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Narrative, Literacy and Other Skills: Studies in intervention
Edited by Edy Veneziano and Ageliki Nicolopoulou
[Studies in Narrative 25] 2019
► pp. 173–199

Chapter 8
New frontiers in facilitating narrative skills in children and adolescents

A dynamic systems account incorporating eight narrative developmental stages

| The Pennsylvania State University
| Rhodes College

Despite evidence that early narrative abilities are predictive of school-age literacy skills and academic achievement, only limited progress has been made in understanding how these narrative skills can be promoted. One theoretical framework that discusses the contextual conditions which are especially crucial for learning to take place is dynamic systems theory (Nelson et al., 2001; Thelen & Smith, 2006) which emphasizes the nonlinear dynamic convergence of multiple aspects. It has been suggested that cognitive, perceptual, motor, social, emotional, motivational, structural challenges, dialogic patterns, and current neural network conditions must all reach threshold levels of convergence to support advances in language (Nelson & Arkenberg, 2008). The current chapter utilizes this framework to provide a detailed account of the mechanisms that support advances in narrative skills in early childhood through adolescence. The detailed account of the eight stages of narrative development incorporates prior descriptive research on children’s storytelling and story retelling skills as well as intervention work examining the effectiveness of explicit teaching of story structure on narrative outcomes. This section further extends the literature by including a discussion of the skills and conditions that are expected to support highly proficient and expert narrative performance. The chapter concludes with a discussion on how theoretically-derived refinements in teaching procedures could facilitate narrative skill acquisition and lead to sufficient advances in preschool children to support higher levels of school-age language, literacy, math, and science achievements.

Keywords: narrative, development, stages, intervention, non-linear dynamic convergence, storytelling skills, teaching procedures
Article outline
  • Importance of narrative
    • A profound puzzle
  • A new theoretical model for narrative development
    • Processes underlying narrative development and narrative level attainment across early childhood
  • Stages of narrative development and conditions that support acquisition
    • Stage 1: Younger than 3 years of age
    • Stage 2: 3:0 to 3;11
    • Stage 3: 4;0 to 4;11
    • Stage 4: 5;0 to 5;11
    • Stage 5: Around 6–7 years of age
    • Stage 6: Proficient narrators
    • Stage 7: Expert level for narratives
    • Stage 8: High expert level in narrative
  • Theory-based proposals for innovations in narrative teaching
  • Five new strategies for raising narrative skills in children and adolescents
    • Scaffolding executive functions
    • Dealing with cognitive overload from memory limitations and plotline complexity
    • Supporting understanding of characters’ motivations and goal structures
    • Teaching causality
    • Embedding linguistic complexity in narrative teaching
  • Summary and conclusions: Children’s shockingly low narrative skills at 4 to 8 years of age
  • References
Published online: 6 May 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sin.25.09nel
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