed in. Lamarre (2009) insists on the enhanced force of a moving image while shared in limited animation and how. this cardboard theatre, with its sliding drawings and live narration, had a profound impact on limited animation, leading to an emphasis on moving the drawings and on supplying voice-over narration or explanations. Nonetheless, even if we locate the sources of sliding planes and moving the drawings in the sliding paperboard panels of kamishibai, those kamishibai techniques, already profoundly related to technologies of the moving image, occur under conditions of movement in limited animation, wherein the flattened compositing of celluloid layers pushes depth and movement to the surface of the image in specific ways. (p. 193)

Kamishibai seems slow and limited in terms of movement by essence. In fact, this very core feature enhances more power through a minimalist, concentrated movement, which fascinates the audience like the technology of the animated image. Tara McGowan (n.d.) in her life-long research about kamishibai refers to the process of creating and performing kamishibai as a process similar to directing a theatre production or a film, on a reduced scale. Ishiguro (2017) highlights the flexibility of kamishibai, which allows for a great diversity in its use. He presents his research drawn upon workshops with children creating kamishibai. The focus was not so much on writing exercises, but rather a collaborative project. He shows how a two-step process including an adult-led and then a child-initiated collaborative creation, allowed students to explore the notions of authorship and self-expression based on rich body-play modalities. In terms of oral expression, kamishibai’s flexible usage is also a great aid in differentiating: the butai (the box) works as a protective accessory that encourages speaking. On the one hand, it partially hides the shy narrator, on the other hand, it shares the attention of the audience between themselves and the child. Finally, the fact that there are indications on the back of the sheets is reassuring for the child. Children in school can present to a small group vs a larger audience, to the whole class or to a lesser-known audience, such as another class, or even to a larger number, such as a

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grade level or the parents’ community, depending on the challenge that is sought after, scaffolding the principle of responsiveness . The setting of this art induces a sense of confidentiality that supports attention. The stage is larger than a children’s album, but remains small (between A3 and A2 formats) and brings together its audience working as a focal point. As on a screen, the image occupies the whole surface, concentrating the attention of the audience. As the kamishibai sheet has to be readable at a distance and is visible only for a few minutes at most, unlike a picture book where the reader can linger on small illustrative and even non-essential details, the sheet ought to be very clear in its organisation, colour contrasts, etc. Adjusting the scale or the image layout allows the hierarchical relationships to be identified, with the dominant characters occupying all the space, for example, while at the same time strongly conveying a power of evocation or symbolism. Moreover, the stage (butai), which doors open to reveal the story, offers what could be called an "open window to the world". Each image offers a unity of place, where the audience is drawn into a view of a moment, inside or outside, making the storytelling principle of relationality tangible. Older students have a more developed awareness and knowledge of mental images and how to analyse framed shots with truncated figures, enclosed in the space of a stage to construct the solutions of sequencing and linking, that is, the relationships of proximity necessary to understand the story. However, young children who are not aware of the limits of the image understand the medium in all its extent, as a vast field of projection, which builds a powerful immersive experience. The sheets pulling mechanics enable the storyteller to build anticipation and excitement in the narrative. The pull-out/push-in sheets in the wooden stage allow for strong sensations and surprises, such as partial unveilings. By pulling a sheet out halfway a performer can create a dialogue between two characters as in the kamishibai Hats for the Jizos. As this art of storytelling is visually based, it allows for pedagogical links with art, with the primary aim of making the students aware of the importance of the visual element of a story. More generally, many transdisciplinary projects can be developed. Regarding arts, the students can work on the notion of representation, playing with forms, background, symbolism, different techniques of illustration, use of a two-dimensional space, the expressive value of differences in relation to realism, the encoding in image of the narrative intention, and organisation of layout (repetition and alternation, enlargement and reduction, full and empty,

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etc.). For example, exploration of comics allows the children to further inquire how to represent emotions, how to highlight an object in the story (close-up for example). Cross-curricular projects, including technology, information technology (IT), music, drama or maths elements, centred on the creation of a kamishibai are easily set-up. The construction of the stage allows students to carry out a manufacturing project in science and technology: they will have to explore materials (wood, sheetboard…), to make plans, to work on the notion of scale, to experiment and solve problems, to add variants such as a lighting system possibly researching electricity, etc. Students can also use IT tools to type and/or check texts, or to edit photos. Accompanying sounds can be explored in music: discovering other art works that mix art-literature and music such as Peter and the Wolf, Fantasia, or The Magic Flute and tackling the concepts of intensity, tempo, and how different emotions are conveyed through diversity of music. Foundations of theatrical performance can be introduced: reading or reciting in an articulate, fluid and clear way, conveying emotions, projecting one’s voice, capturing attention, and becoming aware of one’s posture. Finally, depending on the content of the story, kamishibai could be the provocations and the triggers for inquiries as well as an aid in scaffolding concepts of mathematics as shown in the Five Little Squares kamishibai, or for history, geography, interculturality.

Kamishibai and Education in Japan The Significance of Kamishibai in Education “Let us give real culture to children! It is in the midst of kyokan and awe that children develop the strength to live, which is the purpose of education” (Matsui, 2002). This statement by educator Mikio Matsui (1927–2012), former head of a middle and high school known for nurturing freedom and self-reliance, neatly summarises the significance of kamishibai in education. Kamishibai culture nurtures the sharing of feelings and emotions, which in turn help children to embrace life. Offering Real Kamishibai IKAJA’s vision of the kamishibai consists of nurturing children’s strength to live through real kamishibai. This means kamishibai that utilise the

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form’s features and offer messages of joy and affirming life, which can be experienced through kyokan. With these principles as the foundation, kamishibai should also offer superb illustrations and beautiful text in the audience’s mother tongue. There are two types of Kamishibai: audience-participation type, which requires responses from the audience in order to proceed; and selfcontained type, in which the story is complete in itself (IKAJA, 2017, pp. 74–5). The audience-participation type is illustrated by Okiku okiku okiku naare (Grow Grow Grow Bigger!) by Noriko Matsui (1983) (Fig. 5.3). She once reflected, “I pursued the unique aspects of kamishibai and created works in which the audience plays a central role. In this work, by repeatedly calling out, ‘Grow grow grow bigger!’, the audience magnifies the universal human desire to grow” (IKAJA, 2017, p. 81). Children take part in this kamishibai actively, and when they pretend to eat the cake that appears at the end, “it’s a time of filling up on their own wishes to grow bigger” (p. 81).

Fig. 5.3 Okiku okiku okiku na-are (grow grow grow bigger! 1983) by Noriko Matsui

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Fig. 5.4 Yasashii mamono wapper (The kind monster wapper, 2009)

A complete story type example is Yasashii mamono Wapper (The Kind Monster Wapper) by Etsuko Nozaka and Nana Furiya (2009) (see Fig. 5.4). In the first half of this work, a lone monster hanging about town is spotted by a boy named Jan, and the two become friends. This development shows the importance of seeing others for oneself, without prejudice. In the second half, Jan and other children join forces with the monster to cast a spell, and the monster becomes able to do magic he could not do before. The message “you can do more than you think!” spreads through the young audience with kyokan, and the joy of self-confidence is felt deep in children’s hearts. Both types of kamishibai convey the significance of living as humans. Children must have this essential joy for their growth and future. The Importance of Performing The performer of kamishibai is nearly always an adult, but benefits have also been observed when teaching children to perform. Saeko Uehara of Izu City, Shizuoka, reports teaching kamishibai performance to forty

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students in grades one to three (roughly ages six to nine) during summer and winter school vacations over two years (Uehara, 2020). The leaders were eleven adults in a local kamishibai study group. They began by performing kamishibai for the children and having them practice vocal production and readings of poems and short prose, emphasising the importance of understanding the text as a whole. Then, the children began to say, “I want to perform kamishibai, too!” The leaders offered them a choice of eight kamishibai and had them form groups based on which kamishibai interested them. The groups practiced diligently, receiving guidance as needed, and they successfully performed their kamishibai. This exercise helped the children relate to one another across age groups, thanks to the kyokan-eliciting aspects of kamishibai based on the principle of relationality. Kamishibai Born in the Classroom The kamishibai Kuishinbo no manmaru oni (The Hungry Round Ogres) (Matsui, 2002) was conceived in the classroom. While trying out various forms of children’s culture in class, we realised that kamishibai offered the superior feature of eliciting kyokan. Special needs instructor Toshio Sugiyama handmade some kamishibai while considering the students’ responses, and the students grew to love learning math with it . . . With this success, we began wishing for more math kamishibai that we could share with more children. This led to having an author-illustrator create Five Fantasies with Numbers and Shapes [the series including Kuishinbo no manmaru oni].

The three oni or ogres in this work (see Fig. 5.5) search for food that comes in the same quantity as they do. While teaching the mathematical concept of one-to-one correspondence, this work also teaches the “life” concept of each person being able to find happiness. Children can recite “one, two, three, four...” without knowing what numbers mean. To grasp the concept, they actually need more meaningful experiences. In the ogre kamishibai, when food falls out of the sky but is not enough, the main characters take action. When at last they have one portion of food per ogre, children experience kyokan and truly understand.

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Fig. 5.5 Kuishinbonomanmaruoni (The hungry round ogres) (Matsui, 2002)

Elementary school teacher Kaoru Yoshida writes of performing this kamishibai (Yoshida, 2012): The scene where the yummy treats from the sky are not enough, and one round ogre doesn’t get any and cries, and the other two ogres say ‘sorry, sorry’ and try to comfort him, this feels to the kids like a scene from everyday life, and they really relate to it. The scenes where deliciouslooking food appears or a lovely aroma wafts down also seem to tickle their senses, expanding their imaginations and really getting them to think. When the three ogres embark on their quest to get one treat each, the children call out as one, and when a third treat is found at last, the classroom fills with smiles as children experience joy. This is not just because fantasy (rather than an explanation) has been used to teach them math, but also because they have been engaging with others and experiencing the pure delight of kyokan. It is not merely an informational kamishibai, but really a microcosm of human thoughtfulness and delight. (Yoshida, 2012, p. 20)

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Strength to Face the Future In 2005, sixty years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Eiko Matsui wrote and illustrated the kamishibai Nido to (Never Again) (see Fig. 5.6). She wanted to embed the cries of “No more Hiroshimas, no more Nagasakis!”—which fill the hearts of people working towards peace—in the kyokan that kamishibai creates. Since then, she has been performing Nido to in “peace classes” in Japan and abroad, in kindergartens, nurseries, schools, universities, and describes in (Matsui, 2016): When I perform Nido to, the students lean forward and stare straight at what the atomic bombs did. When I see the students unwavering gazes, I see that these young people are strong beings who can absorb the truth. I perform as if embracing them, conveying, ‘We will never do this again, OK?’ I encounter with them not only the horror and tragedy of war, but also the importance of kyokan. When we reach the scene where Ayako— an eight-year-old who has lost all nine of her family members to the

Fig. 5.6 Nidoto (never again)

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bomb—raises both hands to the sky, I feel determination ignite in all of the audience members, and I myself feel a strength well up inside me to stand strong and live. In the scene where a bird born from the cries of ‘No more Hiroshimas, no more Nagasakis!’ soars into the blue, I turn toward everyone, and what I see are people gazing straight ahead with conviction. In the kyokan of kamishibai, young people experience the ‘ideals of those working to create peace’ deep in their hearts.

In such experiences, an answer arises to the question “What do children learn from kamishibai?” In the words of educator Mikio Matsui (2010): You immediately begin to rethink the meaning of learning. You meet these students, and they overturn your ideas of ‘why humans learn’ You realize that learning is for self-reliance. Learning is to help us take pride in being alive. It’s to help us feel joy in supporting each other. (Matsui, 2010)

IKAJA regularly highlights several kamishibai for peace, including not only Nido to but also Kariyushi no umi (The Ocean of Kariyushi) by N. Matsui and Yokoi (1989), and Zoge no kushi (The Ivory Comb) by Bui Duc Lien (2006). Kamishibai for peace vitally illustrate what war is, have humans face it head-on, and illustrate how humans go about overcoming it. In the depths of these works dwells not only the reality of war, but also the need for humane living. “Even when peace itself is not the theme, the best kamishibai have the wonder and meaning of life at heart. When children make this their own, they develop the strength to face the future” (Matsui, 2008).

Kamishibai in Asia Founded in 2001, the International Kamishibai Association of Japan is the world’s largest kamishibai organisation. Some 604 of its 682 members (including 561 in Japan) hail from Asia and Oceania, comprising about seventy per cent of all members.2 IKAJA publishes an English-language homepage and annual newsletter and uses the book How to Perform Kamishibai Q & A by Noriko Matsui in several translations, including Chinese and English. In Japan, it holds countrywide seminars twice per

2 Figures as of January 2021.

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year, once in Tokyo and once in a different region, and it offers workshop series on performance and creation of kamishibai. The first IKAJA presentation in Asia outside of Japan was at the Asian Conference on Storytelling in New Delhi (2005), which included a performance for children. After that, members of IKAJA went on to present at the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) World Congress in Macau (2006) and at Asia Oceania Regional IBBY Congresses in Bali (2013), Putrajaya (2015), Bangkok (2017), and Xi’an (2019), as well as at the Asian Festival of Children’s Content in Singapore in 2016. Besides conference delegations, IKAJA has sent individuals to China (Shanghai and Beijing), Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), India and South Korea to conduct kamishibai seminars for educators, librarians, authors and illustrators, storytellers, and university students. As a result, local libraries’ and schools’ collections of kamishibai have reportedly grown, and the number of kamishibai performers has gradually increased. IKAJA has also responded to requests for remote sessions for audiences in China (Shenzhen and Shanghai) and Thailand (Bangkok) in December 2020–January 2021. As early as ten years before IKAJA’s founding, Vietnam’s large, stateowned Kim Ð`ông Publishing House hosted near-annual kamishibai seminars with the guidance of future IKAJA leaders Noriko Matsui, Kyoko Sakai, and Shigeko Kusakabe. Vietnamese creators of kamishibai then emerged, and their works were published one after another by Kim Ð`ông. Japanese translations of several Vietnamese kamishibai were then published in Japan, including the acclaimed Where Does the Sun Come From? by Truong Van Hieu (1996). Such activity later continued under the auspices of the Japan-Vietnam Kamishibai Exchange Association. Alexander Brown (2020) writes, “The story of the development of kamishibai in Vietnam in the early 1990s and the publication of Vietnamese works in Japanese further exemplifies how kamishibai as a movement has enabled transnational relationships between former enemies on the basis of peace and education” (p. 6).

Supporting the Preservation of Folktales A glance at the kamishibai published in Asia and the West also shows the prevalence of kamishibai that tell traditional tales.

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Among the Doshinsha publications, available in English in Japan or in the United States, a diversity of folktales can be found. Japanese tales such as Tumbling Taros or The Three Magic Charms (priest and monk folktales), the Celestial Robe, The farting young wife, Hats for the Jizos, Momotaro. There are also tales originating from Sumatra, like Father, and from France, Duck the King, along with stories covering the traditions shared across Asia, namely How the years were named, the Story of Tanabata. In Europe, whether in France or Germany, the same trend was developed by several publishers. For example, the majority of kamishibai published in Germany are linked to traditional holidays (St Nicholas, St Martin, Christmas and the nativity story), traditional witch stories, or the brother Grimm’s tales. Publishers have seized the opportunity offered by the kamishibai set-up to renew their offer to libraries and schools. Outside of Germany, at the Goethe Institutes and at German schools as observed in Singapore, these folktale kamishibai are widely used in the context of language learning and of introduction to Germanic culture. For example, at the German European School Singapore, during the 12-week unit of inquiry How we express ourselves, the Pre-Primary teachers teaching 5–6 years old children, introduce Grimm’s fairy tales via kamishibai in German. The butai and kamishibai stay in the classroom on a dedicated table. The children can handle them freely during free time. They are invited to retell the story to their classmates by handling the sheets during the inquiry sessions. This manipulative characteristic of the kamishaibai is particularly suitable for early years. In this context, kamishibai as an easy-to-handle tool that facilitates access to meaning via storyboard-like visualisation which supports empathetic imagination, therefore nurturing an understanding of others. Following on from this idea of intercultural exposure and inter-literacy, it is possible to discover links between different storytelling traditions with young students. For example, Urashima Tar¯ o, a fisherman who is rewarded by a turtle for saving her baby, is transported to the dragon’s palace at the bottom of the ocean and returns to his village to find that 300 years have passed. This story can be linked to other folktales, such as Sleeping Beauty or Rip van Winkle, with the motif of many years of sleep. In a context of globalisation and the disappearance of oral transmissions of stories, and a growing ignorance of traditional tales, many stories are therefore published via a medium that offers several advantages: a renewal in the way the story is delivered; and a visual support for children who are immersed in a culture of internet images or for children who are

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in the process of learning languages in a multilingual context and who are not immersed in the original culture of these stories. Further, the stage allows all performers to free their hands and they can use sign language or makaton when telling the story. Scaffolding on all these traits, between Christmas and Lunar New Year, the German-as-a-Foreign Language teacher of the K2 kindergarten in GESS planned her lessons to tell the story of the Lunar New Year in five different ways. Her aim was dual: having the students discover the traditional origin of the years associated with an animal over a twelve-year cycle, and enriching the learners’ vocabulary, working in particular on the names of animals. She used resources ranging from the most visual to the most linguistic to accompany memorisation and knowledge creation, first using the kamishibai, then a book, then a puzzle story, then drawing a storyboard and finally acting out a playlet. The kamishibai was used as an original visual tool, unknown to children, allowing the introduction of vocabulary while maintaining a high level of attention from the 4–5 years-old students.

How Kamishibai Supports Teaching the Writing Process Text-based work is only one mode of communication. Kamishibai offers students multiple modes with which to communicate: drawing, oral storytelling, writing, reading, and performing. Within the network of French international schools, since 2015, an annual multilingual kamishibai competition has been offered by Dulala, open to children from kindergarten to secondary grades. Classes enroll to create a kamishibai written in at least 4 languages. Created in 2009, Dulala3 is an association specialised in multilingual education based in France. It offers an opportunity for “the children [to] become […] language experts, contributing to the collective understanding by bringing in their own knowledge, sometimes acquired outside of school” (Pedley & Stevanato, 2018, p. 47). The children explore in turn, as they go along, all of the narrative roles, in reception as well as in production, orally as well as in writing: spectators, listeners, mediators, authors, scriptwriters, illustrators, readers, and storytellers.

3 - https://www.dulala.fr/association/

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Writing/illustrating a kamishibai requires a great deal of teamwork, which requires an effort to listen, to help each other, and to organise. Before moving on to the creation of their own kamishibai, children take a proactive role in discovering their linguistic environment. Teachers guide them in the awareness of the resources of the classroom, the languages present and the skills of each individual, but also of the presence of other languages in other contexts (the school, the home, the neighbourhood, for example). A booklet to guide teachers is offered to support them in the four phases of the project: (1) the discovery of the kamishibai and the plurilingual kamishibai, the sensitisation to their linguistic environment; (2) the creation of a plurilingual kamishibai; (3) the preparation of a performance, and (4) the diffusion of the created object. Since stories are a familiar medium for students and allow them to enter into the approach known as "language awareness" in a roundabout way, creating a plurilingual kamishibai does not necessarily need them to speak a multitude of languages, drawing on the knowledge creation principle but also their empathetic imagination. To create a multilingual kamishibai, one can work with the languages present, for example by using the languages of the children, parents or professionals, or languages they don’t know. According to the coordinator of the competition in Asia, Mary Leclercq, elementary teacher in the French international school of Shanghai, China, the realisation includes the following steps. 1. Discovering the kamishibai 2. Making the butai (wood stage) 3. Writing stories 4. Story-boarding 5. Drawing the sheets 6. Reading/performing the kamishibai stories The competition includes a different theme each year: “The world was changing faster than I had imagined” Tom Tirabosco Wonderland, in 2019. Participating groups spend an average of 20 to 30 h on the project. The competition has now seen over 20,000 children participating worldwide since the competition’s inception in 2015. More than 600 children registered in 2019 in Asia–Pacific representing 27 classes across the French international schools of the region.

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What IKAJA Members Are Doing: World Kamishibai Day and Translingual Approaches Since 2018, IKAJA has celebrated its founding date of December 7 as World Kamishibai Day, registering it with the Japan Anniversary Association and urging those in Japan and abroad to aspire to peace; to perform and enjoy kamishibai; and to spread the joy of kyokan, the sharing of feelings to live life together. On the inaugural World Kamishibai Day, IKAJA held an event at a Tokyo bookstore with performances of kamishibai in Arabic, Dutch, English, Japanese, and Mongolian, seeking to enjoy kyokan that went beyond language (Nozaka, 2019). The idea of a multilingual presentation can also be applied in classrooms, with the audience-participation type is especially effective. When children from different countries are in a classroom, the kamishibai performer can ask them how to say a line in a kamishibai that calls for participation, such as the title line in Grow Grow Grow Bigger! (Matsui, 1983) in their own language(s). When it’s time to call out as group during the kamishibai, everyone present then uses the new language(s). This has proven a helpful method for knowledge creation (for the audience), relationality (between audience members and performer), and empathetic imagination In addition, IKAJA has created a Mini-Booklet for Performing Kamishibai in seven languages, which is downloadable from the website (IKAJA, 2021), hoping to seed further translingual approaches.

Kamishibai in Libraries: The Example of OpenBook in Cambodia With Kamishibai The Butai opens its doors To let the words fly

Haiku by Catherine Cousins, founder of OpenBook, a network of community libraries in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. OpenBook was founded as an NGO in 2002 to give access to books to all, in a safe environment, with a vision of fostering the pleasure of reading and the respect for books and other readers. Free, open 7 days a week, the now five small community libraries welcome mostly children and families in different neighbourhoods of Phnom Penh.

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Since 2002, once a week, on Thursday afternoon, librarians offer a storytelling time followed by a creative moment, when patrons can express themselves in drawing. The librarians lead these two activities and read to the children in Khmer language. Depending on the foreigner volunteers available, the storytelling can also take place as bilingual (English, Japanese…). The novelty of the kamishibai when they were first utilised in 2018, raised interest and more patrons visited. The founder of OpenBook, Catherine Cousins, born and educated in France with a degree in ethology, first taught French in higher education in the USA for 17 years before relocating to Asia. She worked as a teacher, a librarian, and a publisher in Cambodia and now Singapore. Her interest for observing behaviours as well as knowledge transmission tools brought her to the Japanese art of storytelling called kamishibai. She attended her first kamishibai performance during the 2015 Frankfurt Bookfair at Lirabelle publisher’s booth, and travelled to Japan to train with IKAJA in Tokyo later. She saw the potential use of reading kamishibai inside the libraries in Cambodia. The OpenBook team have been using kamishibai storytelling in three ways.4 i) to support literacy by sharing the love of stories and by giving access to international literature; ii) to give exposure to languages, by honouring the Khmer language and offering activities in foreign languages. As of the time this chapter is written, the collection comprises circa 30 kamishibai which have been translated into Khmer language; iii) to develop creativity and public speech in a non-assessed setting. Shy children enjoy inserting their drawings into the butai and come up with their own story in creative ways. A publishing house was also founded to cater to the needs of publishing original multilingual works and supporting illustrators. The kamishibai was a good match to the mission of the library. It focuses on visual arts, nurturing the love of colour prints and original artworks. In recent Cambodian history, books were destroyed during the “Red Khmer” era (1975–1979). The vast majority of books available were 4 Due to space limitations, photos are available on www.openbooklibraries.com

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only photocopies. The OpenBook libraries are committed to be places where patrons play, read, and have access to original colour prints. No photocopied versions are allowed on the shelves. Hence, children are supported to develop not only a love for curated beautiful stories, but also encouraged to develop their creative mind, in expressing themselves orally and in drawing. Papers and coloured pencils are provided and children enjoy drawing after the story. Some insert their single drawing in the stage and tell their own story, which shows the power of knowledge creation supported by the initial storytelling. The second focus consists of building a collection in translated Khmer language and foreign languages. The large size of the kamishibai makes it more appropriate to large audiences and allows to print up to four languages at the back of a sheet. With clear large illustrations and no words to read, the kamishibai organically draws attention to the stage of the butai. Its doors that open and close at the beginning and the end, symbolically draw the audience in and out, creating a strong sense of relationality. As highlighted by Catherine during her interview with the authors in March 2021, the doors represent the opening of the mind of the children ready to go into the unknown of a story. The power of kamishibai lies in its ability to bring children of all ages together to socialise and share a communal experience, which at OpenBook is further enhanced by removing the academic context and pressure of the school context and allowing families to enjoy the experience of kyokan and relationality.

Kamishibai Supporting Bilingualism at the German European School of Singapore (GESS) Preschool, Singapore In the particular context of the bilingual preschool at GESS, bilingual kamishibai storytelling has been successfully used for the storytelling principles of relationality and responsiveness . In this non-profit inclusive school, the 300 children from 18-month-old through 6-year-old are exposed to English and German, and can enrol regardless of their language skills in both languages and at any time of the school year. In other words, homeroom teachers and specialists are confronted on a daily basis with the double challenge of levels of comprehension that vary from zero to 100 from one child to another, and of working several

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times a year on the cohesion of their class by integrating the double movement of departing and arriving children in the year. As the librarian speaks English, the bilingual kamishibai sessions are with the Germanspeaking co-teacher, the German teacher from the language department or a Mystery Guest, as well as the main school. In a kamishibai bilingual storytelling lesson, the magic kamishibai theatre box is hidden and uncovered, and the children are encouraged to understand the mechanism of the scrolling sheets. The two languages are shared on an equal footing. The narration is theatricalised with props, body language, and sounds for children who do not yet have the tools of auditory linguistic comprehension. Kamishibai storytelling ensures repetition of the message, through two linguistic codes read or re-transcribed against the same visual code. The adaptation of the content to the audience in the moment is facilitated, by allowing children to play with rhythm (slowing down the narration for example, or extending pauses), the visual cues that are very visible on the large sheets, and the variation in the times of silence. The dramatisation of kamishibai can be more or less elaborate. Narration as presented by the members of IKAJA is preferred to dramatisation. However, the Japanese language is extraordinarily rich in onomatopoeia to add readily expression to the story narration. In educational contexts, it is desirable to reinforce the dramatisation to facilitate access to meaning for young audiences, for example, by adding sound effects, background music, lighting, decorating the kamishibai or even providing props.

Conclusion Kamishibai storytelling encourages listening, creation, and cooperation. The kyokan effect of sharing emotions in the audience acts as a powerful bond in a class. Additionally, the slow mechanics of the sheets sliding in and out of a stage and the large size of images facilitate focus. By using a stage instead of holding a book, it allows the storyteller (or performer) to face the children and encourage communication. Kamishibai is a multifaceted educational resource ideal for use during group settings, such as nurseries, pre-schools, and library story times, as well as well suited for multilingual settings. The large sheets can be used to reveal the story in a variety of ways, adding drama and intrigue, which allow a large group or an entire class to enjoy the story together. We invite you to explore the Japanese story and paper art tradition, kamishibai for

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its great capacity to pedagogically attend to multiple literacies—visual, oral, gestural, and written, through kyokan.

Practical Suggestions Dont’s: • Do not tell a kamishibai without the stage, unless the story was meant for (Heave-ho 5 ). • Do not copy the pages of a picture book to insert in the butai. In addition to being a violation of copyright, it does not work (that’s how birds fly backwards as the movement on the page can be opposite to the sliding-out direction). Do’s: • Play with the butai, practice the sliding in and out, action movements. Create a song or a sentence to begin and end (the ending could be “kamishi-bybye”). Take some time to intimately know the art and the text of the kamishibai. • Read The Kamishibai Man (Say, 2005) to share how kamishibai started in Japan. • Read How to Perform Kamishibai Q&A (Matsui et al., 2008) to know about the performance based on the theory. • Performing real kamishibai helps you to understand what kamishibai is. • Writing and illustrating one kamishibai is also a good way to capture its essence.

References Brown, A. (2020). Kamishibai as Peacemaking. Kamishibai Newsletter, 16, IKAJA. Bui, D. L. (2006). Zoge no kushi (The ivory comb). Doshinsha Publishing with Japan-Vietnam Kamishibai Association. Colonna d’Istria, C., Lagarde, J., & Langlois, S. (2013). Le kamishibai. AFE. 5 A kamishibai meant to be performed without a stage.

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IKAJA. (2005). Presentation at the Asian conference on storytelling, New Delhi. IKAJA. (2017). Kamishibai hyakka (Kamishibai encyclopedia). Doshinsha Publishing. IKAJA (2021). The International Kamishibai Association of Japan (IKAJA) homepage. Retrieved from https://www.kamishibai-ikaja.com/en/index.html Ishiguro, H. (2017). Revisiting Japanese multimodal drama performance as child-centred performance ethnography: Picture-mediated reflection on ‘Kamishibai’. In Arts-based methods in education around the world (pp. 90– 105). River Publishers. Kamichi, C. (1997). Kamishibai no rekishi (The history of Kamishibai). Kyuzansha Publishing. Lamarre, T. (2009). Anime machine: A media theory of animation. University of Minnesota. Leclercq, M. (2019, November). How to use kamishibai in your class. In Journées de formation de l’Association des Professeurs de français de Singapour, Singapore, 14–16. Matsui, E. (2002). Kuishinbo no manmaru oni (The hungry round Ogres). Doshinsha Publishing. Matsui, E. (2008). Interview 2008—hekigaka/kamishibai sakka no Matsui Eikosan (Interview 2008: Muralist and kamishibai artist Eiko Matsui) [Interview]. Shogakukan Inc. Matsui, E. (2016). Kamishibai de heiwa o tsunagu (Preserving peace with kamishibai). In Haha no hiroba (Mother’s square), 627 . Doshinsha Publishing. Matsui, E., & Ogawa, T. (2005). Nido to (Never again). Doshinsha Publishing. Matsui, M. (2010). Shogaiji ga kagayaku sansu/sugaku no jugyo (Students with special needs shine: Arithmetic and mathematics class). Himawari-sha Matsui, N. (1983). Okiku okiku okiku na-are (Grow grow grow bigger!). Doshinsha Publishing. Matsui, N., & Yokoi, K. (1989). Kariyushi no umi (The ocean of Kariyushi). Doshinsha Publishing. Matsui, N., Nozaka, E., & Yamaguchi, K. (2008). How to perform Kamishibai Q & A. Doshinsha Publishing. McGowan, T. M. (n.d.). The mechanics of Kamishibai through the art of Eigoro Futamata. Retrieved from http://www.kamishibai.com/PDF/TheMechan ics.pdf Nozaka, E. (2019). A report on the first-ever world Kamishibai day. Kamishibai Newsletter, 15. IKAJA. Nozaka, E., & Furiya, N. (2009). Yasashii mamono Wapper (The kind monster Wapper). Doshinsha. Pedley, M., & Stevanato, A. (2018). Le concours Kamishibaï plurilingue: Un outil innovant pour diffuser l’éveil aux langues. Éducation Et Sociétés Plurilingues, 45, 43–56.

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Say, A. (2005). Kamishibai man. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Truong, V. H. (1996). Taiyo wa doko kara deru no (Where does the sun come from?). Doshinsha Publishing. Uehara, S. (2020). Kamishibai at the Children’s center: Individuality and confidence grow, friendship through Kyokan Blossoms! Kamishibai Newsletter, 16. IKAJA. Yoshida, K. (2012). Kuishinbo no manmaru oni (The hungry round ogres). Kamishibai bunka no kai kaiho (International Kamishibai Association of Japan Japanese Newsletter), 20. IKAJA.

CHAPTER 6

Storytelling as Pedagogy for Chinese Language Learning Swee Yean Wong

How I Became a Storyteller I, Swee Yean (see Fig. 6.1), have been a full-time storyteller since 2005. I was formerly a secondary school teacher teaching English, English Literature and Music. My storytelling journey began when I met storytellers in Singapore like Sheila Wee, Kiran Shah and Rosemarie Somaiah. I began telling oral stories to captivate my three sons so they would eat their meals quietly without running around. I had fun creating stories about noodles, vegetables and meatballs that could go into my sons’ mouths for adventure rides. I also told folktales that I heard from Margaret Read Macdonald and Cathy Spagnoli and read from their books. Gradually my repertoire expanded to include stories that could engage secondary school students. This was a challenge as teenagers tend to be more critical about stories. Nevertheless, it meant enquiring into the nature of stories and

S. Y. Wong (B) Storytelling Association, Singapore URL: https://eruditestories.com/

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 L. G. Phillips and T. T. P. Nguyen (eds.), Storytelling Pedagogy in Australia & Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4009-4_6

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Fig. 6.1 Swee Yean Wong telling

honing the art of connecting with an audience. The success lay in not only the content of the story but also putting the story in context for the audience and then delivering a story that will attract them. Telling suitable tales that appeal to different profile groups, be it preschoolers, primary school students, secondary school students, adults, senior citizens and young people with specific learning abilities and disabilities is to find a way to acknowledge them and connect with them.

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I discovered the varied styles of storytelling when I met foreign storytellers from the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Asia who came to Singapore to attend storytelling congresses or festivals. They ranged from the quiet and muted style to the theatrical style of engagement and that no one style was better than the other. I also saw how that through storytelling, people could share their unique cultural heritage and at the same time be connected through universal values. It creates empathetic listening so that listeners can gain new knowledge and new perspectives. In 2015, I began to tell stories in Mandarin. Although I grew up in a bilingual environment of Singapore, having learnt both English and Mandarin in school, I was more fluent in English. English is the medium of instruction and the main language used in formal settings in Singapore. Therefore, there is little need for many ethnic Chinese Singaporeans to use Mandarin in day-to-day living. Amongst the younger generation, there is little awareness of the Chinese culture and history in comparison to the knowledge of Western culture and history because of the wider exposure through television media and popular culture. I grew up more knowledgeable of western literature than Chinese literature. However, when I went overseas to Canada and the USA for studies and when asked to explain my cultural heritage to foreigners, I started to find out more about my Chinese heritage and take pride in my unique family history. My grandparents were migrants from China. My parents told me stories about them and shared their love of popular Chinese folktales and Chinese history. They stimulated my curiosity to explore telling stories from my Chinese culture to Singapore children. That curiosity grew when I joined a class taught by Ng Koon How, a Chinese storyteller who had in the 1970s told stories in Mandarin as a volunteer at the local libraries. I also joined his storytelling club that was supported by the National Library Board. Ng was also an author and theatre playwright. His storytelling style infused theatrical movements to complement verbal cues resulting in a visually attractive treat that drew children to love to go to the library to watch him. I performed some of the stories that Ng wrote and Ng also guided me on the way I wrote and performed my stories. I wrote a Chinese version Leave, Bees!: A Thai Folk Tale (MacDonald & Tossa, 2007). The story is about how the elephant got its long trunk. I had written it for a tandem storytelling with another storyteller, Karen Lee. Ng offered suggestions on how to bring a child audience into an immersive experience of storytelling.

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Ng suggested starting the story with a well-known children’s song about the elephant’s nose, but with a slight modification of the lyrics that the elephant’s nose be short. I was the Elephant while Karen was the Bee. I walked with big and heavy steps and spoke in a low pitch. Karen, on the other hand, was light-footed and fluttered her hands like the wings of a bee, speaking in a high pitch. Ng choreographed our movements. First, he told us to walk amongst the audience when we were travelling to immerse the audience in the story. To further inspire the children’s imagination, at the point when Bee entered Elephant’s mouth to take refuge from the choking flames, Karen and I held hands and spun around two times to show that the characters were entering into a new experience. The bee was entering into the new environment of the elephant’s mouth—a dark and unknown space. The elephant, too, was experiencing something new—a hairy visitor crawling inside its mouth. As soon as we stopped spinning, Karen stood behind me with a piece of cloth on her head because Bee was now inside Elephant’s mouth. When I moved my head to the left, she moved to the right. I showed anxiety and annoyance on my face while Karen showed the face of curiosity and joyful exploration. The whole scene was comical for the audience. In the end, we spun again to show that Bee was leaving the mouth of Elephant.

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The above is one of the scripts that Ng edited. Ng had written other scripts and explained his choice of Chinese phrases. He helped me to appreciate the beauty of the Chinese words and demonstrated how one’s body movements could help to express that better. I began to research more about my Chinese roots and ancestry. My encounter with Ng awakened in me the many Chinese stories I had heard and read when I was young. As many young children in Singapore are not fluent in the Chinese language, I discovered storytelling is ideal for language learning. Most children enjoy stories, and the co-creative nature of storytelling has a positive impact on students struggling with the language. I can introduce new vocabulary or revise language items because the stories contextualize the words. Sometimes I will introduce the new vocabulary prior to telling the story or I use mime to help with understanding. When I taught preschool and lower primary school children, I chose stories that involved participation. It could be stories that incorporate movement or chants that the audience can join in. In this way, there is an opportunity to speak the language together with me. I often adapt my stories to the local context of a multi-racial diverse society. For example, I adapted the well-known finger play story Mr Wiggle and Mr Waggle into a story about two friends, Ah Ming and Ahmad, a Chinese boy and a Malay boy. The story is told with the thumbs of both hands representing the two characters (see Fig. 6.2). The doors of their homes are the fingers that open and close. When each character goes into their home, the fingers open to let the thumb tuck inside. When each character goes out of their home, the fingers open to let the thumb pop out (for extra fun you can draw faces on your thumbprints). The story goes like this:

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Fig. 6.2 Swee telling Mr Wiggle and Mr Waggle

Ah Ming and Ahmad were good friends. (Hold up both thumbs, fist closed.) They talk to each other a lot. (Wriggle both thumbs as if they were ‘talking’ to each other.) One day, they moved house and lived far from each other. (The thumbs move apart.) The new house was beautiful and comfortable. They went into their houses like this. (The palms of both hands open for both thumbs to tuck in. Close fingers of both hands over the thumbs.) One day, Ah Ming decided to visit Ahmad. He opened his door. (The left palm opens to let the thumb pop up. Close the fist.) Ah Ming travelled to Ahmad’s home. (The left thumb moved up and down, up and down, up and down towards the right hand.) Ah Ming knocked on the door of Ahmad’s door but no one came to the door. (The left fist knocks the right fist.)

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Sadly, Ah Ming went home. (The left thumb moved up and down, up and down, up and down towards the left side.) He went into his house like this. (The left palm opens for the thumb to tuck in. Close fingers over the thumb.) On another day, Ahmad decided to visit his friend. He opened his door. (The right palm opens to let the thumb pop up. Close the fist.) Ahmad travelled to Ah Ming’s home. (The right thumb moved up and down, up and down, up and down towards the left fist.) Ahmad knocked on the door of Ah Ming’s door but no one came to the door. (The right fist knocks the left fist.) Sadly, Ahmad went home. (The right thumb moved up and down, up and down, up and down towards the right side.) He went into his house like this. (The right palm opens for the thumb to tuck in. Close fingers over the thumb.) The 2 friends missed each other and tried to visit each other again. Together they left their house. (The palms of both hands open to let the thumbs pop up. Both fists close.) Both friends travelled. (Both thumbs moved up and down, up and down, up and down towards each other and meet midway.) They were so happy to meet each other. They played on the slides, sat on the swings, and climbed the ropes. (Both thumbs moved together from high to low, from left to right and in alternate steps upwards.) They ate their favourite hamburger meal. (Both thumbs wriggle to a munching sound.) They drank orange juice. (Both thumbs wriggle to a slurping sound.) They ate ice cream. (Both thumbs wriggle to a licking sound.) It was late and they decided to go home. (Both thumbs moved up and down, up and down, up and down towards their original place.) They entered their home. (The palms of both hands open to let the thumbs tuck in. Close fingers over the thumbs.) Both of them happily went to bed. (The palms open out and turn to face upwards.)

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Children mirror me with their fingers and repeat after me. They follow the way I inflect my speech. Then I tell the story a second time with the same structure and vocabulary but without gestures. The children carry out finger movements without speech. In this way, those who are not confident with speaking the language can hear it a second time and as they move their fingers, they are associating the words with movement. Then I tell the story a third time gesturing without speech while the children speak the words. By then, the children can remember the story better and be more confident to speak the story and if they don’t, they can hear their peers and follow along. By repeating the story in different manners like speaking fast or slow, in high or low pitch, the unfamiliar vocabulary becomes more and more familiar. The repetition does not just imitate and copy but also offers processing of word meaning as the story is told in varied ways. In the next round, the children retell the story in pairs. The kinesthetic movement of hand gestures consolidates the meaning and memorization of the words. This repetitive storytelling process supports children to speak the language, and remember the story (Fig. 6.3). As the children work on their story, I often involve partner work or group work. I build up cooperative learning strategies for students to work in small groups or pairs so the children develop social skills of interaction. Through such strategies, participants learn the skills of working together successfully. I structure pair work where one tells while the other listens. The teller is instructed to tell with eye contact while the listener ‘listens with delight’, a phrase I learnt from Doug Lipman’s (n.d.) The Beginning Storytelling Toolkit (a self-paced storytelling training kit). To listen with delight is not only to listen attentively but with appreciation and not with criticism. The children thus learn to identify the strengths of one another and to express them clearly. They can offer suggestions in a respectful manner to their partner. The children change partners so they can interact with more than one person. Creating opportunities for interaction between the children emphasizes the theme of friendship that is prevalent in the story. To build authentic relationships between classmates in the class, I draw out information surrounding the theme of friendship from the participants and then weave that information into the story. For example, I find out what the children like to do with their friends, what they like to eat and drink and include these in the story. In this way, the participants can identify with the story and see themselves in the story. They are building

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Fig. 6.3 Swee telling end of Mr Wiggle and Waggle story

connections with the story. As they practice with partners, they are also building relationality with their partners. In a typical classroom, I adopt a ‘person-centred’ approach to facilitate learning. The abilities of the students within a class may vary. As I work with the students, I profile their needs, abilities and interests. Through ‘person-centred’ facilitation, I am being responsive to the responses of our participants and plan ahead in anticipation of their needs. I consider lesson progression from easy to difficult. For example, after learning the finger story of two good friends, the students are encouraged to create a new version of two good friends who quarreled then reconciled. They are encouraged to look for new vocabulary to build their story and then write their new stories on paper. The process of learning the finger story of two friends eventually culminates in a creative writing activity where students are often curious to find new vocabulary to tell their new story. Many stories that I have told to young children involve audience participation. I use a ‘call and response’ method of storytelling, by saying

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a phrase and the audience repeats that phrase. This interactive method invites the audience to pay attention in a playful way and if there is a pattern, there is anticipation which keeps them involved. This is an effective way to engage the audience with language learning. Sometimes the spoken language is accompanied by gesturing to combine both visual and the auditory elements, thus enhancing the learning experience. When students themselves repeat the story verbally with gestures, they remember the language learnt. One area that the storyteller relies on heavily is eye contact (see Fig. 6.4). This is one area in which story ‘telling’ is more advantageous than story ‘reading’. The storyteller leverages a lot more with eyes. Maintaining eye contact with the audience while speaking is vital to build a connection with the audience. The teller’s eyes check for understanding, for acknowledgement or appropriate emotional response. A nod or a smile is an indication of audience support. The eyes that are looking somewhere or puzzled could indicate boredom or confusion. A storyteller builds deep connection with the eyes. A glassy gaze, a twitch of the eyebrow, or the eyeball shifting side to side convey different states of emotion that the storyteller wants the audience to experience. Through the use of words with sensory details and dialogue, and voice modulation, pace, pauses, volume, listeners imagine themselves in

Fig. 6.4 Swee telling using her eyes, expression and puppets

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the story, being part of the story, being in the shoes of the character empathizing with the character (empathetic imagination). For example, I tell a Chinese folktale of a girl confronting a huge python that is moving towards her. The snake stuck out its tongue and hissed. (Voice gets louder) ‘Sssssss’ (tongue sticking out) as it moved closer towards her. T The snake focused its eyes on the girl. It slithered closer (pause) to the girl. ‘Ssssss’ (tongue sticking out and louder) Just as the snake lunged forward, the girl swiftly jumped to one side and struck with her sword (spoken with a faster pace). With accuracy, the girl’s sword pierced (pause) the snake’s eye. The snake was surprised. (pause) The searing pain caused it to retreat into a cave. (slower in pace)

Storytelling is a powerful pedagogical tool to educate, engage and entertain. The process of telling a story not accompanied by a book, but only by the teller’s gestures, facial expressions and voice modulations enhances language acquisition. These verbal and non-verbal cues help the audience to understand the words and the plot of the story (Lwin, 2019). They have to listen and cognitively think and imagine. When a storyteller involves the participation of the audience by getting them to repeat words, respond to questions and kinesthetically move, this multi-sensorial way of learning engages different types of learners. Because the stories contextualize language learning, students can be gently coaxed to learn them and speak them. The more curious a child is, the more he learns. I have found that storytelling is an effective way to pique the curiosity of children to learn the Chinese language. It also entices the children to read and write the language. I invite you too to learn and teach languages through stories.

Practical Suggestions for Storytellers/teachers (1) Choosing a tale to tell For the storyteller or teacher in the classroom, it is important to choose a story that you like and will want to spend time to get to the heart of the story and find ways to retell the story to students. It is best to choose

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oral stories or folktales because they come from the oral tradition. It is important to ‘tell’ the story than to ‘read aloud’ the story, even if it is to tell in your own words. (2) Preparing to tell Note down the structure of the story by making a story map of the story. Drawing the story map helps to capture the story in a memorable way. Practice telling the story aloud in your own words using the story map and then without the story map. Practice varying the pitch, pace and volume of the voice. Think of places where a phrase could be repeated. Think of places where a phrase can be accompanied by a gesture. These can be places where students can participate. Think of how to lead into the story. There could be new vocabulary that needs to be taught. Think of how to follow up after telling the story. There could be activities that help students to learn to tell the story and that these activities could incorporate cooperative learning strategies so the students could practice with one another and learn social skills at the same time. There could be activities that further explore the story language and content through reading and writing language skills or craft activities that could involve collaboration between students. (3) Telling the tale The first attempt in the class is probably the most nerve-wracking. There may be some hesitation or some parts forgotten. Just pause and let the words or images return. Tell the story to different classes and it will become more fluent. When telling a story, remember to have eye contact with the audience. Make use of facial expressions, body gestures and voice modulation to animate the story.

References Lipman. D. (n.d.). The beginning storytelling kit. Story Dynamics.

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Lwin, S. M. (2019). A multimodal perspective on applied storytelling performances: Narrativity in context. Routledge. MacDonald, M. R., & Tossa, W. (2007). Leave, bees!: A Thai folk tale. HamptonBrown.

CHAPTER 7

Storytelling and Imagination Thao Thi Phuong Nguyen

How My Love of Story and Storytelling Began The story began when I started learning English from Year 3 in 1992. At that time, I went to an English class every Sunday from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. I was taught only simple English words through translation and word writing practice. One day, my father gave me a cassette tape with songs and their lyrics inside. I will never forget my first English song which has a lovely story, Oh My Darling Clementine (Bradford, 1885). It was this story that inspired me to learn English. When I read the lyrics, I could feel a moving tale about a father who lost his daughter forever. That was when I first came to know about death. I could construct pictures for myself of each scene narrated through simple clause sentences with some difficult words and inversions, all of which depicted the beautiful memories of when the girl was alive and the father’s misery after her death. The

T. T. P. Nguyen (B) Department of Foreign Language Teacher Education, University of Foreign Language Studies, Danang, Vietnam e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 L. G. Phillips and T. T. P. Nguyen (eds.), Storytelling Pedagogy in Australia & Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4009-4_7

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significance and evocative words of that song led me to read more stories. I thought it was remarkable for children to learn English through stories. Until I worked as a teacher of English and teacher trainer at university and specialised in TESOL methodology for in-service and pre-service teachers and teacher training students, I began to enquire into how storytelling works to teach English as a foreign language (EFL). My colleagues and I delivered innovative workshops about teaching methods for primary English language teachers. In the feedback from most of the teachers, they noted they were very impressed with storytelling because of its effectiveness in engaging learner interest and encouraging language learning. On these positive results, I then decided to pursue PhD research into storytelling as pedagogy for EFL young learners (Nguyen, 2019), which is an interdisciplinary study of second language acquisition and education. A collaborative teacher and I told stories to primary school-aged children at her private tuition centre. The children kept asking us to tell them more stories. I confirmed through research that stories could be a rich land for children to learn a foreign language, such as English. Storytelling as pedagogy purposefully targets children’s EFL learning to cultivate a joy in learning: a key value of the pedagogy. I see joy in learning as a foundational motivator for young children’s learning through storytelling and imagination.

Why Storytelling? Storytelling offers a means for language discovery in contrast to more instructional methods of EFL which provide long explanations about language. Language learners may not learn effectively from these long explanations whereas learners need to play with and use the language themselves to adapt themselves in learning (Scrivener, 2011). In line with this perspective, it is gainful for children to learn a language and make meaning of it through stories and storytelling, as a contemporary educational philosopher with an emphasis on the uses of imagination and storytelling in education and child development Kieran Egan (1986) suggests “Telling a story is a way of establishing meaning” (p. 37) and “Young children have the conceptual tools to learn the most profound things about our past” (p. 14). Storytelling is an “interactive art of using words and actions to reveal the elements and images of a story while encouraging the listener’s imagination” (National Storytelling Network, 1975/2021). Storytelling is especially provocative in activating imagination in children’s

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minds (Chambers, 1970; Egan, 1986, 1992). Accordingly, when meaning is achieved, learning can be enhanced. As teacher trainers in teaching English to children David Vale and Anne Feunteun (1995) explained, when children read or listen to a story, in terms of their comprehension and responses, there are four main types of mental process involved: picturing, imagining, identification and personalising. The result is unique to the individual child. This explanation is consistent with Egan’s (1986, 2005) suggestion of using storytelling to involve the cognitive tools of children’s imagination in oral language development. The purpose of storytelling is to enhance language learning and inspire creativity and imagination of students (Graham, 1994; Kiefer, 2020; Phillips, 2000). First, it has an important role for young learners’ first language learning as well as potential for second or foreign languages (L2/FL) (Slattery & Willis, 2001). Second, stories and storytelling intensify oral language exposure in the classroom in the sense that storytelling serves as verbal communication (Bland, 2015; Livo & Rietz, 1986). Stories are seen as a good source of language applied to a meaningful context for children. Last but not least, as pedagogy, storytelling can maximise students’ meaning-making in an additional language and can form the basis of a social and cultural learning community and reference pool because the concept of a story is “so central to the lives of young children that it comes to defining their existence” (Gottschall, 2012, p. 7). Storytelling as pedagogy invites playfulness. As a pedagogy, the simple act of storytelling can be transformed, by enhancing it through role play, drawing, total physical response (TPR) and other hands-on activities for thinking through action (Puchta & Williams, 2011). Storytelling is evident as pedagogy for young learners in EFL, especially through a responsive pedagogical strategy, multimodal scaffolding, mutually inspired engagement and a linguistic model facilitating relationality and inspiring meta-awareness of learning (see Nguyen, 2019). Application of storytelling pedagogy in an EFL classroom invites a greater focus on young learners as active agents in their learning, as opposed to passive receivers of knowledge.

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What Does Research Suggest About Imagination in Second Language Learning? The concept of imagination in the classroom is difficult to define because imagination is not a practical technique that can be readily engaged in a content lesson and visibly recognised (Egan, 1992; Judson & Egan, 2013). The history of imagination reveals its complexity in meanings over centuries (see Egan, 1992). According to Egan, “imagination is not simply a capacity to form images, but is a capacity to think in a particular way” (p. 4). According to American philosopher Mark Johnson (1987), “imagination is our capacity to organize mental representations (especially percepts, images and image schemata) into meaningful, coherent unities” (p. 140). From these perspectives, imagination plays an essential role in how to make meaning. A contemporary dictionary defines imagination as “the ability to think of clever and original ideas, possibilities or solutions; to form a picture, story, or idea in your mind; and to think, feel, or believe something that is not real or true” (Macmillan English Dictionary, 2021). Pedagogical justification of imagination has become clearer in L2/FL education for language learners. It is representational through other forms such as storytelling, drawing (Wright, 2010), dramatising, dancing, singing in a classroom where learners can perceive literary text meaning (Beliavsky, 2001; Bongiorno, 2001; Dinapoli, 2001; Ratliff, 2001). Imagination is conceptualised as the main part of becoming literate (Murris & Kell, 2016). It is also representational in children’s worlds where they learn about themselves, culture, nature, and their life as a story and sense the world according to their views (Madoc-Jones & Egan, 2001). These authors suggest that fantasy-imagination is “a product of the languaged mind” (p. 12) where children develop their understanding about the worlds of reality and fantasy on a continuum through the mediation of language and other modalities. Imagination through folktales told in English as a second language acts on student understanding of the English language outside the classroom and their cultural understandings (Price, 2001). Planaria Price found out that students acquired English language knowledge of number order, adjectives and nouns (e.g. three little pigs, the big bad wolf and the little red riding hood) not by rules but through imaginative learning through stories and storytelling. Brian Tomlinson (2001) explored the relationship between the inner voice and second language learning where he considers inner voice a critical factor used “to produce speech sounds in

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the mind when talking to ourselves or when repeating what we have heard or read” (p. 28). Although Tomlinson did not mention imagination, the inner voice to form mental images and responses engages imagination in this learning process. He further suggested that inner voice should be encouraged in second language learning to acquire a second language naturally.

Imagination Provoked by Storytelling The following framework of imagination offers a way to understand imagination in the relationships between storytelling and EFL learning. Theorists and researchers have intensively explored definitions of imagination. According to the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky known for his work of sociocultural theory and imagination with children (2004), there are two basic types of activities in a person’s actions and behaviours: reproductive activity and creative activity. He describes reproductive activity as being “closely linked to memory; essentially it consists of a person reproducing or repeating previously developed and mastered behavioural patterns or resurrecting traces of earlier impressions” (p. 7), whereas creative activity he describes as a combinational act of existing elements to produce new elements is called imagination or fantasy in psychology. Vygotsky further explained the relationship of imagination and reality where imagination is not a separation of reality and nonexistence as he wrote a century ago: In everyday life, fantasy or imagination refers to what is not actually true, what does not correspond to reality, and what, thus, could not have any serious practical significance. But in actuality, imagination, as the basis of all creative activity, is an important component of absolutely all aspects of cultural life, enabling artistic, scientific and technical creation alike. (Vygotsky, 2004, p. 9)

This creative activity does not necessarily mean the greatest scientific inventions of human beings by talented scientists. More importantly, Vygotsky asserts that creativity occurs “whenever a person imagines, combines, alters, and creates something new, no matter how small a drop in the bucket this new thing appears compared to the works of geniuses” (p. 11). This proposition provides an understanding of children’s learning

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through their imaginative play at an early age and imagination to enhance language learning. In this way, children can create or produce new things by combining what they already know or experience. Imagination works best in language play such as role play in storytelling. A child’s play is not simply a reproduction of what he has experienced, but creative reworking of the impressions he has acquired. He combines them and uses them to construct a new reality, one that conforms to his own needs and desires. (Vygotsky, 2004, p. 12)

Functioning in imagination is the working of mental imagery. Egan (2005) defined the role of mental imagery as “a tool of immense emotional importance, influencing us throughout our lives…. The image carries more imaginative and memorable force than the concept alone can hold” (p. 3) and stressed that “the use of mental images (as distinct from external pictures) should play a large role in teaching and learning” (p. 4). Mental imagery can make a great contribution to students’ language learning by increasing creativity, improving listening comprehension and providing fluency in speaking, facilitating memory for language learning, strengthen motivation and self-concept, and help to focus their attention (Kuyvenhoven, 2007). Noticing their relations, teachers can mediate children to develop relevant areas. Through utilisation of multimodalities, that is, digital, visual, audio, tactile and gestural modes (Kalantzis & Cope, 2018), further clues are offered to enhance meaning-making and stimulate children’s imaginations. In the workshops, I also combined the multimodality frame discussed by David Block (2013) as a way of stimulating children’s imagination for meaning-making in English through storytelling. The multimodality frame is characterised by modes: spoken language, postures, gestures (i.e. iconic, metaphoric, deictic, and beat), bodily movements, facial expressions, and gaze. “Words are used to create mental pictures of story. The storyteller’s face, voice, body and personality help to convey meaning and mood” (Harrett, 2004, p. 4). All of these modes support children’s imaginative learning through storytelling. Storytelling cannot be engaging when we memorise scripts and merely recall the content. The collaborative teacher and I recounted the stories interactively with the children by inviting them into our storytelling world.

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How Children Imagine to Learn In my study, three short stories namely The Gingerbread Man 1 (Sims, 2011), Friends 2 (Lewis, 1999) and Slop 3 (MacDonald, 1997) were told in the course of eight workshops. Each story was told twice or three times. The three stories I selected to tell were interrelated to support children’s language learning and created a larger picture of the daily life of the characters. The workshops were aimed at promoting language learning and possibly going beyond language learning. During the workshops, it became apparent how imagination was evident in the process of storytelling. Children are curious and want to make meaning about the world around them which they can reproduce later in learning activities. During storytelling, children may imagine that they are playing the roles of characters in the story. They naturally enter this magic world and try to visually imagine an action, an event, or even some feelings, all of which are parts of the whole jigsaw. They construct meaning and use verbal and nonverbal language (such as body language or gesture). Pseudonyms are used for all the children in the following instances. Episode 1: Embodiment Children Visualise Meaning Through Gestures Drawing on the multimodality frame presented above, the children created meaning by deciphering clues from gestures observed and analysed. When I told The Gingerbread Man story, I demonstrated tossing and snapping by using her head and mouth. The children enhanced their meaning-making by exploring hand gestures.

1 Story synopsis: Everyone wants to catch the gingerbread man, but he’s too fast for them. Until he reaches a river, and meets a suspiciously helpful fox (Sims, 2011). 2 Story synopsis: Sam and Alice are the best friends. One day, while playing on the farm, they find an egg and decide to take it back to the farmhouse. It’s a long way to carry an egg and keep it safe: Will they be friends in the end? (Lewis, 1999). 3 Story synopsis: Every night an old man and an old woman finish their dinner and

dump all their slops into a bucket. Then the old man picks up the heavy bucket of slops, carries it outside and pours the slops over the garden wall, not knowing that the wee couple lives below. The wee man comes to show the old man the results of the slops on his wee house, the old couple uses all their ingenuity to solve the problem (MacDonald, 1997).

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Thao: And the Gingerbread Man (…) what? Snap (snapping ), toss and snap (tossing head and snapping by mouth) Jack: (moves fingers to express the meaning of snap; other children laugh).

Jack did not repeat the teacher’s gestural meaning of snapping by mouth. Instead, he used his hand gesture to reproduce the meaning of “snap” as shown in Fig. 7.1. He innovated a gesture in his own way to make meaning. The children also made meaning of body language or visual cues and used English to describe the gestures. James and some children: (hold one hand tight ). Sam: Egg in hand (holds one hand tight )

Instead of recalling the exact story language (i.e. hold the egg tight), Sam’s meaning-making was mediated by modelling gestures from other children and this made his thought explicit. Interestingly, he even used the correct preposition in saying “egg in hand.” The evidence might suggest

Fig. 7.1 Jack uses his hand gesture for a new word “snap”

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that Sam’s understanding was not a reproduction of rote learning because he was using language in a specific context to describe what the other children were doing. In the following extract of The Gingerbread Man story, the children internalised the story through the embodiment of gestures and speech. My telling and the children’s involvement were mostly simultaneous. Thao: She weighed the dough [[Children: (watch the teacher’s storytelling excitingly; Jack, Tom, and Peter stretch two arms weighing ) Cân, cân n˘a.ng]] and she measured (measuring with two hands ), measure, measure, [Jack: Bô.t] d-ong, d-o. She measured and then she mixed ´ Everyone, (mixing with one hand circling ) = (Mary: Trô.n; Lisa: Quây). follow me. Children: (mixing with one hand circling ) Mix. Thao: and stir (stirring with fingers ) [Children: Stir (stirring by pretending using their hands holding a bow and a finger as a spoon)] Then she rolled the dough (gestures with two arms rolling the dough) [[Children: she rolled the dough (rolling the dough by moving two arms )]]. She rolled the dough. Say with me. … Thao: Oven, oven in the kitchen = (Children: Oven, oven). Oven is in the kitchen. She put the shape in the oven to bake, to bake. Uhm, soon the kitchen was filled with a smell (smelling ) (Jack smells ). Smell (Thao and Children smell ). Everyone, smell the hot gingerbread. Children: Smell (smell and close their eyes )

The children and I imagined the cooking episode by using hand gestures. They balanced two hands in front of them to denote the meaning of weighing or simulated the action of mixing,stirring and rolling the dough by using their fingers or hands. In this social context of storytelling, the children learned the language through distinctive gestures and body language. Evidence from the episodes illustrates that gestures are an important tool for learning English, especially for meaning-making. Jack and Sam innovated gestures to show their imaginative learning. “As children listen to a story being told, no pictures can be seen except for the pictures in their heads. Instead of a literal picture to view, children are using their imagination to create their individualised visuals” (Koehnecke, 2000,

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p. 187). In following Vygotsky’s (2004) explanations of imagination, the learning occurred because imagination enabled the children to conceptualise something from my storytelling that they had never experienced before. The imagery offered through gestures in the storytelling assisted the children to make meaning. Children Enact Roles in the Stories The role play of storytelling reinforced the children’s comprehension and created an opportunity for them to sequentially connect story events. Rosy, Alex and Jack played the roles of the little old woman, the little old man and the Gingerbread Man (GM), respectively. Sam played a horse, Kevin a cow, Harry a farmer, and James and Sophie the children. The collaborative teacher was the narrator. They demonstrated how imagination worked through the re-enactment of story events. The following extract was taken from the role play. Thao: Can you do this? (puts a hand on the chest ) I am a gingerbread man. (Jack speeds up past the farmer, smiling ) Thao: And the Gingerbread Man raced past a horse and a cow (Jack pretends to race past Sam and Kevin who play those animal roles ). Sam as a horse: Uhm, you look delicious. Neigh. = Thao: neigh the horse and moo the cow. Kevin as a cow: Moo. Come (.) here (.) Gingerbread Man (hand gesture of beckoning ). Thao: But the Gingerbread Man ran along the road and sang. Jack as the Gingerbread Man: I have run away from the little old woman and the little old man. And I can run away from you too. Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me. I am the Gingerbread Man. (Thao sings along a little bit ). Thao: And the gingerbread man sped past a farmer (.) in a field. Harry as a farmer (Alex pretends to plough and Harry follows ): [Thao: what a] What a treat! Come here (.) Gingerbread Man. Thao: But the Gingerbread Man ran along the road (Jack runs ) and was singing. Jack-GM: I have run away from a horse, a cow, a little old woman, and a little old man. And I can run away from you too. Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me. I am the Gingerbread Man (Jack looks happy). Thao: And the Gingerbread Man scampered past a school, children. James and Sophie as children: Uhm, we love gingerbread. [Thao: Come here] Come here, little man (smiling ).

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Jack-GM: I have run away from a farmer in the field, a cow, a horse, a little old woman and a little old man [Thao: I can]. And I can run away from you too. Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me. I am the Gingerbread Man. (Thao sings along a little bit ).

Jack demonstrated his imagination and a clear understanding of the story when he interacted imaginatively and dialogically with Sam, Harry, James and Sophie. He could address a series of characters when he met them on the road by singing the song. Kevin and Harry altered their voices to suit their characters in this role play. Kevin actively made the clear sound of “moo” and called Jack the Gingerbread Man in a loud, slow voice “Come here Gingerbread Man.” Kevin and Harry replaced the original script which was “Come here little man.” The critical point is that the children may mimic the teacher, but the evidence indicates they could also suitably improvise language use in the role-play enactment of the story. The children prepared for their roles through verbal and non-verbal devices. This chapter has earlier pointed out how children used hand gestures as non-verbal devices to demonstrate comprehension. Further evidence follows, illustrating how they enacted their roles. Thao: The fox tossed its head Alex: (tosses his head) Peter: Snap (opens his mouth). Jack: (acts out the Gingerbread Man a quarter gone, half gone, three quarters gone and the end, by bending his body slowly).

Peter enacted his role play by saying “Snap” and acting it out. Especially, Jack in this role play creatively used the embodied action of bending his body to make meaning of how the Gingerbread Man was snapped by a fox, and in the end, completely gobbled up. This is a good example of how the children connected the multimodal storytelling with their experiences for understanding and then transformed the meaning into their own creation. The group re-telling of the story gave the children the opportunity to express felt emotions and understandings from the story. The children became more imaginative in meaning-making, both intrapersonally and interpersonally. When they knew the devices, they spoke up or acted out creatively. Whenever they were uncertain, they sought support from peers

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or the collaborative teacher and me. It is relevant here to consider Helga Andresen (2005) who noted that: With role play, the children no longer presuppose the context given, but rather transform the meanings of persons, objects and actions, thereby using language as the central instrument to generate the altered meanings. In doing so, they differentiate between word and object, between language and its context. (Andresen, 2005, p. 409)

Unlike conventional methods, storytelling arouses children’s imagination. The tangible and invisible representation of meaning through storytelling seems to be supportive of children’s language and imaginative learning. Evidence from children’s oral descriptions about their drawings also shows their capacity to relay abstract meanings with the aid of these drawings, which serve as a means to record story details visually so that they can then speak about them later. Similarly, children can act them out. As such, art activities such as drawing or poster making, role-play, and drama developed from storytelling actively support knowledge creation in foreign language learning. What follows is another episode of children’s joy in learning, in coming to learn the moral lessons of the stories, to further understand how imagination in storytelling pedagogy works. Episode 2: Emotion and Imagination in Storytelling Joyous Learning Insights into the joy applied imagination in storytelling can also be gained by looking closely at how children engage in storytelling. The children were very excited and had a lot of laughs during the role-play storytelling of The Gingerbread Man. Jack’s moment of joy was when he was able to demonstrate his creativity in making meaning of how the gingerbread man was eaten by the fox as seen in Fig. 7.2. Moments of joy reoccurred during storytelling because the children imagined meaning in their own ways. Thao:

Once upon a time, many years ago, a little old woman, các con d-u´,ng dâ.y làm bà già d-i. ((Please stand up and role play a little old woman)) = (Harry stands up, then Kevin and James laugh) and a little old man = (Tom laughs and pretends to

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Fig. 7.2 Joyous learning moment

be an old man) lived on a farm. There is a cow, a cow, moo [Jack, Sam, Alex: moo (laughing )], a goat, or a horse? A horse, neigh [[Steven, Sophie, Jessica: neigh (Jessica smiles )]], a cow = (Jack, Alex, Sam: MOO). They were kind people, but they were sad. It made them sad = (Harry and Kevin pretend to be sad) = (Children laugh) that they had no children. In the excerpt above, Kevin and James’ laughter reflected the irony of Harry and themselves playing a little old woman. Other laughter was indicative of their autonomy in the role play turns and in comprehending the characters’ performances. The children were more comfortable and joyful when learning through stories and storytelling than when I observed the class in their regular English language classes. Their joy made them more animated in the storytelling sessions than in any controlled activities such as the event sequencing activities, which dealt with story reading. Storytelling is not only a productive linguistic environment but also a pool for embedding joy. I have found that storytelling is itself an act of living the value of joy.

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Empathetic Imagination Storytelling and stories transport children into both an imaginative space and the real world in which they genuinely engage with empathetic imagination where they will learn moral lessons, social relationships, emotions and the feelings of others through the narrative imagination. Storytelling keeps children in contact with the richness of language rather than merely with linguistic items, the latter of which would necessarily impoverish the beauty of language (Bloor & Bloor, 2013) and isolate it from other semiotic means (Lane, 2009) for learning. At the end of the series of storytelling workshops I co-facilitated with this group, I asked the children which was their favourite story and what they learned from that story. Their thoughts about the characters revealed empathetic imagination which “implies imagining feeling together with the story characters” as explained in Chapter 1. Anna’s reflection below is evident of empathetic imagination (originally written in Vietnamese and translated into English). From the Gingerbread man story, I feel that the Gingerbread man was so lovely and innocent. He made me feel very happy. He was made with love from the old woman and the old man because they had no children. When the old couple created the Gingerbread man, they thought he would be nice but he jumped out of the oven very fast and ran away ignoring that the old couple tried to stop him. He ran on the farm, in the field and past the school to the river where he was tempted and eaten by the fox. What a pity for the old couple.

Anna empathised with the old couple. Although Anna did not write the reflection in English, her writing showed her capacity to feel love, hope and loss with the old couple. She imagined what it felt like for them. Through storytelling play and imagination, the children learned about courage, empathy, compassion, dignity and respect, which emerged as concepts of what it means to be human in the stories that we shared.

Imagination in Storytelling Pedagogy Makes a Responsive and Relational Difference Storytelling pedagogy ignites children’s joyful imagination through being playful partners, who share in laughing, role playing, joking, body

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gestures, vocal and sound play. As storytelling teachers, the collaborating teacher and I responded to the children’s multifaceted expression. By opening space for children’s agency in lively expression, a lively dynamic was cultivated in which we bounced ideas and actions off each other (responsiveness ). We began to understand each child more fully in the following ways: respecting their individuality; encouraging shy and bold children differently; and offering children more choice for their learning preferences in our storytelling practice. The hierarchical sense of a classroom based on student rankings creates divides of inferiority and superiority. However, in the storytelling classroom, the children built a positive sense of self (e.g. a feeling of pride in helping peers’ learning without showing off; a feeling of enjoyment in learning together and achieving meaning-making together) and blurred the distance in the relationship between the teacher and children and among the children. As Louise (co-editor) shares with me, “storytelling implies an existence of community” and from there, relationality is nurtured. Relationality is cultivated in a synergy between learning and teaching. I suggest that teachers tell stories for children and with children rather than cajoling children into learning vocabulary or grammar from the stories. How children learn must start from children and with children. Being for and from children means the children are agentic learners; being with children means the children learn the language as they are active meaning makers.

Storytelling: A Multimodal Pedagogy for Imagination I see storytelling as a pedagogical and cultural tool mediating children’s understanding of English as a foreign language through activating the imagination and social and cultural interaction with a storyteller and other children. And I emphasise the importance of asking questions to trigger children’s imagination through multimodal storytelling. I suggest that teachers adapt or create questions according to their stories. The content elements of questions can be literal, inferring, predicting, analysing, making connections and critical reflection but imagination orientation. I asked these questions in the workshops of the Welsh folktale Slop (MacDonald & Davis, 1997) to provoke the children’s imagination.

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– What do you know about a cottage? – Can you guess where the voice comes from? – What do you think would happen if the old man stopped pouring the slop? – What do you predict would happen to the wee little man and woman? – What would you do if you were the wee little man? – How would you feel when your house was poured with dirty water? For open questions like these, children do not give “moulded” answers. And children’s responses also inspire the teacher’s imagination. By asking the above questions in planning a storytelling lesson, teachers can involve imagination in teaching while children can inform teachers by showing their performance in learning.

Final Thoughts Through this chapter, I have shared how to teach through storytelling as pedagogy for children’s imaginative learning in English as a foreign language. Storytelling and imagination can play a mutually pedagogical role. As Phillips (2000) found in her storytelling research, “The quintessential value of story is its far-reaching ability to open and inspire imagination” (p. 2). Hughes (1970) stressed, “when we tell a story to a child, to some extent, we have his future in our hands insofar as we have hold of his imagination. That’s the key” (p. 61). Therefore, I see great value in incorporating storytelling pedagogy in foreign language learning, just as Swee Yean Wong advocates in Chapter Six and Wajuppa Tossa and Prasong Saihong in Chapter Three, primarily for its capacity to enhance imagination, joy and agency in children’s learning, which unfortunately is often absent in mainstream language classrooms in Vietnam.

Storytelling Tips and Suggestions The Workshops • Workshop of storytelling can be organised in different modes (e.g. acting, storytelling with puppets, realia, posters, and role-play storytelling).

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• Follow-up class activities should be developed from each story. The main purpose of these follow-up activities is to consolidate meaning for the children. These activities are play-based activities which may involve vocabulary, conceptual or cultural knowledge to facilitate and enhance children’s story meaning-making. The Stories: Principles of Selection • Cultural factors should be balanced with Vietnamese traditions and those of other cultures in the story selection because children may have a chance to learn about another culture and compare it with their own culture. This will help both facilitate understanding and create meaningful language input. • The plots have to be new, to captivate learners in listening to the stories and to encourage discovery. However, the characters and settings are familiar to provide a foundation of contextual understanding and underlying concepts for a better comprehension of the new lesson content so that they can transfer it in their prior knowledge (Schwartz & Nasir, 2002). • The language used in the stories is rich yet contextualised in a predictable pattern with the support of visual aids and body language. The choice of target words in the stories should be based on parts of speech and word frequency. The content needs to be simple, but this does not mean that there are no new words at all. New words in the text range from one new word per 15 words to one per 50 words (Nation, 1990) because this does not overreach the level of difficulty for comprehension. • Language devices used may include metaphor, simile, alliteration, allegory, onomatopoeia, imagery and more. • Three key organisational features are recommended: the thematic structure, spatial and temporal sequence (Toolan, 2001). The purpose of these features is to construct children’s sense of human beings, animals, objects, places or culture in themes and sense of time (e.g. the past, the present and the future). The story organisation is composed of an opening to introduce the characters, a description of the story background, an introduction of problems or conflicts, a series of events (repetition) that lead to the resolution of the problem, a closing and mores which are either explicitly or implicitly stated.

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Judson, G., & Egan, K. (2013). Engaging students’ imaginations in second language learning. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 3(3), 343–356. Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2018). Multiliteracies. New learning: Transformational designs for pedagogy and assessment. Retrieved 08/09/2018, from http://newlearningonline.com/multiliteracies Kiefer, D. (2020). The imagined within the real: Imagination, storytelling, and our perception of reality. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. Koehnecke, D. S. (2000). Increasing literacy through storytelling. Reading Improvement, 37 (4), 187–189. Kuyvenhoven, J. (2007). What happens inside your head when you are listening to a story? Children talk about their experience during a storytelling. Storytelling, Self, Society, 3(2), 95–114. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41948981 Lane, P. (2009). Identities in action: A nexus analysis of identity construction and language shift. Visual Communication, 8(4), 449–468. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1470357209343360 Lewis, K. (1999). Friends. Walker Books Ltd. Livo, N., & Rietz, S. (1986). Storytelling: Process and practice. Libraries Unlimited MacDonald, M. R., & David, Y. L. (Ill.) (1997). Slop! Fulcrum Publishing. Macmillan Online English Dictionary. (2021). https://www.macmillandictio nary.com/ Madoc-Jones, G., & Egan, K. (2001). On the educational uses of fantasy. The Journal of the Imagination in Language Learning and Teaching, 6, 8–13. Murris, K., & Kell, C. (2016). Imagination and literacy: Introduction to the special issue. Reading & Writing, 7 (2), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw. v7i2.136 Nation, P. (1990). Teaching and learning vocabulary. Heinle and Heinle. National Storytelling Network. (1975/2021). What is storytelling? http://www. storynet.org/resources/whatisstorytelling.html Nguyen, T. P. T. (2019). Storytelling as pedagogy to facilitate meaning-making in English learning as a foreign language for young learners. The University of Queensland. Phillips, L. (2000). Storytelling: The seeds of children’s creativity. Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 25(3), 1–5. Phillips, L. (2010). Young children’s active citizenship: Storytelling, stories and social actions (PhD thesis). The Queensland University of Technology. Price, P. (2001). The magic of folktales for teaching English and culture. The Journal of the Imagination in Language Learning and Teaching, 6, 18–25. Puchta, H., & Williams, M. (2011). Teaching young learners to think. Helbling Languages.

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CHAPTER 8

Storytelling for Sustainability Education, Cultural Learning and Social Change Anna Jarrett

Becoming a Storyteller Growing up, I knew that I had Scottish and German heritage. There were a few old black and white photos of the Runge family, at my Granma’s place. In my second year of university, I travelled to Scotland to stay with my Aunty Sarah and Granma in the little town of Newburgh just north of Aberdeen. Like Granma, I felt a deep sense of belonging there, and a knowing that I had Scottish blood in me. In my twenties, when I became interested in my family history, I learned that I have convicts on both sides of my family, the Taylors (Mum) and the Jarretts (Dad). The layers of my family history continue to unfold as I research historical first contact experiences between Aboriginal people and the British, and as I visit the places where The Jarrett and Taylor story starts in post-invasion Australia; on the Hawkesbury River, in the Southern Highlands‚ on the Bellingen River and Mid North Coast of New South Wales (Fig. 8.1).

A. Jarrett (B) Long Beach, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 L. G. Phillips and T. T. P. Nguyen (eds.), Storytelling Pedagogy in Australia & Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4009-4_8

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Fig. 8.1 Anna Jarrett

I didn’t expect to be a storyteller. I didn’t actually know what that was. I didn’t come from a family that told stories, but I did always love drama and books. I started reading when I was in kindergarten and loved learning new words and making up my own stories everyday. My love of stories in books led to a love of children’s literature, which I studied at university along with drama. When I left university, making drama out of children’s stories was what I naturally fell into, and I absolutely loved it. Through street theatre and telling favourite stories like Wombat Stew (Vaughan & Lofts, 1984) in parks and festivals, I could share my love of stories. I had a ball making lots of sounds, getting people involved in the stories and really bringing those stories to life. I didn’t know that this performance, of literary and folk tales, was called storytelling. When I went to America in 1989, I was planning to act in a children’s theatre in an education company. Instead, I landed on this thing called storytelling. It was advertised in San Francisco Chronicle, and I thought that it sounded really interesting. I had been to one story circle in Sydney, at the Kirribilli Neighbourhood Centre, and I liked the experience of sitting in a circle with people, listening to stories as well as

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telling them. I wondered what storytelling was like in San Francisco, and I went along to my first storytelling show. I was hooked and I decided that’s what I want to do, put away all the props and just be me. I love theatre, but I really loved this idea of stories just coming to life with nothing, but you, your voice, the story and the audience. That was the beginning of my roller coaster storytelling ride during my first year in the USA. 1989 became a powerful year as embraced by my newly found role as a storyteller and looked for opportunities to learn more about the art and traditions of storytelling. I attended lots of storytelling festivals, presented a show called “Amazing Australian Animals” in San Francisco libraries, and was mentored by Diane Ferlatte. Diane is one of my best friends and a master storyteller in the African American tradition. When I returned to Australia at the end of that year, I also had my first offering for work teaching in rural communities through a national touring arts program called “Teenage Roadshow.” Funded by the Australia Council, I was part of a team of artists and musicians who presented creative shows, workshops and events in remote First Nations communities and towns with Aboriginal populations. My role was as The Travelling Storyteller, presenting story and creative drama programs in the outback communities of northwest New South Wales. During my first storytelling tour in Australia, I realised that the people I was meeting, and the communities I was visiting, all fascinating stories. I started to put this living history, regional character and diversity of voices, into my traditional and literary stories repertoire, to give my storytelling a whole new dimension. That was thirty years ago when I really started to understand the oral tradition of storytelling. So, layers of lived experiences, story fragments, dreams and imaginings have been built on that foundation. My storytelling practice as well as my storied life, continues to deepen and to evolve.

My Experience of Being Mentored as a Storyteller When I came back to Australia from America in 1990, I needed someone to mentor me in storytelling; to help me design, script and perform a few sets of really good stories that would work for school audiences from Kindergarten to Year 6, as well as for intergenerational family events. There was a small group of professional storytellers in Sydney and through them, I met Moses Aaron, a master storyteller. Moses offered to spend

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some time with me‚ helped me to refine my performance techniques and to shape my stories so that they were tightly timed‚ and had all the right elements of a good story. One of the most powerful things I learned was how to create a performance space anywhere, anytime, and how to move into the story and out of the story within that space. I really treasure what Moses taught me, and I still call upon many of his teachings about masterful use of the body (gesture and movement) and voice. I was travelling solo in bush communities and I didn’t have anyone to support me, so I really needed to be able to feel confident with what I was doing. Moses also taught me to look at my intention and why I tell the stories I tell; what’s my deep connection with my stories? I didn’t really know how to answer this question at first as I simply told stories I liked that made me laugh, and stories that I knew the children would like too. Both my storytelling mentors, Diane Ferlatte and Moses Aaron, told me I need to know a bit more about my cultural heritage to connect more deeply with myself as a storyteller, and also with the stories that I tell. Diane’s culture is African American and Moses is a Jewish Australian. I’m a white/European Australian with a bit of Scottish in me, so I decided to travel to Scotland in search of more stories and perhaps my stories. My travels through Scotland revealed some fascinating stories full of fairies, ghosts, witches and strange things that happen on the misty moors and wild north seas. In Fife, at a little farmhouse, I met up with Duncan Williamson, one of the travelling people and a master teller. I felt totally at home with Duncan and in Scotland. Every story Duncan told me wove another thread of magic into the tapestry of stories which I was now fully immersed in. I stayed with Duncan for two days and two nights of nonstop storytelling! Duncan, like my mentor friends Diane and Moses, saw the world through the lens of story, thinking in stories and breathing life into all the old stories of Scotland, and the Travellers Tales. Alas, he’s passed now, but he’s left an amazing legacy and an epic record of stories for everyone to enjoy. I’m thankful to Duncan for helping me to connect with my Scottish roots, for giving me some really good stories which I still tell now and for sharing with me that deep fire and eye twinkle passion for telling stories. Many storytellers around the world have been gifted with Duncan’s love of stories. His way of making sure the storytelling tradition continues was to sit you down, tell one story and then another and another, until your eyes light right up. Then he asks you to tell the story back to him and if you can remember it and feel it and it sounds

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good, then that story is yours. Duncan’s greatest joy was sending you off around the world to tell those stories again and again. Thanks to my three first storytelling teachers, I received an incredible initiation and mentoring in storytelling. Travelling through Australian bush communities, on my Teenage Roadshow tour, I also connected with Elders, who were great teachers. I was welcomed by Elders and families and often told local stories to help me relate to and connect with each unique community which I was visiting. Hearing local Australian stories was a powerful way for me to put my storytelling work into a cultural context, as well as to learn about Australia as a place rich in stories; ghost stories, lots of dramas, layers of history and the extraordinary legacy of First Nations knowledge. Learning about Aboriginal Australia was a whole new way of me knowing about, and relating to, my country. We weren’t taught these perspectives and stories at school or university back in the 1980’s. Now, it’s taught in every school, and every child at least has been introduced to Aboriginal Australian perspectives.

My Practice of Teaching Through Storytelling Kieren Egan (2005), educational philosopher and key scholar on imagination proposes “The soul of teaching has to do with meaning” (p. 211) and I see this meaning is made in the stories which we construct to hold ideas, information, emotions, questions and all the complexities of the human experience. Basically, for me, story is everything. When you think, live and breathe as a storyteller, it means constructing a world and all knowledge through that framework. Recently it’s become fashionable to claim that we are all storytellers. We all have stories to tell and we all naturally think in stories, its an ancient language and it is universal. That is true. But working within schools, and working in a Western, very modern, context, a lot of traditional story knowledge seems to have been lost. When I teach, I reclaim the idea that we are story beings and that we are wired for stories. I work in learning support now in high school, and I am loving teaching small classes where I can work with individuals, oneon-one, and meet them with the question in my mind, “What’s your story? What brings you here today? What’s happening for you today?” What happens then is a relational thing. Students know that you are open to learning about them, as opposed to categorising, judging or assessing them. This means they open up really quickly to share their story. They often share with me all sorts of amazing things about their life. I can

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put their stories into my teaching to create more meaningful, contextual learning. I’m also able to put any learning difficulties that students are having, within a context that is more free and holistic. On top of that, I can bring in a whole bunch of strength perspectives, framed with curious questions like, “Tell me about what you are struggling with,” then, “Tell me about what you love.” I want to learn as much as I can about the children and young people that I’m working with; the more I know their story, the better I can work with them to create the best learning day. And then on top of that, all content is framed within a story context. So, there’s a whole inquirybased way of learning. I ask a key question, and explore the answers and scenarios through story; your story, the story of the information that’s being presented, and then our stories in this learning environment today. I love that way of working, and I’m finding it’s really powerful. There’s something really strong, beautiful and calming about working with story, and listening to stories. Diane said to me, “Share more of your stories.” I’m a bit of wild child and have done all sorts of things. Adolescence can be a challenging time in life, and I have found that when I choose the right story at the right time, to share with the young people, they love it, and they just stop and go “wow.” A lot of high school students like stories about risk and a sense of safety, as well as tales of family, community and travel adventures. That is the way I work with story in teaching. It works on a very interpersonal level, which is the relational level. It also works on a pedagogical level, where you are actually consciously framing, designing, and planning. All of this is happening within the broader context of story as a form of communication and expression. Some questions I’m asking as I’m teaching and telling stories are: How is this student experiencing this learning today? How are they understanding it? How do they show me that they understand it or don’t? Story is very circular and non-linear. When I teach story in any of the contexts that I work in, story starts through the micro level, then it moves out to a macro level, just like moving from the local to the global. I guess that’s how I work with story. Once you start to say, at the beginning of the day. “What’s the story today?” I wonder how it will unfold. Here’s my beginning, and here’s what I love to see, my visualisations, my imaginations, the possibilities, my planning, my resources. Then each moment unfolds. By the end of the day, you have the story of the day.

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Storytelling in Outdoor Education For the last ten years, I’ve worked as an outdoor educator, tour guide and environmental educator/ranger. Through this work, I’ve developed a very strong sense of place and home on the South Coast of New South Wales, a bush and beach environment. I’ve also developed a deep love and connection with the animals and plants that I live with. When I started work as an environmental educator, working with endangered shorebirds, I was drawn closer into my local environment and a whole new world opened up to me. Our endangered shorebirds here are a very unique group called the beach-nesting birds. There are six species of beachnesting birds in Australia, and of those, we have four species here on our South Coast; hooded plovers, red capped plobers, little terns, pied otster catchers and sooty oyster catchers. They are very unusual because they lay their eggs right on the beach, on the sand camouflaged amongst seaweed, driftwood, pebbles and shells. Sooty oyster catchers lay their eggs above the rocky tideline of nearby offshore islands. The eggs are exposed and very easy to tread on and can get washed away by the tides. They are incredibly vulnerable. As you can imagine in the past, it might have served them to be where they are, but now it’s a very threatening place for them to live now. My work has been to share my love of the coastline and these birds and to bring that passion and knowledge to the general public as well as to schools. After a couple of years working as a ranger, the NSW National Parks South Coast Shorebird Recovery Program Manager Jodie Dunn, recognised the need to do education in schools, as a really key priority. We moved from presenting whole school programs to designing a project-based learning experience with on-site lessons as well as art and writing workshops, with the final outcome being a collaboratively written and illustrated picture book on the shorebirds. Year five students were the target group because they are right at the age when their world is changing and they are consciously shaping their worldviews. They’re stepping into their young adulthood and have a feeling of empowerment as unique individuals and global citizens. We approached schools to become engaged in the Shorebird Education Program, and designed a cross-curricular program, with specialist local knowledge and site-specific case studies. We included sustainability education and the idea of global citizens, empowering students to really be capable creative and critical thinkers. To have a sense of ownership, of

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place and to really look at where they live and to understand the story of where the birds and the beaches fit into their life, their sense of identity, their sense of application to learning and their belonging to both the school and the community. It was really exciting because it went from being about doing some drama and bit of role playing with the children, to creating a story called “A day in the life of the hoodie.” The children who had not seen these birds on the beaches started to imagine what it is like to be this tiny little bird on this huge beach at the beginning of the season when it is wild, and there is no one on the beach (empathetic imagination). They are really safe, but later in the season, in the summer when everybody lands, they are right in their peak of nesting, so they are very vulnerable. How do you get children to understand that when even though we all live here, most people don’t know about these birds? The Shorebird Education Program (Dunn et al., 2013) was really exciting to both design and teach. The project also involved creating a book with the children, and to make the book into a really beautiful piece of art, but also an educational book (The Birds, The Sea & Me by Jarrett & Sydenham, 2016) (see Fig. 8.2) that could be used in the schools for years to come because we couldn’t sustain the intensity and the funding of

Rikki loves to explore the beaches and learn about the birds that live there while her dad goes for his morning surf. She watches the shorebirds find homes, make nests and try to raise their chicks in the wild coastal landscape that is often as harsh as it is beautiful.

“A beautiful collaboration. The Birds, The Sea and Me is an inspiring and informative story for children and families. It makes a powerful, creative tool for environmental education and community-based shorebird protection programs”. Jodie Dunn NPWS South Coast Shorebird Recovery Coordinator

Anna Jarrett &

harbourpublishinghouse.com.au

Julie Sydenham in collaboration with students from NSW South Coast schools

Fig. 8.2 The birds, the sea & me by Jarrett and Sydenham, 2016

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the program that we had created. If we look at five years of year 5, what kind of social change are we looking at in terms of attitude values and beliefs, behaviours, and also understanding and connection to the birds and the beaches. All the children love the beach, but not many really love or know the birds. We worked with seven schools intensively where we did site-based visits. Instead of bringing the images of birds to the school, and telling stories to the children, showing photos on a big screen, we actually took them to the site to physically experience observing the birds at home in their local environment. The beach was the best teaching place as the students made direct connections with their beach and the birds. We’d say, “Hey, this is your beach but let’s have a look at it in a different way,” then we’d divide into groups and go tracking on the sand, looking for signs of birds, goannas, snakes, dogs and foxes. We did a sensory walk, listening to all the sounds, and sinking into the smells of the beach, imagining that we were a really small bird, and what it feels like to be so small on such a big beach. We’d find a beautiful sitting spot to simply sit and write or draw, finding words and images to describe this place and express how we feel in it (See Fig. 8.3). We had the time and space to really sink into the environment and develop our own very special relationship with it. Students could start to identify with their special place, then they could also open up to its story in new ways, based on information we were receiving over three different site visits. Students could grow their knowledge by listening to information and stories from me (shorebird educator), the team of rangers and shorebird volunteers. Sometimes elders in the community, who had been working with the birds for years, came along to talk to the children about how they help the shorebirds and what they’ve learned as shorebird volunteers (knowledge creation). The results from the Shorebird Education Book Project were that more than 150 students from seven schools were all introduced to the shorebirds and invited to help to care for the birds by sharing what they learned with their families and friends. Students were so excited about the shorebirds, they wanted to look after them when the summer and nesting season came. They wanted to tell everyone about them. We also had an incredible portfolio of beautiful stories, poems and artwork that the children created. Parts of the text that they wrote were written into the text that I finally wrote for the book. I created one character, Rikki, who represented someone at their age, a tomboy. The students also created artwork with Jules, the book illustrator, who did a lot of pen and ink

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Fig. 8.3 Children writing and drawing about the shorebirds near their habitat

drawings with the students. Some of those sketches were done on site. The close-up drawings are absolutely exquisite, including shells, pebbles and the seaweed that’s all around where the bird’s nest is. Jules was able to digitally overlay a lot of the children’s drawings into sort of composite picture on top of her own paintings. She ended up doing 45 layers of this really complex illustration because all the children had a piece in the final book. They can look into the illustrations, like “Where’s Wally” (Hanford, 1987), and see if they can spot their tiny little bird or rock drawing. Everyone who did a drawing had something in the final publication. All students were illustrators. We also modelled how to make a picture book, with two-page illustrations, and written text woven around the drawings in different ways. It was a really deep experience of project-based literacy, where the students imagined themselves as writers and illustrators. If they didn’t want to write, or they didn’t want to illustrate, they worked together and often communicated with each other about what they really wanted. We

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had mini galleries of their single pages, displayed in the classroom (see Figs. 8.4 and 8.5). These mock-up texts provided a way for students to reflect on their art and to write something about the shorebirds in their own voice. I do a lot of really wonderful projects, but the Shorebird Education Book Project was as good as it gets. When the teachers responded with, “Wow! Yes, please! Could we fund that kind of stuff all the time?” it created a really positive feeling around the shorebirds and about community ownership of the shorebirds on our beaches. There were some wonderful surprises in the project too, like the connection with an elder, Uncle Rex, who has worked with the birds, the pied oystercatchers, for 30 years. Rex came along to a site visit and said, “I can’t stay long because my wife’s not well, but I’ll come and I’ll meet the children, and I’ll just show them this place in Shoalhaven Heads.” Anyway, the children gathered around him, and they were just eating up every word Rex said. That day, all the birds flew in closer. It was a magnificent display of shorebirds that call the lake and the beach, their home every spring and summer. Students could have walked past this place every weekend for 10 years, and not seen it this way, through Rex’s eyes. They listened to everything he said, as he wove a story of the shorebirds and beach-nesting birds. I didn’t know anything about Shoalhaven Heads as it’s 90 minutes away from where I live. I didn’t have a relationship with it or any direct experiences. Rex did. He wove the story of Shoalhaven Heads through the seasons, mapping where the shorebirds were at now, who hadn’t arrived, who was going to be coming soon, where they feed and what they feed on. Then he took the students on a journey. This place is called “The Airport,” because it is a major flyway landing area where a lot of migratory birds come in to feed and where the beach-nesting birds come to breed. This spot is a favourite place for the pied oystercatchers. Rex took the students on an adventure into the bird’s world. He had so much fun sharing his knowledge, that he came back to the school the next visit, and he spent the day with the children, talking in a circle. It was organic and very powerful. Students were meant to be working on their stories and art, but when Rex came to school, we invited students to take time to chat with Rex. I turned around and there was already a circle of students gathering to listen to Rex, on chairs, deeply listening. I listened to Rex telling his stories and it reminded me of when I started storytelling, how I experienced that circle too. I thought, “This wasn’t planned. This isn’t in the program design.” Yet this is the ultimate experience for the whole

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Fig. 8.4 Gallery of children’s drawings from shorebird project

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Fig. 8.5 A child’s single page illustration and story

project. Rex may not be around for long, but what he’s telling the children, the way they’re listening, and the memory of the experience that the students had with Rex and the shorebirds the other day, will last forever. That’s the power of working with site-based stories; being responsive to place and people. Deep learning happens in layers with key ideas like sustainability and global citizenship, and innovative pedagogies like project-based learning, and inquiry learning. There was a lot of thinking and designing that envisioned and actualised the project. I believe that all learning should ultimately stay open to the potential for magic and wonder in learning experiences because that’s where the deepest learning happens.

Storytelling in Rural Australian Communities My work in rural communities involved designing storytelling programs that aligned with the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia

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(EYLF) (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations [DEEWR], 2009), for the rural and remote communities in New South Wales. A lot of early childhood, community and children and family services are supported by mobile playgroups (Mobile Children’s Services of NSW Inc.). There are a whole bunch of amazing people who travel around in vans which are fully resourced, facilitating playgroups in halls, under trees, on stations, in parks, wherever they can. They work in all weather, and all conditions, through drought, floods, heat and frost, sun and rain. I have been involved in these mobile playgroups for years, from my community art days in the 1980s. I have a network of rural friends with whom I’ve kept in contact over the years. Funding for special programs comes and goes for rural programs, and it often changes its agenda/outcomes. The programs which I’ve facilitated for Mobile Playgroups over the last 30 years are funded to address community development and capacity building, early intervention and violence prevention in communities and families, literacy and quality teaching and understanding. With the EYLF Framework, and the focus being on story as the ultimate education, I have really enjoyed sinking deeply into the work I do as an educator and storyteller in rural communities. I only visit communities for short periods of time ranging from a day to a week, but in this time, there is a rich range of educational, social and cultural experiences offered within a story framework. It’s powerful to know that everything I model during my visit, will influence and inspire educators, families, children, parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles to grow their own story culture and to grow through storytelling. Working as a Story Consultant and designing whole storytelling tour programs was a really really big shift in my work. I moved from being the one who was facilitating the learning experience, transferring skills and capacity building, to being the specialist who in consultation with community, created deep story and deep learning programs. Some of the questions which informed my program design included; Where am I? Who am I with? What’s your story? Where does what I want to do this week fit in with what you already do as educators? What stories do you like? What’s the story about this place? This really rich, reciprocity and responsiveness came about in terms of the stories themselves. And the idea of a storyteller as a story listener came into play. There were a whole bunch of new dimensions, that started to feed into the designing and planning process for a whole experience. This whole experience is really exciting because it is a very holistic way to look at growing into

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this world through stories. This being, belonging, and becoming, it’s like “Yes” when you’re working with little children, and you are thinking about how much power there is in everything we say and do. Stories are our way into this world of wonder and shared experiences; “Yes, you can. Give it a go. You don’t know until you try it.” This excitement all comes through stories and Storytelling Together (the name of my main workshop). On one Mobile Children’s Services tour, I was out in the Flinders Ranges, an outback area in South Australia, with lots of sheep stations on it, and people who live in extremely remote locations; they might not see other people for a month at a time. My job was to travel with the remote services for a week, presenting storytelling programs. I knew that people would be really, really excited, not just about the mobile services coming, but about the storyteller coming. In each of the towns that we travelled to, there was this incredible sense of thankfulness for being a visitor and for bringing the outside world to them. But there was also this wonderful excitement about sharing their life with me because I had never been to the Flinders Ranges. It’s real Blundstone boots and Akubra hat kind of territory. I chose to tell a lot of the old folk tales that work with young children birth to five years old, stories that are fun to play with and involve lots of interaction. Stories like The Bremen Town Musicians (a popular German folktale published by the Grimms brothers), and the Many Caps story (the panchtantra tale in Chapter 2). You can’t go wrong with all of those old favourites. I combined these with my favourite Aussie animal tales, because most of the children who live in these remote communities know their animals; emus, wombats and kangaroos. Children can see the pictures, and imagine what you are saying as soon as you say it. They’re excited. They want to tell this story too. The next layer of story was thinking about my world of the bush and beach. Most of the children and families that I was working with would not have been to the coast, so I brought the sea to them, through stories. I created a whole kind of oceanscape as an environment. Part of this immersion into an imagined world of the sea was creating possibilities and invitations like weaving an ocean of sea creatures through crafts and telling the Rainbow Fish (Pfister, 1992) story with an ocean drama and fish puppet. Multisensory ways to bring the stories to life so that children can see, feel, imagine and create their own reality for the stories. The design and planning of the creative storytelling programs with children and families was very interactive, organic and flexible. It involved

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thinking about multiple learning environments and experiences, that created mini worlds. One way to really ignite the children’s imagination is to do short guided visualisations at the start of the story, to create a context for the story. For example, in the Rainbow Fish story, I play the ocean drama so the children can hear the sound of the sea, imagine the sea and come with me on a beach walk along the tideline to see what we can find. This guided journey can help children make meaning of their world, and help them to see a place which isn’t familiar to them and is something new. Often when we are in the story circle, the young ones are sitting on their mum’s or dad’s lap or grandma’s or an uncle or aunty, and it is a very intimate relational experience. My program design involves thinking about what stories will work best for the children in that context (responsiveness ). If they are really shy children, which some of the children from the stations are, I plan to do something really gentle and not too intimidating to start, then build up to something a bit more outrageous and noisy, like the Bremen Town Musicians , where everyone’s making animal noises and playing instruments. Ultimately for me, a really good story experience is where you’ve got the interactivity happening, a bit of music and sound making. Everybody is really living in the story and the story is coming alive at that moment. This way of working with story in rural communities is very powerful because you are introducing the children to worlds within worlds. You are also creating space for them to play and explore imaginatively together. When the Mobile service arrives in a community, people want to share their stories with the educators. Part of the Mobile Children’s Service worker’s job is to say, “Hey, how are you going? What’s happening for you? Story is within the experience of the day. Throughout the day there are intimate moments for people just talking with each other and supporting each other‚ as well as structured programs and conversations. Some people might be going through a hard time, particularly in drought. Talking about how that’s going‚ and creating space for that‚ is an important part of my program. Two adults might have a chat over a cup of tea in one place, while I play with the children in another place. That’s facilitating the experience so that there are layers of experiences and opportunities to learn in and to connect with, as well as places for pure play. A paint station that’s child friendly creates tactile experiences for children to use their hands and work with the colour blue for the sea. I inspire the children’s imagination by talking about the sea, while they

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paint everything in blue and green. This links the art and sensory creative experiences with the concept of a place; what it looks and feels like. It builds children’s imagination, sense of connection and sense of wonder. When the sea story is told, it fits into a bigger context, and it starts to help children to make meaning of their world; to build their sense of what is in that world (knowledge creation), so that from that visit on, they are talking about the sea. They might have a whole series of conversations about the sea. Conversation is a really key part of storytelling and a vital part of rural community culture. The really big storytelling style that I was trained in for my work in America is the opposite of the cultural style which works best in rural Australian communities. People love it when you ham things up and have a good time, but the most important thing is to really be able to have conversations and to move in and out of that kind of performance space. Planning facilitated conversations is an integral part of my program design. Some of the conversations include: the reasons why we tell stories, what it does, how it connects you to your child, how it builds positive communication, how it inspires imagination, how it connects children to their world, how it opens up wonder, how it brings play into a family. To have a puppet, instrument, song, or a beautiful book, fundamentally changes the way a family lives together and the way a young child experiences their early experiences of the world, with that family in that community, in that bush setting which is often very isolated. I started to really think about what it is it that we are doing when we bring story to people and places. What are we doing in place as a visitor? What are we co-creating with that place and the people who are there? What are we leaving when we leave? What part of the stories stays and continues to grow? What is a story? What kind of stories do we tell? How do we think about story? What do we remember? These questions inform the upskilling in creative storytelling, informing and guiding the content and design of workshops with parents and educators. A lot of the people in the bush have really amazing memories and really rich childhoods. When they have a chance to share our favourite place stories, it is extraordinary what comes out. That alone takes people into a deeper heart and soul place, which then opens people up to listening to stories in a different way, connecting with their own story (empathetic imagination) and wanting to grow story because it is just one of the most beautiful, simple, accessible, ancient, universal tools. You can tell I love story!

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I’m finding new ways to deepen my understanding of story as a way of thinking and being, as well as appreciating story as an art form and tradition. I work with diverse people and communities, always amazed at how many stories are in our lives and excited by how many ways there are to work with storytelling in community. This links back to what I was talking about earlier when I mentioned my work with high school children. I ask these questions everyday; Where we are at today? What part in this story are we going to step into right now? Then obviously when you start doing that, the whole world of emotions and navigating emotions through story, starts to open up. That’s a whole other level of work that I do with communities, where people ask me specifically to address emotions that might have a profound effect on the community or family at the time. It can be challenging to find ways to integrate these emotions into the types of stories that I choose to tell or that I create on the spot, or that we create together. The story framework, basic story skeleton structure and all the tools in my storytelling tool kit, are the essentials that I continue to use as I create new stories that really work in diverse settings and challenging times.

Storytelling Tips and Suggestions • Ask your students—What’s your story? What brings you here today? What’s happening for you today? • Get to know and tell the stories of your local places. • Nurture children’s imagination through short guided visualisations at the start of the story, to create a context for the story. • Be a story listener. Hear the stories of the communities you work with. Co-create stories about the places you shared relationships with.

References Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations [DEEWR]. (2009). Belonging, being and becoming. The early years learning framework for Australia. Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations for the Council of Australian Governments. Dunn, J., Jarrett, A., & Wilson, K. (2013). Education kit. Office of Heritage & Environment, NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service. http://www.sou

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thcoastshorebirds.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Shorebirds-Education-Kit_ NPWS_2013.pdf. Egan, K. (2005). An imaginative approach to teaching. Jossey-Bass. Hanford, M. (1987). Where’s Wally? Walker Books. Jarrett, A., & Sydenham, J. (2016). The birds, the sea & me. National Parks & Wildlife Services. Mobile Children’s Services of NSW Inc. (2021). Mobile children’s services of NSW . New South Wales Australia. https://www.mcsa.org.au/ Pfister, M. (1992). Rainbow fish. Simon & Schuster. Vaughan, M., & Lofts, P. (ill.) (1984). Wombat stew. Scholastic Australia.

CHAPTER 9

Storytelling Pedagogy for Active Citizenship Louise Gwenneth Phillips

My Storytelling Beginnings I am a fifth generation white Australian of English, Irish and German heritage. I have savoured the world of stories since embarking on studies in early childhood education in the late 1980s and forging a storytelling career from performing told stories as early childhood pedagogy. Though the spark for stories was probably ignited much earlier. My mother always has stories to tell of the happenings in her life. She especially loves the madness-of-everyday-life stories; those that make you chuckle at your own lunacy or delight at the wonderfully serendipitous. A yearning for stories has pervaded my adulthood, with this hunger somewhat satiated through active participation in Storytelling Guilds and festivals of the storytelling revival. Perhaps as Berger and Quinney (2005) suggest “this

L. G. Phillips (B) Faculty of Education, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] URL: https://louptales.education James Cook University, Singapore e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 L. G. Phillips and T. T. P. Nguyen (eds.), Storytelling Pedagogy in Australia & Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4009-4_9

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revival reflects a culture that is ill at ease, that lacks compelling myths to bind us all together. Perhaps it has something to do with our sense of rootlessness, of separation from extended family…a way to resurrect something we never had” (pp. 8–9). As a white Australian descended from convicts and settlers I am dislocated from my ancestral cultural roots in rituals, values and stories. Since transitioning into adulthood, I have sort meaning of identity, purpose and place through folktales rooted in various cultures across the world (Fig. 9.1). From 1991, I started performing professionally as a storyteller with young children at conferences, kindergartens, schools, museums, libraries and festivals. Through this passion for stories, I saw the great educative potential of storytelling early in my teaching career. I undertook an

Fig. 9.1 Louise telling a story of her ancestral roots (Phillips, 2018)

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independent project on storytelling in education in the final year of my education degree, from which I published two articles (Phillips, 1999, 2000), which to my surprise continue to be read and cited. My interest in how story and storytelling can catalyse social action was sparked in the year 2000, let me tell you the story. It was the year 2000, and there was much discussion about reconciliation across many forums in Australia. Prime Minister John Howard refused to apologise to the Stolen Generations, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who had been removed from their families by successive Australian governments. The general public expressed support for reconciliation through large-scale events, such as the Walk for Reconciliation, Corroboree 2000. My son at age four found The Rabbits by John Marsden and Shaun Tan (1998) in our local library. When we read the story at home I was astounded by the powerful use of metaphor in this picture book. The rabbits symbolically equated with white colonisers, and numbat-like creatures with the colonised. The story is told from an imagined perspective of a numbat. Rabbits, like white colonisers, are an introduced species to Australia with a population that grew rapidly, from 24 rabbits in 1859 to two million rabbits in 1869 (Light, 2008). I read, The Rabbits as acknowledging the shameful events in Australian history rather than pretending such incidents never occurred, as so many Australian books have done in the past. Most adults in Australia were really only taught the white settler version of Australian history at school. I showed The Rabbits to the preschool teacher at the community child care organisation where I worked as a training and resource officer. The organisation had a strong commitment to confronting social biases through the implementation of an anti-bias curriculum (Derman-Sparks & The Anti-bias Task Force, 1989), which the teacher and I both supported. Enthusiastic to engage in critical dialogue with her class of children aged four to five years, the teacher shared The Rabbits a number of times. Some days later, the teacher talked to me about how one of the children’s parents wanted her to stop reading The Rabbits to her son, for he was having nightmares about his baby brother being stolen. A double page spread in the book reads: “…and stole our children” (Marsden & Tan, 1998). The teacher did not want to stop reading the book or stop the dialogue with the children about the issues that the book had raised, yet she also wanted to respect the parent’s wishes and attend to the child’s fears. We thought about it together and decided that I would visit the class and tell a story to provide more context to the colonising practice of

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removing children from their families authorised by previous Australian governments. I told a story of a young Aboriginal Australian woman named Elsie, which drew from the childhood experiences of Aboriginal Australian women documented in the book Murawina: Australian Women of High Achievement (Sykes, 1993). On completing the story, two boys aged five expressed their outrage at the acts of the government officials with “Put them in a brown bear cage” and, “Hang them upside down”. I heard these comments as violent suggestions. My training as an early childhood teacher drove me to redirect such suggestions to more constructive ideas. I then asked the children, “Well what do you do here when something unfair happens?” to which one child replied, “You say sorry”. Then suddenly another boy leapt to his feet with urgency and blurted out, “John Howard did not say sorry”. He readily saw a connection between the story I had just told, possible discussions with his teacher and family, and a recurring feature in the media that year. Prime Minister John Howard refused to apologise to Indigenous Australians for the past government policy of forced removal of children from their families, contrary to the recommendation of the Bringing Them Home Report (Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997). The boy continued with, “Get John Howard to come here and say sorry to the Aborigines!” I was inspired by what I witnessed as passionate motivation in a child aged five to initiate social action to redress injustice. I wanted to support the children’s enthusiasm to act, but I recognised it was unlikely that John Howard would visit their childcare centre. As a compromise, I suggested that the children write letters to the government expressing their thoughts and feelings regarding the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. This suggestion had barely left my mouth when they all moved from the gathering on the carpet to the writing area of the room. They busily crafted letters, that asserted their earnest desires to rectify the situation: “The Government took Elsie. Elsie sends a letter to the government to say my mother didn’t die.” “Say sorry to the Aborigines. You’re not very nice government ‘cos you didn’t say sorry to the Aborigines.” “I took all the Aboriginal children (the sisters, brothers and Elsie) back to their mother.”

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The next day we wrote a group letter to the government to accompany the individual letters, which included the children’s drawings and messages. The group decided collectively upon the following words: “To the Government, Could you please say sorry to the Aborigines for stealing children from their families and home, and invading their land? Please find enclosed our drawings and messages. From…”

As soon as I finished transcribing these words, the children moved spontaneously towards the poster-size letter and signed their names on the bottom. I was stunned that this needed no prompting; they were proud to have their names associated with their plea to the government. This storytelling stirred activism encounter has resonated with me for years, and I have shared this account at many storytelling workshops, conference presentations and lectures with early childhood educators and pre-service teachers. When able to undertake postgraduate research some five years later, this encounter framed my doctoral study titled Young children’s active citizenship: Storytelling, stories and social actions (Phillips, 2010). This chapter will draw from this study along with philosophical and theoretical explanations of the qualities of stories and storytelling to invite social action.

How Stories and Storytelling Provoke Empathy and Social Action Stories are an inclusive mode of communication, they speak across generations, across cultures and break down barriers. American philosopher, Martha Nussbaum claims (1997) that story and storytelling are valuable attributes to being global citizens. As explained in Chapter 1, Nussbaum identifies the extraordinary capacity of story and storytelling to nurture sympathetic imagination, that is to understand the complexities of humanity through the training of the imagination that storytelling fosters. As children grasp complexities of humanity (such as perseverance and unfairness) by learning their dynamics through the story in particular tragedies, they become capable of compassion. Through the cultivation of sympathetic imagination, we are then able to comprehend the choices of people different from ourselves. She proposed that sharing tragedies with children acquaints them as citizens with understandings

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of the misfortune that may happen in human life but also equips children with understanding of the diversity of choice of action. On the basis of such understandings of stories, Nussbaum suggested that the goals of global citizenship are best promoted through stories in a deliberative and critical spirit to provoke participation as global citizens who act for humanity. German-born American philosopher, Hannah Arendt (1958/1998) also understood the story as having the capacity to carry the weight of tragedy, to convey it and offer insights. According to Arendt, we can only know who somebody is by knowing the story in which she or he is the hero. The place of story in her theory of action is explained through an examination of courage. The connotation of courage, which we now feel to be an indispensable quality of the hero, is in fact present in the willingness to act and speak at all, to insert oneself into the world and begin a story of one’s own. (p. 186)

Those who have the courage to start something new are seen as heroes in their own stories. Actions then tell about who the heroes are, thereby exposing deeper understandings of qualities of humanity. This view suggests that a person’s activity emanates from the core of their being. Indian anti-colonial political ethicist, Mohandas K. Gandhi’s story of igniting en masse non-violent action in resistance to British rule is such a story of courage, and has been widely shared in schools and broader society across India and the world post India’s independence. As India’s first Prime Minister Nehru (and long-time friend of Gandhi) wrote in the foreword of Indian Government published comic The Gandhi Story (1966): “The Gandhi story has become an essential part of our rich heritage from the past and is still moulding our present”.1 I recall the 1982 Gandhi film being released when I was in high school and being profoundly affected by Gandhi’s capacity to ignite change in such a calm and spiritual way. It was probably his story of courage to be willing to act

1 More recently, Gandhi’s story is appropriated as a Hindu story fuelling the fundamentalist conflict between Hindus and Muslims (Pillalamarri, 2019), yet Gandhi had invested so much of his teachings and actions peace building between peoples of the two faiths: “the Mussalmans are blood of our blood and bone of our bone” (Gandhi, 2004).

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and speak against the racist oppression of the British Empire that sparked my interest in activism. Stories of people doing courageous acts inspire others to act courageously. Education for social change supports displays of civic courage through demonstrations of a willingness to act. To Canadian cultural critic, Henri Giroux (1983), support for civic participation in education must rest on the following pedagogical assumptions. First, students must be active in the learning process and be taught to think critically. Second, students are encouraged to speak from their experiences (or histories), that is, their stories. This is what I see as a necessary provocative pedagogical practice to build empathy and compassion for relational community-minded citizenship, where we act to ensure equity for our sisters and brothers across all species: to tell stories of courage and facilitate critical discussion and action. American educational philosopher, author, social activist and teacher Maxine Greene (1995), also saw that the motivation to act for social change can be created by stories that voice personal perspectives as well as listening to the stories of others in the spaces of dialogue. Spaces for dialogue, that is, students and teachers speaking from their own experiences and reflecting together on issues of critical concern, can inspire students to come together to understand what social justice actually means and what it might demand. Greene saw that these spaces of dialogue could endeavour to nurture what Arendt (1958/1998) referred to as “in-between” or a “‘web’ of human relationships” (p. 183), perhaps what Aboriginal Australian Elder Aunty Margaret Kemarre Turner refers to as central to in Aboriginal Australian ontology: “We as Aboriginal people, we always relate to other people, connect with them, no matter who we are” (Turner, 2005, p.7). Story does that. It invites us to feel the heart and soul of others, which is necessary for feminist constructions of citizenship as relational and community-minded (e.g., see Lister, 2007; Yuval-Davis, 1997). Greene saw that people could come together, as Arendt (1958/1998) proposed, through spoken words and action to create something in common. From this understanding, Greene envisioned classrooms that value multiple perspectives, democratic pluralism, life narratives and ongoing social change. Indonesian sociologist, Yanu Endar Prasetyo (2017) too has argued that “Storytelling is how we learn to exercise our community to deal with new challenges and conscious of alternative futures” (p. 2) and that “stories do not merely recount experiences but open-up new possibilities for

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action” (p. 3). And organisations like Global Citizen (a global movement to end extreme poverty) explicitly utilise storytelling to motivate social action (Brown, 2016). I will now share with you two stories I crafted and shared with a class of five to six-year olds in Brisbane, Australia and how they responded as further illustrative examples of storytelling as pedagogy building empathy and compassion for relational community-minded citizenship.

Storytelling for Interspecies Compassion and Social Action I had already spent a couple of weeks with the class and had come to understand that they were concerned about hunters killing birds. I considered Hart’s (1997) case for adults to support children’s participation in matters that interest children within their local environment. According to Hart, a local focus enables children to be involved directly, and in turn, deepens their understanding and connection with the issue. This informed my decision to source a story that could motivate participation in their local environment. I realised that if I wanted to present storytelling that provoked meaningful local social action, a story based on an animal that needed support in our local environment was required, so I sourced information on a critically endangered bird in South East Queensland drawing from Coxen’s fig-parrot cyclopsitta diophthalma coxeni recovery plan 2001–2005 (The State of Queensland, Environmental Protection Agency, 2001). This is how the storytelling went. Louise: A long, long time ago, the land that we live in and the places that we now visit and holiday at were covered with rainforests—beautiful rainforests with huge trees—Moreton bay fig trees and green strangler vine fig trees laden with succulent figs. This story is about a beautiful green parrot who lived amidst these trees. He had a broad round body and short stumpy tail. Denmark: I know what it is—a king parrot. Louise: (points at poster of the Coxen’s fig-parrot ) Child: King parrot. Juliet: Not the king parrot. Louise: The Coxen’s fig-parrot. He had distinctly blue feathers on his forehead surrounded by a few red feathers and an orange-red patch on his cheek with a blue band below. His beak was pale grey in colour and the tip was a dark grey. His eyes were brown like the colour of the earth. A very beautiful parrot that would fly amidst the majestic fig

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trees and would call out “zeet zeet” and all the parrots would do the same. Because there were hundreds of parrots, they would call back. (gestured to all to make call) All: “Zeet zeet—zeet zeet”. Louise: And they would fly around together and swoop down when they found a fig tree abundant with ripe figs, feasting on the seeds (myself and some children make flying actions and feeding actions ). Their favourite food is the seeds from ripe figs on Moreton bay fig trees and green strangler vine fig trees. There were hundreds of them and they shared these figs with other birds and animals and the Jinibara people and Turrbal people, there was plenty to go around. Everyone ate just what they needed. (Peter and Charlie continue flying swooping actions). But more people came from another land. They came in big ships, firstly, from England and Ireland. Tony: My Daddy comes from England. Louise: And they came with axes and started to chop down the trees to build houses (I stood up to act out chopping down a tree—Declan, Peter, Charlie all join in). They used the wood to make houses. And then more people came so they built more houses. They chopped down more trees. Juliet: And they chopped down the fig trees. Louise: That is exactly right Juliet and then they brought huge machines that could knock down many trees at once. And people came from other countries like India Child: Chinese Louise: (What’s another country where people came from to live in Australia?) UN China Denmark: Denmark Juliet: Japan, China Max: USA Denmark: Denmark—my mum came from there. Declan: Spain—my Mum came from Spain so that is why I chose it. Louise: Molly? Molly: Brazil Louise: People came from all these countries. For all these people to live here they needed houses. Every family that came here needed a house. So, they cleared land to build houses on, so what they would do is chop down trees or get the big machines to knock down many trees. This affected the food supply for the beautiful Coxen’s fig-parrot. They were finding it harder and harder to find food because there were less trees, so many of Coxen’s fig-parrot died. With fewer left it was harder

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for them to find a mate to make more Coxen’s fig-parrots. This poor little Coxen’s fig-parrot flew around looking for others like it screeching “zeet zeet” in search of others that might return his call, but there was silence. And so, it learnt to do everything by itself. Find water by itself. Find figs by itself and preen its own feathers. Juliet: And it couldn’t breed. Louise: Yes, it found it hard to find another mate. And being all alone it was very vulnerable so the parrot needed to be very quiet. It had to move very quietly on branches so predators would not hear it. Predators like the owl, the goshawk and people. This bird is so rare. So, few of them left now. They think only—fifty!. That is not much more than this class and the class next door. Because they are so rare you know what might be happening? These birds are so rare and so precious that they are worth a lot of money, so some people might be catching them and selling them overseas. What this bird needs, is more forest. Denmark: More fig trees. Louise: More fig trees like you’re saying Denmark and this bird needs (hand gesture to Juliet) Juliet: A mate then it could breed more. Louise: So it could breed more to increase the population. Louise: So that is the story of the Coxen’s fig-parrot. That is what has happened to the beautiful Coxen’s fig-parrot.

Following the story, the children participated in a re-enactment of the deforestation of native fig trees and the consequential decline in the population of Coxen’s fig-parrots. Through the story and the re-enactment, the children linguistically, visually and kinaesthetically experienced the impact of deforestation on Coxen’s fig-parrots. The final scene of one tree and two birds seemed to leave a strong impression, as expressed by these children’s comments. Juliet: When the people were chopping down the trees I felt like the parrot was dying. They weren’t thinking about the animals. Like if they were chopping down the trees with a bird in it—they’ve got to be careful of other animals. Max: What happens to the animals? If they be friends—be kind to the lorikeet [Coxen’s fig-parrot] and everything else. So why are they killing them? … Shouldn’t have only one more left. What happens to stop killing?

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The class then made signs (see Fig. 9.2) of key messages they wanted people to know about the Coxen’s fig-parrot. Declan wrote “We need to plant more fig trees”. As he was writing he proposed: “We could plant them in the school and the fig-parrots could come around, so we could see a real one.”

From the idea proposed by Declan, the teacher started to consider and consult with the principal about planting a fig tree at the school. Over the next week, I made contact with numerous organisations in search of native fig seedlings, which included the Threatened Bird Network, the Blackall Ranges Landcare Group (who work in a known Coxen’s fig-parrot habitat), and Queensland Parks and Wildlife Services Coxen’s Fig-parrot Recovery Team. Eventually, it was through a resident of the Blackall Ranges who had devoted much of her life to recovery work for

Fig. 9.2 Children’s conservation signs for the Coxen’s fig parrot

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the Coxen’s fig-parrot that brought success. I learnt that the Coxen’s figparrot eats only a few native fig species, and their seeds could only be sourced from these trees, not from nurseries. This resident also advised against planting a fig tree in the school grounds for two reasons: the hazard of their size; and that to have any chance of supporting the recovery of the Coxen’s fig-parrot population, the fig trees needed to be planted in known habitat areas, such as the Blackall Ranges. The resident kindly volunteered to travel from the Blackall Ranges to Brisbane to bring seedlings for the children to nurture until they were sufficiently mature to be planted in the Blackall Ranges. Unfortunately, illness prevented her from visiting the class. We then waited for a suitable time for the designated Coxen’s fig-parrot expert from the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Services to visit after he had collected fig seedlings from the Blackall Ranges. When a Queensland Parks and Wildlife Services Officer visited six weeks later he also brought a preserved Coxen’s fig-parrot from the Queensland Museum collection and a recording of its song. In this way, Declan and the class had an as-close-as-possible experience of a real Coxen’s fig-parrot. This visit not only enabled the children to contribute to the recovery of a Coxen’s fig-parrot habitat but also led to the children becoming more informed about it and becoming advocates for its recovery. The class went on to develop a petition to the state Minister for the Environment to help save the Coxen’s fig-parrot. The children built a connection with the Coxen’s fig-parrot and its plight, through the story, dramatisation, discussions, sign-making, meeting conservationists, fig-seedling nurturing, petition writing and signature gathering (see Phillips, 2008). Across the three months I spent with this class I told ten different stories, when I asked each child which story they learned the most from, the most common answer was The Lonely Coxen’s Fig-parrot.

Storytelling for children’s Rights Another story that I told this same class evoked the most sympathetic responses across the project, as well as triggered most of the children’s enacted social actions across the three months. It was a story I crafted on biographical details of Pakistani child activist, Iqbal Masih’s (1982–1995) life, informed by books (Crofts, 2006; Kielburger, 1998) and websites (The World Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child, n.d). The story told of Iqbal and his friends having their rights to freedom being abused,

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but also told of Iqbal advocating for himself and others to ensure their rights were honoured. Louise: (Everyone close your eyes and I want you to imagine.) Imagine a room which just has a dirt floor and a bed that’s made out of wood but there’s no mattress, there’s just string; strong string across and some sheets on it. This is Iqbal’s room. Iqbal is a boy from Pakistan and he shares his room with his Mother and his sister. There are two other beds in that room as well, just the same that have a wooden frame and string over the frame. Now the only thing that Iqbal owned—the only toy that Iqbal owned is a cricket bat, which he kept under his bed. In their house they have another room, that’s the kitchen where they make their food. Their house is made out of mud. Mud walls—the mud is set hard—it’s like bricks. (Open your eyes.) This is story of Iqbal. Iqbal lived in Pakistan—a country next door to India. And when he was five his family was so poor that they sent him to work in a carpet factory. He wove carpets by tying knots. And he has to work there as soon as the sun comes up, till when the sun goes down. It’s a very long day. He doesn’t get to go to school. He doesn’t have time to play. Child: He has to work always? Louise: He comes home so tired and he doesn’t get to eat all day. When he gets home he collapses in his bed and says, “Mama! Please bring me some bread”. And he eats some bread then falls asleep. He spends all his time working very long days —not getting much money—just 50 cents a day. That’s less than one dollar for a long day’s work. His family is so poor that when his Mother gets sick and she needs an operation they don’t have the money for the operation and the only place that they knew where they could get the money is from Ghullah: the man who owns the carpet factory. They ask him can they borrow some money—could they have Iqbal’s wages in advance. He says, “yes”, so Iqbal’s mother can have her operation. But now that they owe money to Ghullah, Ghullah thinks that he owns Iqbal. There is a big demand for carpets. Lots of people wanting to buy carpets, so Ghullah comes around to Iqbal’s house in the middle of the night and wakes up Iqbal and drags him back to the factory half asleep. Poor Iqbal is so tired. He can’t even sleep anymore. And you know what this factory owner does? Sometimes when he is very cross—to wake Iqbal up, he hits him with the hard metal carpet fork used to push the threads down. (Let’s see what this looks like.) Max: Can I be the boy who’s sleeping? Louise: Okay.

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Max: (Raises fist jubilantly) Louise: (to Charlie) (And you can be the factory owner: Ghullah.) Louise: (to Max) So you go into sleeping position as Iqbal and (to Charlie) you are going to be Ghullah, you come to his house and you wake him up. (Charlie gently rubs Max’s back). Come on pull his arm, come on, that’s it tell him: “You have to come and make more carpets.” Charlie: Go and make some more carpets! Louise: (And Max you wake up—you look a bit sleepy. Get up. Stand up. Sorry let me have a close look at this scene. (to Max) You look sleepy (demonstrate drooped posture and facial expression). (to Charlie) You look serious and strong, you’re pulling him. Then back at the factory. (to Charlie) You stand here. Let’s make the factory scene. Everyone is working in the factory. So, what we need to do is we all need to be in three rows, sitting on the floor squatting do you remember how he was sitting? So, there will be seven in one row facing that way and seven in another row facing that way and seven in another row facing that way.) Max: Also, I have to do it. Louise: (to Max) (You can stay where you are sitting. Okay so you are working hard tying lots of knots. And Ghullah you are fierce and say, “Work harder”). Charlie: Work harder!! Louise: (Your bodies are listless and exhausted—their flopping looking out at the windows wishing you were out there playing—exhausted— unhappy—tired—you’ve been doing this for years day in day out—you haven’t played sport for weeks.) (Tony, Max, Ella, Molly sit with very floppy bodies—nearly falling over with exhaustion). (What are you thinking, when you are tying the knots?) Denmark: Speed—speed. Molly: I’m imagining what it would be like to play. Fergie: Go really fast so you can do anything you like after you did it really speedy. Louise: So, Iqbal works like this for many years. Then one day one of his friends was very sick, he had a high fever. Some of you have been sick lately so you know what it is like to have a high fever and you stay home from school. Well this boy stayed home from work in the carpet factory, but Ghullah was so angry that he went around to his house and dragged him in and he said, “I’M THE ONE HERE WHO SAYS WHEN AND WHEN YOU CAN’T WORK. NOT YOU!” And he forced this boy to work even though he was so sick. Imagine what that would feel like. When you are sick you don’t feel like doing anything—let alone work. And when Iqbal saw this he decided at that point he had had enough

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of the cruel treatment from Ghullah. So, then he started to work out plans for how he could escape. What he would do when Ghullah wasn’t there—he would say to the person who was the foreman (managing the carpet factory at that time), “I need to go to the toilet.” He would then go outside and some of his friends would say the same thing then they would run off down to the canal or the fields and they would play. They would have such good time playing together. Then one day when Iqbal got up very early in the morning to go to the factory, he met these people that were on a truck and they told him that what Ghullah was doing was against the law that Iqbal didn’t have to work. That Ghullah did not own him. He had the right to not work. Iqbal listened very carefully for this was important information. And he went to a meeting that they had and he told them about his experience of working in a carpet factory—how cruel Ghullah was to Iqbal and his friends. Iqbal told this to a big crowd. And they gave him a special letter. It was called a freedom letter. So, he took it to Ghullah to say that he was free. He did not have to work, so he went back to the carpet factory and he handed this letter to Ghullah and you know what Ghullah said? Declan: You have to stay. Louise: That’s right he said, “I don’t care about that letter.” He even ripped it up. “I don’t care about that letter. You have to stay here. Your family owe me money, so you are working for me.” Now fortunately these people that he met knew that there might be trouble so they came to the factory and they helped Iqbal to get away. And they invited Iqbal to their school. Here is a picture of their school and they called it, “Our own school”. It was for children like Iqbal who used to work in factories. Iqbal was ten years of age when he first went to school. He loved it. He just had one book and there’s his bag. He loved going to school and the other things that he would do now is that he would help lots of other children to escape or find a way to get out of having to work in factories. He helped so many other children that by the time he was twelve he was invited to go to Sweden, which is way over the other side of the world, in Europe. He went there to speak to people all over the world about how children are forced to work in factories. Max: Also, when he went—did he go to India? Louise: Ahh! Not that I know of. Maybe he might have had to go there to fly out of Pakistan. I’m not sure. When they were getting ready for their big trip to go to Sweden, which was so exciting for Iqbal, for he had only ever travelled to the next village. He hadn’t been out of his country, let alone go on a plane. He didn’t have a passport. He didn’t even have a birth certificate. So, they had to do lots of things to get ready and then they heard that he was going to be given a prize. They

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told Iqbal. He had no idea what a prize was. He had never heard about prizes. No one had ever noticed the good things that he had done. He was getting a prize for helping so many other children who were working in factories to freedom. So not only was he going to Sweden, but now he was going to America as well. When he was protesting for his other friends who are still forced to work in factories, he would sometimes holding a sign that says: “Don‘t buy children’s blood”. Some children work so hard in these factories that they are hurting. Declan: Carpets should be made by adults. Louise: That is what I think too. When Iqbal went to the prize ceremony he dressed up and he showed the crowd a carpet, like the ones he made. When Iqbal was in these other countries he was interviewed by newspaper reporters on TV. He visited schools and told them about what was happening in his country and in America he even got to be person of the week by the TV station they call ABC. What I mean is that they voted him the person of the week, so everyone got to know about him. When he came back to Pakistan, he was a hero. Everyone was so excited. All the people in his village, his friends and family came around to meet him. (Max do you still want to play the role of Iqbal?) Max: Yes Louise: (Fergie you stand up and you could be a person who has come to see Iqbal come home, so you put these flowers over his head.) (Max stands proudly receiving flowers and Fergie smiles as she places them around his neck). And everyone was so excited to see him and then Iqbal said his little speech that he gave at the schools that he visited. He said, “THE CHILDREN SHOULD HAVE PENS NOT TOOLS!” Max: The children should have pens not tools! (stands proudly) Louise: And then he said, “For the children are” Max: For the children are All: FREE!! Louise: And they all cheered yay!! (clapping ) All: Yay!!! (clapping ) (Max bows ) Louise: This is the story of Iqbal Masih.

Following hearing Iqbal’s story Molly shared her experience of the story “I imagined I was the one who worked in the carpet factory and when I was sleeping—he [carpet factory owner] kept on dragging me out of the blankets when I was cold”. In role as Iqbal, Max expressed pride and bowed spontaneously. This was a moment of strong connection to the story that both his teacher and I noticed.

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Teacher: He was really in role. Understanding what storytelling is really about. It is not just sit and listen. It is whole thinking.

Max seemed very focussed in his portrayal of Iqbal; he took his role seriously and responded aptly to my narration of the story. In the discussion, Max gave this account of his experience of being in the story. Max: When they [carpet customers] buying, and I use my hands and I use my teeth to work, to make it more easier for me.

Max’s comment illustrates the intensity of how he empathises with Iqbal, that he uses all his bodily resources to meet the demand for carpets. Perhaps being assigned the role of Iqbal also aided his capacity to imagine and connect with the story, so that he saw the story as his own experience. This account illustrates the capacity of drama and storytelling to enable connections with others (Abbs, 1989; Arendt, 1958, 1998; Benjamin, 1955/1999). And many of the children were motivated to help children forced into child labour. Max: Help some people around the country [Pakistan] tell some people what is happening in the country we live in. Molly: To go on holidays there and help them. Declan: Me too! I was going to say the same.

These five-year olds felt the suffering in Iqbal’s story so strongly that they wanted to go there and help. I have found that stories based on real lives possess a greater capacity to evoke a shift in understanding of the other, like Hannah Arendt’s (1958,1998) proposition that we really only know who someone is in stories of courage, of a willingness to speak and act. Iqbal’s Story was about real-life experiences of another child. By being a real account, the children could connect with the children in the story, perhaps imagining that the suffering could happen to them. Emotive connection with an individual’s experience of injustice seemed to be one quality of social justice storytelling that motivates young children’s active citizenship. This Prep class went on to tell their Year 6 buddy class the story of Iqbal Masih. The Year 6 class was stunned by the story, which led the Year 6 teacher to orchestrate a unit of learning on child labour for all

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the Year 6 classes, and for the rest of the year when the Prep class and Year 6 class met, the focus of their investigations was child labour. The Prep class was very interested in supporting schools for children who had been forced into child labour. The Year 6 teacher had a friend who was an emergency architect who had just returned from Pakistan building a school for girls. He met with the Prep and Year 6 class to explain the context and troubleshoot ways the children could assist. The Prep children initiated an educational toy donation collection that was posted to a new girls’ school in Pakistan.

Storytelling Pedagogy for Active Citizenship From these experiences I have shared with you‚ I came to see that young children possess the capacity to engage with tragedy. Some adults who are influenced by a perception of children as innocent may be alarmed at sharing stories such as Iqbal’s Story with young children, as they choose to protect young children from what they view as a tragedy. A view of children as innocent shapes a culture of sharing sanitised stories with young children (Zipes, 1983, 1994). The communal space that live storytelling nurtures, enables the weight of tragedies to be shared. Hannah Arendt (1958,1998) saw significant merit in the capacity of storytelling to bear the weight of suffering. I see that storytelling provides space for airing emotions and forging solidarity. In my practice of storytelling pedagogy for active citizenship I create spaces where the children’s thoughts and feelings can be expressed and shared, through open conversations after the story as a whole group followed by small group multimodal activities, inviting expressive responses through visual art, drama, writing and making using varying technologies. In addition, I send a transcript of each story home with each child on the day the story is told, so the families are aware of the story content and can support discussions of the stories at home. My practice of storytelling pedagogy for active citizenship is framed by three motifs: story-tailoring (responsiveness ), walk in the shoes of another (empathetic imagination) and freedom of expression (to enable knowledge creation) (Phillips, 2010, 2012). The story is tailored to the audience and the injustices they are troubling with. The story is crafted and told to evoke the whole-body experience of walking in the shoes of those troubled; to viscerally feel their tragedy with empathy and relationality. Both in and after the story, carefully curated opportunities are held for the

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listeners to share their responses to the story to build ideas and plans for actions this story invites. I hope that you explore and expand on these ideas to increase possibilities for children’s active citizenship.

Storytelling Tips and Suggestions • Choose cultural stories that you identify with to provoke thinking and discussions about values about what it means to be human. • Craft stories of local heroes, those who have the courage to speak and act. • Tell in a circle. By sitting in a circle everyone can see each other, so respect for each and the learning community are nurtured. • Always provide time to hold conversations about what the story invites you to think about and to do. • Listen carefully to children’s responses, however, they are communicated. Provide multiple opportunities for children to process story meanings. Include families in these conversations.

Story Resources for Active Citizenship https://active-citizens.britishcouncil.org/global-impact-stories—Active citizens is a global social leadership program. The website has stories of action from East Asia and South Asia that may inspire crafting of local stories. https://afcc.com.sg/—Asian Festival of Children’s Content in literature—showcasing Asian authors, illustrators and storytellers of literature for children—celebrating Asian voices and childhoods. https://www.magabala.com/—Australian Aboriginal owned and led publishing house that promotes the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices. https://books.katha.org/—a publisher based in India that publishes children’s picture books that focus on girls, earth, equity and kindness. https://store.prathambooks.org/—a publisher based in India that publishes children’s picture books inclusion, empowerment and integrity.

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https://bookstore.teri.res.in/—TERI Press—an Indian publisher that publishes children’s picture books on the environment, energy and sustainable development.

References Abbs, P. (1989). A is for aesthetic: Essays on creative and aesthetic education. The Falmer Press. Arendt, H. (1958/1998). The human condition (2nd ed.). The University of Chicago Press. Benjamin, W. (1955/1999). Illuminations (H. Zorn, Trans.). Pimlico. Berger, R. J., & Quinney, R. (2005). The narrative turn in social inquiry. In R. J. Berger & R. Quinney (Eds.), Storytelling sociology: Narrative as social inquiry (pp. 1–11). Lynne Rienner Publishers. Brown, S. (2016). See what happens when storytelling and social action come together. Global Citizen. https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/storyt elling-social-action-impact/. Crofts, A. (2006). The little hero: One boy’s fight for freedom—Iqbal Masih’s story. Independent Publishers Group. Derman-Sparks, L., & The Anti-bias Task Force. (1989). Anti-bias curriculum: Tools for empowering young children. NAEYC. Gandhi, M. K. (2004). Soul force: Gandhi’s writings on peace. Tara Publishing. Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. Jossey-Bass. Giroux, H. (1983). Theory and resistance in education: A pedagogy for the opposition. Bergin & Garvey. Hart, R. (1997). Children’s participation: The theory and practice of involving young citizens in community development and environmental care. Earthscan Publications. Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission. (1997). Bringing them home: Report of the national inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. Retrieved July 7, 2008, from http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AILR/1997/36.html. Kielburger, C. (1998). Free the children: A young man fights against child labour and proves that children can change the world. Harper Collins Publishers. Light, D. (2008). April–June). Hip hop: The rabbit is back. Australian Geographic, 90, 114–119.

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Lister, R. (2007). Why citizenship: Where, when and how children? Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 8(2), 693–718. Marsden, J., & Tan, S. (1998). The rabbits. Hachette Australia. Nehru, J. (1966). Foreword. In S. D. Sawant, & S. D. Badalkar (Eds.), The Gandhi story, [iii]. Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Nussbaum, M. (1997). Cultivating humanity: A classical defense of reform in liberal education. Harvard University Press. Phillips, L. (1999). The role of storytelling in early literacy development. Rattler, 51, 12–15. Phillips, L. G. (2000). Storytelling: The seeds of children’s creativity. Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 25(3), 1–5. Phillips, L. (2008). A story worth more than words: The plight of the Coxen’s fig-parrot motivates Prep children. Bush Telegraph, Spring issue, 8. Phillips, L. G. (2010). Young children’s active citizenship: Storytelling, stories, and social actions. Doctor of Philosophy thesis, Queensland University of Technology. Phillips, L. (2012). Emergent motifs of social justice storytelling as pedagogy. Storytelling, Self, Society, 8, 108–125. Phillips, L. G. with Borland-Sentinella, D., & Owen, A. (2018). Etch, stitch: I am a colonial subject in Phillips, L.G., Bunda, T., Heckenberg, R., Black, A., Snepvangers, K., & Lacszik, A. (2018, May 18 & 20). Stories of belonging. State Library of Queensland, Anywhere Festival See - https://figshare.com/ articles/media/Etch_stitch_I_am_a_colonial_subject/12661511. Pillalamarri, A. (2019, March 16). The origins of Hindu-Muslim conflict in South Asia. The Diplomat. https://thediplomat.com/2019/03/the-originsof-hindu-muslim-conflict-in-south-asia/#:~:text=India’s%20partition%20and% 20the%20conflict,granted%20their%20own%20country%2C%20Pakistan. Prasetyo, Y. E. (2017). From storytelling to social change: The power of story in the community building. SSRN Electronic Journal. DOI: https://doi.org/10. 2139/ssrn.3094947 Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3094947 or http://dx.doi.org/https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3094947. Sykes, R. (1993). Murawina: Australian women of high achievement. Doubleday. The State of Queensland, Environmental Protection Agency. (2001). Coxen’s fig-parrot cyclopsitta diophthalma coxeni recovery plan 2001–2005. Retrieved July 27, 2007, from http://www.epa.qld.gov.au/publications/p01379aa. pdf/Coxens_figparrot_iCyclopsitta_diophthalma_coxeni/i_recovery_plan_ 20012005.pdf. The World Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child. (n.d). The world children’s prize for the rights of the child 2000: Iqbal Masih. https://worldschildr ensprize.org/iqbal-masih.

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Turner, M. K., with McDonald, B., & Dobson, V. P. (Trans.) (2010). Iwenhe Tyerrtye: What it means to be an Aboriginal person. IAD Press. Yuval-Davis, N. (1997). Gender and nation. Sage. Zipes, J. (1983). Fairy tales and the art of subversion: The classical genre for children and the process of civilization. Heinemann. Zipes, J. (1994). Fairy tale as myth: Myth as fairy tale. University Press of Kentucky.

CHAPTER 10

Bringing Storytelling Pedagogy Ideas Together Thao Thi Phuong Nguyen

and Louise Gwenneth Phillips

The Art of Storytelling Pedagogy Now that you have learnt from our many different ways of teaching through storytelling we offer closing thoughts to further inspire and consolidate your practice of storytelling pedagogy. Teaching through storytelling is not new, its origins began from the development of oral

T. T. P. Nguyen (B) Department of Foreign Language Teacher Education, University of Foreign Language Studies, Danang, Vietnam e-mail: [email protected] L. G. Phillips Faculty of Education, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] URL: https://louptales.education James Cook University, Singapore e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 L. G. Phillips and T. T. P. Nguyen (eds.), Storytelling Pedagogy in Australia & Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4009-4_10

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language, and was the prime mode of education prior to the written word. Education that privileges the written word, fact over fiction, and digital technologies have largely shunted oral storytelling to the background. The creation of the printing press brought large spread dissemination of written texts and teaching through these texts. The age of enlightenment forged an agenda of reason and doubt (as the seventeenth century philosopher René Descartes proposed), foregrounding truth and fundamental scientific research, in which no authority is to be trusted, until it is subjected to rigorous sceptical questioning (Bristow, 2017). “Folk and fairy tales were regarded as useless for the bourgeois rationalization process” (Zipes, 2002, p. 3). The legacy of foregrounding reason and authorised truths has spawned a cognitive (disembodied head) focus in western thinking which continues to determine what is truth and untruth and thus what is authorised knowledge and unauthorised knowledge. Stories do not seek to offer “totalizing truths”, but instead provide “local situated truths” (Davies & Gannon, 2006, p. 4). And digital technologies have largely replaced face to face relational pedagogies with teaching and learning through screens. The folk tales of education before the written word and printing press are still in circulation but there is a difference in the roles they now play compared to their function in the past. The difference can be seen in the manner in which they are produced, distributed and marketed. Profit mars their stories and their cultural heritage. (Zipes, 2002, p. 2)

Many folk tales and fairy tales are mass produced in commercial books and films that tell just for story sake, as a money-making exercise. The role of the storytelling pedagogue is to tell for an educative purpose. Folk and fairy tales were created to share with local communities local knowledges, that is, local contextual language, cautions of their local landscape, cultural values in which to live for social integration embedded with utopian longings and wishes (Zipes). The storytellers in each of the chapters have carefully chosen the stories they tell and how they tell them with educative purpose. Further, each of their storytelling pedagogies is unique because it is shaped by their values, knowledge/ worldviews and lived experiences and contexts. This we will explain further in the next sections as: value immersed storytelling pedagogy; knowing through

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storytelling; and being through storytelling, as ways to think of and frame your storytelling pedagogy practice.

Value Immersed Storytelling Pedagogy Storytelling and stories form the bedrock of cultural heritage: the beauty of languages, relationship in family and community, aesthetics and educational values. The capacities of storytelling pedagogy can create more relational, intercultural, empathetic, responsive learning communities. For a long time, stories have been a treasure of humankind and storytelling by storytellers as key keepers have been the golden key to open that treasure. Livo and Rietz (1986) assert that “if a storyteller dies without passing on their stories, a treasure can be lost that is unretrievable … the heart of a culture, its teaching, and its memory disappear forever” (p. xi). Fortunately, storytelling pedagogy has been revived by teachers, educators and researchers in Australia and Asia who cherish the treasure for preserving cultural knowledge, promoting active citizenship, creating sustainability in education, and innovating language teaching. When you tell a story about your life with your relatives, friends or colleagues, you are sharing what you value. These moments really deepen your feelings, thinking and recalling of what resonated with you. That is your unique storytelling. Anyone at whatever age can be a storyteller with a story to share. A story is a fundamental genre through which we make sense of our experiences and evince cultural values. Therefore, a storyteller can live these values through the stories they tell. Storytelling pedagogy that foregrounds cultural values enables understanding of humanity concepts with the children, the children with disabilities, students, adults in communities, families and friends so that these listeners can express their feelings, ask questions, and exchange ideas. It enables children’s agency as meaning-makers in their world, which aligns with the notion that pedagogy should be promoting “worthwhile agency” rather than any form of agency (Renshaw, 2016). Each author in this book has endorsed their own way to share values. Many of the authors keep alive cultural heritage through their storytelling pedagogy. Michael Jarrett’s storytelling pedagogy is informed by Gumbaynggirr values. He keeps Gumbaynggirr cultural values alive through storytelling in Gumbaynggirr language. He creates and tells stories of culturally significant places and totems as a way to preserve Gumbaynggirr values.

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Wajuppa Tossa and Prasong Saihong’s storytelling pedagogy is driven by valuing the preservation of Isan and Lao language and cultural stories, with their university students to empower the next generation of learning. Prasong also shared how he values all children experiencing the joy of storytelling, adapting stories and pedagogy to match age, abilities and needs. Anamika Bhati and Nupur Aggarwal value cultural diversity and wholebody communication. These values come through their storytelling by finding, adapting and delivering stories through lively dramatic performance that meet the cultural and learning needs of their audiences, with sensitivity and awareness of the diversity in the classroom. Karine Lespinasse, Eiko Matsui and Etsuko Nozaka foreground the Japanese value of kyokan (empathy) through the Japanese tradition of Kamishibai stories. They use Kamishibai stories as an educational tool for elementary school children to understand their cultural values immersed and emerged in their storytelling. Swee Yean Wong values her Chinese cultural heritage, language and being person-centred. She relayed how her storytelling practice grew in the immersion of her values through her pursuits of coming to know more of her cultural heritage, through finding ways to teach Chinese language through storytelling, and through crafting stories relevant to the audience that include them as active participants. Thao Nguyen values joy and freedom in holistic learning for young learners. She realises these values can be shared truly when children learn English as a foreign language with stories in classrooms which are very popular in Vietnam. Thao prioritises joy per se as the motivation for learning and also giving prominence to children’s rights and freedom of expression through imaginative learning and storytelling. Anna Jarrett values nature and creative expression for all. Through her storytelling pedagogy she evokes empathy and care for nature and creative expression invitations attuned to differing audiences, however, isolated they may be. Louise Phillips values equity and justice for all beings and all people regardless of age being active contributors to community social cohesion. She transforms real-life stories into educational storytelling to cultivate empathy, compassion and social action with young children. Values guide the choice of stories we tell, how we tell and what we invite listeners to do with the stories. Here are some questions to

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guide your thinking about how values inform your storytelling pedagogy practice. Prompts to guide your practice: • Why do you choose the stories you choose? (think carefully about the values that guide choice and educative purpose of sharing each story) • How will you manifest these values in your storytelling? (e.g., making them become visible, perceived by listeners, or reflective) • What do you learn from the listeners’ valuing these values?

Knowing Through Storytelling Stories hold knowledge. We each hold different knowledges, accumulated through our live experiences and shaped by our culture, context and opportunities. With this book focussing on the practice of storytelling pedagogy in Australia and Asia, the ancestral roots of knowing are eastern ways of knowing, which are intuitional and universal, with philosophy entwined with spirituality (Krishnananda, 2021). With western thinking in circulation across the world through colonisation, media and internationalisation, the foregrounding of individualism, as Socrates espoused with “know thyself” (Green, 2018) and empiricism (based on observed evidence) fuelled through modern science is also entangled in ways of knowing in Australia and Asia. Collective cultural knowledge holds great esteem in Aboriginal Australian ways of knowing, and in Indian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese ways of knowing. Michael Jarrett shares Gumbaynggirr cultural knowledge through his stories. With Aboriginal Australian culture being the longest living culture, the storied knowledge Michael shares are living treasures for his clan and all of humanity about how to live sustainably with all other beings. Wajuppa Tossa and Prasong Saihong share cultural and linguistic knowledge embedded in folktales of North-East Thailand, also to preserve cultural knowledge for the Isan region, which is especially known for its rich folklore of elegant poetic language (Sansak et al., 2014). The preservation of Indigenous languages, such as Isan and Gumbaynggirr, through cultural stories is essential “for ensuring the continuation and transmission of culture, customs and history, but it is also important

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to address biodiversity loss and climate change” (United Nations, 2016). These languages and stories hold ancient wisdom of living in particular biodiverse places. Anamika Bhati and Nupur Aggarwal, also keep alive ancient cultural knowledge through panchatantra storytelling pedagogy originated from approximately 300–500 BC, in India, in which story holds a “tantra” offering insight to inner fulfilment (the entanglement of spirituality and philosophy). Karine Lespinasse, Eiko Matsui and Etsuko Nozaka see that the Japanese kyokan (to feel at one with others) way of knowing is enhanced through the Japanese visual artform of kamishibai. The storytelling pedagogy they showcased is a way of knowing through imagery and feeling with others. Swee Yean Wong’s way of knowing through storytelling is shaped by making Chinese language accessible to young Singaporean children, just as Thao Nguyen’s storytelling pedagogy makes the English language accessible and enjoyable to children in Vietnam. Anna Jarrett explicitly names that she thinks, lives and breathes as a storyteller, and thus constructs all knowledge through story/telling. This was illustrated in how she co-constructed with her local community storied knowledge of the local endangered shorebirds to activate conservation action and documented knowledge through the creation of The Birds, The Sea & Me book. Louise Phillips draws from Hannah Arendt’s (1958/1998) proposition that we can only know who somebody is by knowing the story in which she or he is the hero, who shows courage to speak and act. Louise knows the world through people’s stories, of overcoming injustices, of enabling access and equity for all beings. She sees storytelling as the most efficacious way she knows to enable broad audiences to know and feel the lived realities of other’s plights. In sum, all authors/storytellers in this book see that story and storytelling enable knowing what it means to be human. To know how to live sustainably with local flora and fauna, as Michael shares To know how to respect ghosts/spirits as Wajuppa and Prasong share To know how humans and monkeys can work together as Anamika and Nupur share

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To know about self-confidence, hunger and the impact of war as Karine, Eiko and Etsuko share through kamishibai storytelling To know how to be friends as Swee shares through Chinese language storytelling To know how to imagine as Thao shares To know our roles as humans to care for other beings and to make meaning through stories as Anna shares To know we have a responsibility to care and stand up for others as Louise shares.

We share this knowledge through messages embedded in the stories that grow and settle on consciousnesses over time. This is the real beauty and extraordinary potential of knowing through stories, that the knowledge gifted is not explicit, but implicitly layered as noted in Chapter One that “storytelling reveals meaning without the error of defining it” (Arendt, 1970, p. 105). Meaning in storytelling is never definitive, as listeners create meanings applicable to their lives and experiences. And as Benjamin (1955/1999) noted that the art of storytelling is “to keep a story free from explanation as one reproduces it” (p. 89). As storytellers, we offer stories as an invitation to knowing about the world, others and self. Prompts to guide your practice: • Get to know the stories of your origins, so your sense of knowing is rooted. • Know the stories of the places you are connected to. • Think carefully about what you want others to know in the crafting of the stories that you tell. • Attend to the creative writing adage “show don’t tell”: describe what you see, so that listeners can curate their own meaning/ knowledge.

Being Through Storytelling In the divergence of today’s society, different beliefs and values inform different ways of being. We all have different ways of being storytelling pedagogues, though we recognise there are some commonalities. We see being through storytelling encompassing identity, global citizenship, agency, being curious, animated and truly alive.

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First of all, we all claim the identity and way of being as storytellers, one of the oldest professions. The authors seem to conceive “reality” as not separate from us but rather constructed and co-constructed and as subjective–objective reality, co-created by the mind and the given cosmos (Lincoln et al., 2011, p. 102) through their storytelling practice (both conceptual and practical). Michael’s storytelling retains a distinctly Aboriginal identity through growing up with storytelling in the Aboriginal reserve and by learning his culture and language again. He persistently locates his identity in place and the landmarks where he tells stories in real time to live his culture, his language and his love for the land. Thao sees that through storytelling, she found out who she is and can be as a teacher, that is a storytelling teacher. Similarly, we encourage others to take up the call and embrace being storytelling teachers. Then as storytellers we embrace relationality and global citizenship through foregrounding relationships with listeners and instilling a sense of being in a worldwide community through coming to know the world together. For example, Anna inspired a thoughtful response to the shorebirds, with her students when she and the local rangers shared stories to connect with the birds and their habitat. Louise awakened compassion and responsibilities with young children in Australia through sharing the everyday hardship of children in bonded labour in Pakistan, appealing for children’s active citizenship and social changes through a global thinking and acting mindset. Wajuppa and Prasong nurtured relationships with Isan communities and have shared Isan knowledge globally. Storytelling is a lively and interactive way of being and so promotes agentic listeners. The children in Anna’s Shorebird project were open, curious, initiating, critical, creative and willing to share in the storymaking activities to protect the endangered shorebird. All of the chapter authors relayed how children exercise their agency as active participants and learners in their storytelling. In so doing, storytelling softens the demarcation between the roles of teacher and student, and as the authors recommend to welcome joy, sensitivity, curiosity, action, and diversity in the classroom for children to achieve their best performance. Through agentic interaction in story, storytellers and listeners are very much awakened and alive in the story. All gathered in the story are fully present in the moment with each other in the story. This aliveness and presence is central to many Indigenous ontologies, such as Yankuntjatjarra elder, Uncle Bob Randall explained in the documentary Kanyini (2012) “it’s about being

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alive”. This aliveness in the moment fuels curiosity and wonder. Storytelling certainly sparks curiosity, listeners are motivated to learn and want to know more. The aliveness of storytelling can be captured in carefully curated pauses, silences and stillness to nurture mindful reflection, such as raised in Chapter 5. Karine, Etsuko and Eiko suggest being mindfully and sensitively attentive to the audience’s being without any distraction, leaving silent moments for reflection. Another way of animating the story. There are different worlds out there whose doors might be either open, closed or forgotten. We have tried to open most of them with and for the learners through our stories and storytelling, consociating our beings within us and with others. Our storytelling pedagogy way of being seeks to nurture humanity, justice, compassion, love, hope and freedom for the next generations. Prompts to guide your practice: • How do you perceive yourself in this world, in your profession and in connection with students? • Who are you as a storyteller and your audience as listeners in your storytelling? • How will you communicate the idea of global citizenship to your listeners including children and adult learners? All that we offer throughout this book on storytelling pedagogy are beginnings. We see storytelling as a powerful pedagogy to invite curiosity and inquiry about an issue, an experience, an event, or a perspective. Storytelling is the beginning, then listen carefully to what the story and listeners invite for further inquiry and action. Through storytelling pedagogy we value stories and storytelling for their relational, responsive, and empathetic way of knowing and being in the world. We hope you enjoyed this pedagogical adventure located in the rich cultural traditions of Australia and Asia and embrace storytelling pedagogy in your teaching practice. Do you have a story to tell us?

References Arendt, H. (1958/1998). The human condition (2nd ed.). The University of Chicago Press.

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Index

A Aboriginal Australian, 3 Aboriginal languages, 3 active citizenship, 14, 175, 177, 183, 188 Arendt, Hannah, 5, 9, 164, 175, 176, 186 audience/audiences responding to, 28 telling to, 26

B Becoming a storyteller, 21, 139 Being through storytelling, 187 Benjamin, Walter, 2, 6, 9 Blue Jackal, The Panchatantra story, 71 Bremen Town Musicians, The, 154 Bringing everyone together for story, 27 Bruner, Jerome, 6

C children’s rights, 170, 184 Coxen’s fig-parrot cyclopsitta diophthalma coxeni recovery plan 2001–2005, 166 creativity, 54, 65, 97, 121, 123, 130 cultural preservation via folktales and storytelling, 33

D Dreaming stories, 3–5

E early childhood education storytelling, 22, 47 East stories born in the, 5 Egan, Kieran, 7, 120, 143 empathetic imagination, 8, 11, 27, 48, 50, 63, 76, 80, 93, 95, 96, 115, 132, 146, 155, 176 empathy, 11 English teaching, 42

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 L. G. Phillips and T. T. P. Nguyen (eds.), Storytelling Pedagogy in Australia & Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4009-4

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INDEX

through storytelling, 38, 120. See also Why storytelling? Erfahrung , 6

F fingers storytelling with, 112

G Gandhi, Mohandas, 164 Greene, Maxine, 165 Gumbaynggirr, 8, 14, 21, 24–28, 183, 185 Gurukul education system, 5

H heritage, 14, 57, 60, 71, 105, 139, 159, 183, 184 humanity, 2, 7, 11, 163, 164, 183, 185, 189

I imagination, 6, 7, 11, 12, 46, 54, 65, 89, 106, 120–124, 129, 130, 132, 133, 154, 163 and emotion, 132 in second language learning, 123 Iqbal’s Story, 175, 176

K Kaavads, 57 kamishibai, 7, 14, 75–77, 85, 187 kê chuyê.n, 4 Knowing through storytelling, 182 Knowledge creation, 8, 28, 48, 60, 65, 94–96, 98, 130, 147, 155, 176

Kyokan effect, 76

M Many Caps , 153 Miirlarl , 28 Monkeys and the hat seller, The, 57–59 Mr Wiggle and Mr Waggle finger play story, 109 Murawina: Australian Women of High Achievement , 162

O Okiku okiku okiku na-are kamishibai, 86 oral storytellers, 5 oral storytelling, 3, 5, 9, 57, 61, 182 tradition of, 5

P Panchatantra, 5, 56, 57, 71 principles, 8. See also storytelling pedagogy, key principles of prompts practice, 185, 187, 189

R Rabbits, The, 161 relationality, 9, 10, 13, 48, 64, 84, 88, 96, 98, 113, 121, 133, 176, 188 responsiveness, 8, 10, 11, 28, 48, 49, 61, 80, 84, 98, 133, 152, 176

ij

S Shorebird Education Program, 146 social action, 161–163, 166, 184 special education storytelling in, 46

INDEX

Stolen Generation, 15 story/stories feeling with, 27 roots of, 2 word, 2 Story House, 43 storyteller/storytellers, 2, 7, 10–12, 14, 23, 26, 31, 49, 57, 63, 64–68, 76, 105, 115, 141–143, 152, 160, 182, 183, 186–188 children as, 7 storytelling, 4, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 32, 46, 48, 50, 115, 155 benefit of, 6 Chinese oral, 3 imagination provoked by, 123 in education, 7 in outdoor education, 145 India, 3 kamishibai, 7, 99 learning through, 28 teacher, 29 teach through, 64 term, 2 Thailand, 4 Vietnam, 4 Storytelling-a Means to Maintain a Disappearing Language and Culture in Northeast Thailand project, 32 storytelling pedagogy, 8, 48, 55, 59, 121, 130, 176, 181, 183–186 art of, 181 key principles of, 8 Storytelling tours, 35 student-storytellers, 33, 42 suggestions, 29, 51, 68, 100, 105, 115, 134, 156, 162, 177

193

sustainability education storytelling for, 139, 145, 151

T tandem storytelling, 32, 34, 47, 48, 78, 105 Telling on country, 28 thumbs storytelling with, 109 Thung Gula Ronghai folktale, 43–45 traditions oral storytelling, 3 Turtle & the C(r)ow picturebook, 39

V values, 4, 5, 8, 13, 55, 105, 147, 160, 177, 182–184

W West stories born in the, 5 Why storytelling?, 120 Wijirrjagi, 26

Y Yuludarla, 23, 25

Z Zen koan folktales, 4 Zipes, Jack, 2