Understanding the World Through Narrative
While many educational books focus on creative and critical thinking skills, this ground-breaking work is the first to deal specifically with the ability to understand, question and evaluate information presented, broadly speaking, in story form.
Story or narrative is central to our understanding of and interaction with the world around us. We only have to think of the ‘mini stories’ encapsulated in many advertisements; the way that topics in science – the story of human evolution for example, in history and other subjects present themselves; the power of myths and legends to act as guides to moral behaviour; and the pervasive way that gossip, rumour and superstition can spread – to recognise the benefits of heightening such awareness in young learners.
Understanding the World Through Narrative explores the narrative structure of fiction, but uses this as a template to show how the story form appears in mythology and modern urban folklore, science, history, the media – including advertising; in our internal dialogues (stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and others), and how narrative structure can be used in curriculum planning to enhance children’s learning. The book contains over 160 thinking/discussing/researching activities for use in the classroom and as project work. Chapters can be used independently, although they are arranged with increasing degrees of sophistication and challenge. This fascinating work is an essential resource for any teacher of upper primary and lower secondary students, covering not only children’s evolving intellectual ability and promoting curiosity and critical engagement but also enhancing their mental and emotional wellbeing.
Steve Bowkett began writing for pleasure in his teens and started to publish both fiction and educational books during his 20-year teaching career. He has so far published 81 titles. Since 1994, he has been a freelance fulltime writer, author visitor to hundreds of schools and an education consultant.
Tony Hitchman taught in primary schools for 35 years across the primary age range, culminating in 11 years as a primary head teacher. He has contributed artwork to a number of educational books/articles and has collaborated with Steve in creating three previous books published by Routledge.