Learning, teaching and other stories

Jennie Osborn

LASALLE 22 September 2013

2http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/22/singapore-fairytales-warn-declining-fertility#

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Humans are primed to make meaning, to ‘take whatever scraps they an extract from the stimulus input, and if these confirm to expectancy . . . read the rest from the model in their head’ (Bruner, 1986, p.47). We reconstitute stories from our experience, each listener creating the story anew.

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“Upon waking, the dinosaur was still there” (Augusto Monterroso, 1959, The Dinosaur)

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Stories carry tacit ideas and experiences, and contain our social worlds and contexts. We make sense of the scraps, we fill the gaps with our shared understandings, reflecting and creating shared meanings.

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“Set sail, great storm, all lost.” John BanvilleThe truth of a story is always one of many possible truths, whispered, laying beneath the surface of conscious thought, operating through tacit assumptions, communicated through art and culture.

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“The polar bears made me do it.” The truth of a story is not in facts but in meaning. “The painting reputed to make students fail exams’, 13

September 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-29175003

8Shared context holds the power to create new ‘truth’. Truthfacts.com

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Storytelling is a process, a way of encountering and shaping the world, a way of knowing.

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‘The summer night was heady with the scent of lilac. He heard the click of the garden gate; and saw a glimmer of her dress as she left’. Philippa Gregory

#lasallestory

We make stories, but stories also make us.

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“when we teach we tell stories about the world.” (Pagano, 1991, p.197)

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“Narrative might be considered a solution to . . . the problem of how to translate knowing into telling” (White, 1991, p.1)

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storying . . . is one of the most fundamental means of making meaning, as such, it is an activity that pervades all aspects of learning. When storying becomes overt and is given expression in word, the resulting stories are one of the most effective ways of making one’s own interpretation of events and ideas available to others’ (Wells, 1986, p.194)

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'That inevitable split second when you take criticism personally.' Goedele Caluwe, student, School of Philosophy and Art History

'Only 300 Words left! *5% battery* NO! SAVE! PLUG! RUN!‘ Sehrish Khan, student, Department of Language and Linguistics

'I turned the pages for hours and found a story.' Chris Coates, staff, Communications and External Relations http://www.essex.ac.uk/ldev/microfiction/

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“learning is a process of sense-making, of adding and synthesising new information within existing knowledge structures” (Arlidge, 2000, p. 34)

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“Learners do not acquire knowledge that is transmitted to them; rather, they construct knowledge through their intellectual activity and make it their own.” (Chaille and Britain, 1991, p.11)

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A generic term for those intellectual and effective activities in which individuals engage to explore their experiences in order to lead to a new understanding and appreciation. (Boud et al., 1985)

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What?

So what

?

What next

?

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“A word is its own little solar system of meanings. Yet we are wanting it to carry some part of our meaning, of the meaning of our experience, and the meaning of our experience is finally unfathomable . . . “ (Ted Hughes, 1967, p.119)

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re-mix

re-make

re-map

un-map

Arlidge, J. 2000, Constructivism: Is anyone making meaning in New Zealand adult and vocational education? New Zealand Journal of Adult Learning, 28 (1), 32-49.

Boud. D, Keogh, R and Walker, D 1985, Reflection: Turning experience into learning. London: Kogan Page.

Bruner, E, 1986, ‘Ethnography as narrative’. In E.M. Bruner and V. Turner (eds), The anthropology of experience. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Chaille, C. and Britain, L. 1991, The young child as scientist: A constructivist approach to early childhood science education. New York: HarperCollins.

Hughes, E, 1967, Poetry in the making, London: Faber and Faber.

Pagano, J, 1991, Moral fictions: The dilemma of theory and practice. In C. Witherall and N. Noddings (eds), Stories lives tell: Narrative and dialogue in education. New York: Teachers College Press.

Wells, B, 1986, The meaning makers, Portsmouth NH: Heinemann Educational Books.

White, J, 1991, War stories: invitiations to reflect on practice. In B. Tabachnick and K. Zeichner (eds), Issues and practices in inquiry-orientated teacher education. London: Falmer Press. 21

References