Narrative Inquiry in Early Childhood and Elementary School

As top-down educational reform policies at local and national levels increasingly isolate teachers from their own professional and instructional agency, and stultify children's passion for learning, new techniques are needed for understanding and transforming educational practices. Narrative Inquiry in Early Childhood and Elementary School: Learning to Teach, Teaching Well facilitates meaningful change in early years education by providing early childhood and elementary school teachers with methods to incorporate narrative into their instruction and inquiry. This book offers practical strategies for incorporating narrative tools and structures into the classroom, and encouraging effective conceptual, pedagogical, and personal avenues for engaged teaching and learning across languages and cultures. The book's chapters promote a lively discussion of central tenets of narrative inquiry and illustrative examples of teachers at work with narrative and inquiry for improving their practice and children's learning.

Stephanie Sisk-Hilton is Associate Professor of Elementary Education at San Francisco State University, USA. Daniel R. Meier is Professor of Elementary Education at San Francisco State University, USA.

Foreword by Marianna Souto-Manning Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: Why Narrative Inquiry? Chapter 2: Problems and Puzzles for Inquiry: What Story Are We Telling? Chapter 3: Narrative-Based Tools and Strategies - Telling a Good Story Chapter 4: Telling Someone Else's Story: Narrative Inquiry for Understanding Individual Children Chapter 5: Narrative Inquiry as a Support for Curricular Innovation Chapter 6: Narrative Inquiry and Language and Literacy Teaching Chapter 7: Pulling It All Together: Narrative Inquiry in Action Chapter 8: Narrative Inquiry and Educational Change Authors' Biographies References Index