narrative report in values education

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Student teaching narrative report and documentation

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Josefin Lindgren

Novie Joy Javarez

Alastair Daniel

This is a book about the potential of the story told to enhance the way that language is used in the primary classroom. The premise is simple: narrative is the natural way in which humans organise information, and storytelling is the most immediate (and fundamental) means by which that narrative is communicated. There is a renaissance in storytelling both in schools and in the wider community. The fact that all over the country there are people running training courses for business leaders and politicians to improve their storytelling abilities is a testimony to how seriously the effective communication of narrative is being taken. In schools, of course, story has always been an essential component of a full and rich education, and many teachers have found ways to bring narrative to life in their practice and there are schools where storytelling, by teachers and children, is celebrated. However, there are still many teachers for whom the value of spoken language seems to be as a precursor to the written word. Storytelling, when it does occur, is perhaps reserved for a dedicated ‘story time’, or is be employed during those literacy activities which are aimed specifically at developing speaking and listening skills (such as ‘Talk for writing’). Indeed, for some teachers the thought of putting down a book and simply narrating a story as part of their teaching can be too threatening to contemplate, as one teacher informed a student recently, ‘We read to the children in this school, we don’t tell them stories’. Such reluctance is hard to understand when the teacher quoted will, almost certainly, build much of her teaching on narrative frameworks, and frequently rely on oral transmission of information. Storytelling is part of what we, as teachers, do and narrative simply provides the means of organising the content of the tales that we tell.

I magine a Year 2 classroom that has 28 children – 12 have Additional Learning Needs. In September they are tested using the new All Wales Reading Test and then re-tested in June – and in between they experience no direct teaching of literacy. No phonics. No text work. No step-by-step teaching of literacy sub-skills. What are the results? Fifty per cent of the 6 -7 year olds achieve the maximum score on the test, equivalent to a reading age of 8 years 11 months.

New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development

Colette Daiute

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The teaching of English based on School Based Curriculum in Indonesia is delivered through text and context. Literary works are part of the text. They have been taught for all level of schools in Indonesia. Whether the subject is listening, speaking, reading, or writing, teachers of English should deliver it through text and context. One of literary works is narration. Junior high school students learn narrative text in the even semester of the second and the third year. As a teacher, one should know the teaching approaches, goals, and objectives. After one knows it, he or she just find proper teaching techniques, materials, and media; and set the right classroom scenario based on them.

Mutuota Kigotho

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revista.unal.edu.co

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Learning Stories: Observation, Reflection, and Narrative in Early Childhood Education

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Editors' Note

Refer to the links below for examples of two Learning Stories:

• Learning Story: Waiting for Dad on this Side of the Border
• Learning Story: Under the Same Sun

When I think of children, the image that comes to mind is that of competent human beings: resourceful, creative, and able to collaborate with peers and adults. Young children are today’s citizens of the world, with their own ideas, theories, inquiries, strong preferences, and stories. As citizens, they have needs, but also rights—one of which is to be seen as contributors to their own education. Their interests, questions, and thoughts should influence what they do and learn at school.

I am an early childhood educator. I am also an immigrant and an American citizen by naturalization. I began teaching and learning from young children in San Francisco, California, when I began volunteering in a multilingual early childhood program. Because I lacked the knowledge of child development and curriculum planning required to do this work most effectively, I enrolled in classes at City College and took as many child development classes as I could. I am currently a doctoral student in the Educational Leadership Program at San Francisco State University, where I have been a lecturer for the past five years. I teach undergraduate courses on children’s language development in multilingual early childhood education settings, classroom observation and children’s evaluation, and more recently, a graduate course on narrative inquiry in ECE and elementary school.

I am also a preschool teacher: I have taught preschool for 18 years—the past 10 at Las Americas Early Education School in San Francisco’s Mission District. As an early childhood educator committed to equity of voice, I believe that educational activities with preschool children should be based on daily observations of children at play both in the classroom and outdoors. These observations should include teachers’ reflections and, as much as possible, families’ opinions and perspectives on their children’s learning, curiosity, talents, agency, hopes, and dreams. As a preschool teacher in a multi-language setting, I am required to conduct classroom observations to assess children’s learning. This has led me to the following questions:

• How can early childhood educators support and make visible children’s emergent cultural and linguistic identities?
• How can teachers embed story and narrative to document children’s growth and strengthen families’ participation in their children’s education?

This article examines the use of an observational approach in the form of Learning Stories, a narrative-based formative assessment created by New Zealand early childhood education leaders. By encouraging teachers to recognize children as competent explorers and learners at any given moment, Learning Stories provide a way to document children’s strengths and improve instruction based on the interests, talents, and expertise of children and their families (Carr & Lee 2012, 2019).

The Role of Documentation

My concept of documentation has evolved over the years and will likely continue evolving as I gain new insights about its relevance in the early childhood classroom. My views have been influenced by the Reggio Emilio approach (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman 1998, 2012); the inquiry work carried out at the former Prospect School (Himley & Carini 2000; Carini 2001) in North Bennington, Vermont; and New Zealand’s Learning Stories (Carr & Lee 2012, 2019). Each of these approaches emphasizes teachers observing, writing, reflecting, and documenting classroom life as a way to better understand and teach children.

The Reggio Emilia early childhood schools of Northern Italy (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman 1998, 2012; Turner & Wilson 2010) use the term “documentation” to refer to the process of observing and recording children’s learning experiences through different media (Helm & Katz 2001). Their curricular framework is an approach “based on adults listening rather than speaking, where doubts and amazement are welcome factors along with scientific inquiry and the deductive method of the detective” (Rinaldi 1998, 115). Systematic and meaningful observations of children’s learning are routine classroom practices that guide the curriculum.

Likewise, in the Prospect School’s approach to schooling, general theories of education take second place to teacher reflection. Teachers reflect on their teaching practices through a collaborative analysis known as “descriptive review,” or the deep analysis of one particular child, one piece of work, one classroom, or one issue that stimulates new kinds of thinking about children, curriculum, and larger educational challenges (Himley & Carini 2000; Carini 2001). While in operation, Prospect teachers documented children’s daily activities through richly detailed observations and descriptions that became narrative accounts over time. They focused on children’s interests and strengths to understand the intricacy of their thinking and to see children and their learning contexts in all of their complexities.

In New Zealand, educators use the Learning Stories approach to assess children’s progress. This narrative tool is a record of a child’s life in the classroom and school community based on teachers’ observations of the child at play and work. It tells a story written  to  the child that is meant to be shared  with  the family. Learning Stories serve as a meaningful pedagogical tool to assess children’s strengths and help educators reflect on their roles in the complex processes of teaching and learning (Carr & Lee 2012, 2019). As formative assessments, they offer the possibility of reimagining all children as competent, inquisitive learners and all educators as critical thinkers and creative writers, genuinely invested in their children’s work.

Documentation in Marginalized Communities

Learning Stories break away from the more traditional methods of teaching, learning, and assessment that often view children and families from a deficit perspective, highlighting what they cannot do. By contrast, Learning Stories offer an opportunity to reimagine children as curious, knowledgeable, playful learners and teachers as critical thinkers, creative writers, and advocates of play. Learning Stories are based on individual or family narratives, and they recognize the value of Indigenous knowledge. For native, Indigenous, and marginalized communities, the telling of stories or historical memoirs may be conceived as something deeply personal and even part of a “sacred whole” (Benham 2007). When we engage in writing and reading classroom stories—knowing how they are told, to whom, and why—we uncover who we are as communities and, perhaps, develop a deeper appreciation and understanding of other people’s stories.

My preschool is part of the San Francisco Unified School District’s Early Education Department. Our school reflects the ethnic, economic, cultural, and linguistic mosaic of the school’s immediate neighborhood, which consists primarily of first- and second-generation immigrant families from Mexico, Central America, and Asia. When children enter our program, only about 10 percent feel comfortable speaking English. The others prefer to speak their home languages, meaning Spanish, Cantonese, and Mandarin are the most common languages in our school.

Most of my students receive subsidized services, and their families primarily work in the hospitality, child care, or construction industries, or are in training for new employment. The school has three preschool-age classrooms: one Spanish-English dual language classroom with 24 children; one Cantonese-English dual language classroom with 24 children; and one classroom of children with special needs, which has 12 children. Each of our preschool classrooms is composed of one lead teacher and two assistant teachers, and each classroom has been assigned a district instructional coach.

Our preschool’s academic framework is based on the project approach, which embraces children’s interests and the immediate environment for engaging in in-depth studies of specific topics from multiple perspectives (Helm & Katz 2016). Investigations are undertaken by a whole class, a small group of children within a class, or by an individual child. Each project focuses on finding answers to questions about a topic posed by the children, the teachers, or the teachers and children together. Classroom investigations may last from a few days to several months and are carefully documented by teachers and children. Photographs, recorded conversations, short videos, children’s artwork and dictations, classroom-made booklets, and teachers’ reflections and interpretations are all part of what eventually becomes a child’s Learning Story and our teachers’ rich observation, reflection, and assessment tools.

For instance, during a class investigation on families, my 5-year-old student Juanito shared why his family did not live together in San Francisco. He described in graphic detail how his grandfather had been shot to death several years before while crossing a river in El Salvador. He also shared how his dad and mom had come to San Francisco, leaving behind their two older daughters, his sisters. Juanito’s sense of family was marked by a sense of longing for a foreign country he had never visited and two siblings he had only seen in photographs.

Juanito used drawings to express his feelings. In them, he depicted El Salvador as both beautiful and dangerous: a place that offered warmth (because his two young adult sisters lived there) but also a place with gangs who made people live in fear. “El Salvador is very pretty and has a big soccer field where one can play  fútbol  [football soccer],” he told us, his teachers. “My sister is a soccer player, like me. And I know there are gangs that go around killing people. My Daddy told me, and I’ve seen it on the TV.”

In my reflective role as Juanito’s preschool teacher, I began to understand his behavior much better as I watched and talked to him and assembled his Learning Story. As a result, I greatly improved my communication with him and my relationship with his parents. Juanito’s mom and dad have been very open about their family history and the story behind their decision to leave El Salvador and come to the United States. Their search for that envisioned future has brought a lot of stress to a family living in two countries—especially for little Juanito, who is developing his own identity as an American citizen with strong emotional ties to El Salvador.

During another class investigation—this one on our children’s cultural heritage—we read  A Movie in my Pillow / Una Película en mi Almohada , by Salvadorean writer Jorge Argueta (2007). The children enjoyed this collection of poems in which the main character, young Jorgito, lives in the Mission District but has not forgotten his native El Salvador. Just like Jorgito, we discovered that many of the children in our classroom had “memories” from where their parents had emigrated. Argueta’s poems opened the door to children’s creativity and imagination, which teachers could document, reflect on, write about, and assess.

My student Zahid revealed his story-telling skills by sharing the story of his father’s attempt to cross the border between Mexico and the United States. (See “Waiting for Dad on this Side of the Border" and “Under the Same Sun,” below.) The resulting Learning Story provided a structure for documenting Zahid’s developmental progression over time and for collecting data on his language use, funds of knowledge, evolving creative talents, and curiosity for what takes place in his world—all of this in his attempt to make sense of events impacting his family and his community.

Developing a Learning Story

Educators can use Learning Stories to identify developmental milestones with links to specific assessment measures; however, the purpose is not to test a hypothesis or to evaluate. At the root of any Learning Story is a genuine interest in understanding children’s lived experiences and the meaning teachers, families, and children themselves make of those experiences to augment their learning. As Southcott (2015, 37) reminds us, “Teachers choose a significant classroom moment to enlarge in a Learning Story in order to explore children’s thinking more closely.”

Although no two Learning Stories will be alike, a few core principles underlie them all. The foundational components include the following (Carter 2010, 2017; Carr & Lee 2012, 2019):

• an observation with accompanying photographs or short videos
• an analysis of the observation
• a plan to extend a child’s learning
• the family’s perspective on their child’s learning experience
• links to specific evaluation tools

Suggested Format of a Learning Story

The writing of Learning Stories encourages teachers to recognize children as competent explorers and learners in familiar settings at any given moment during the school day. The following format is a helpful guide for observing, documenting, and understanding children’s learning processes. It also may help teachers organize fleeting ideas into a coherent narrative to make sense of classroom observations or specific children’s experiences.

• Title:  Any great story begins with a good title that captures the essence of the tale being told. Margie Carter (2010) suggests that the act of giving a title to a story be saved for the end, after the teacher has written, reflected on, and analyzed the significance of what has been observed, photographed and/or video recorded.
• Observation:  The teacher begins the story with their own interest in what the child has taken the initiative to do, describing what the child does and says. When teachers talk and write the story in the first person, they give a “voice” to the storyteller or narrator within. In their multiple roles as observers, documenters, and writers, teachers bring a personal perspective that is essential to the story. They write directly to the child, describing the scene in detail and narrating what they noticed, observed, or heard. Accompanying photographs, screenshots, or still frames of a video clip of the child in action serve as evidence of the child’s resourcefulness, skills, dispositions, and talents.
• What Does It Mean? (or What Learning Do I See Happening?):  These are questions teachers can use to reflect, interpret, and write about the significance of what they observed. This meaning-making is best done in dialogue with other teachers. Multiple perspectives can certainly be included here; indeed, objectivity is more likely to be reached when the Learning Story includes a variety of voices or perspectives (Carr & Lee 2012, 2019). Ask your coteachers or colleagues to collaborate to offer their pedagogical, professional, and personal opinions to the interpretation of the events.
• Opportunities and Possibilities (or How Can We Support You in Your Learning?):  In this section, teachers describe what they can tentatively do in the immediate or distant future to scaffold and extend the child’s learning. How can they cocreate with children learning activities that stem from individual or collective interests? This section might also reveal teachers’ active processes in planning meaningful classroom activities while respecting children’s sense of agency.
• Questions to the Family:  This is an invitation for a child’s family to offer their opinions on how they perceive their child as a competent learner. It is not uncommon for a child’s family to respond with messages addressed to the teacher. However, when teachers kindly request parents to reply directly to their child, they write beautiful messages to their children. Sometimes, the family might suggest ideas and activities to support their child’s learning both at home and school. They might even provide materials to enhance and extend the learning experience for all the children in the class.
• Observed Milestones or Learning Dispositions:  Here, teachers can link the content of a child’s Learning Story to specific evaluative measures required by a program, school district, or state. They also can focus on the learning dispositions reflected in the story: a child’s curiosity, persistence, creativity, and empathy. The learning dispositions highlighted in a Learning Story reflect the emerging values of children and the values and beliefs of teachers, families, schools, and even the larger community.

Making Time for Documentation

A Learning Story recognizes a child’s everyday efforts as milestones in their continuous growth. It is a beautiful personal and pedagogical gift to a child and family based on what teachers observe, analyze, and interpret. Yes, documenting and making children’s learning visible through detailed observations, photographs, and reflections require time, intention, and incentives. But as Carini reminds us, children are more than a sum of unchanging traits, and it takes time and patience to paint a fuller picture of how they are evolving (Himley & Carini 2000).

When beginning the Learning Story process, remember that there is a storyteller in everyone. Creating a short Learning Story as a record of a child’s learning, playfulness, resourcefulness, experimentation, and drive can turn documentation into something enjoyable. Write just a few lines of what was observed, identify its possible meaning, then plan for a tentative activity to support the child’s interest. Add a photograph or series of photographs as illustrations, then share the Learning Story with a coteacher or other colleague to get feedback on composition, language, and narrative. Think of the Learning Story as another way of making a child and family feel special, and remember that families are always appreciative when teachers take note of their children’s accomplishments. Invite the family to add a few lines to the story by sharing what they have noticed their child doing at home related to the topic.

Waiting for Dad on this Side of the Border

What happened? What’s the story? Zahid, I admire your initiative to tell us the tale of the travels your dad has undertaken to reunite with you and your family in California. On a map you showed us Mexico City where you say your dad started his journey to the North. You spoke about the border ( la frontera ), and you asked us to help you find Nebraska and Texas on our map, because that’s where you say your dad was detained. We asked you, “What is the border?” and you answered: “It is a place where they arrest you because you are an immigrant. My dad was detained because he wanted to go to California to be with me.”

What is the significance of this story? Zahid, through this story where you narrate the failed attempt of your dad to get reunited with you and your family, you reveal an understanding that goes well beyond your 5.4 years. In the beginning you referred to the map as a planet, but perhaps that’s how you understand your world: a planet with lines that divide cities, states, and countries. A particular area that called your attention was the line between Mexico and the United States, which you retraced in blue ink to highlight the place where you say your dad crossed the border. It is indeed admirable to see you standing self-assured in front of the class ready to explain to your classmates your feelings and ideas so eloquently.

What activities could we plan to support you in exploring this topic that you are so interested in? Zahid, we could invite you to share with your classmates the tale of your dad’s travels and invite your friends to share the stories of their families too. We could take dictations of what it means for you to be waiting for Dad on this side of the border. We could support you to put into practice your interest in writing so that you could write a letter or message to your dad. Perhaps you would be interested in making a painting on a canvas representing your ideas and feelings with paint strokes and acrylic colors.

What’s the family’s perspective? Zahid is not very fond of writing, but he talks a lot and also understands quite a lot. He doesn’t like drawing but maybe with your support here at school he could find enjoyment in drawing or painting. —Mom

Under the Same Sun

What happened? What’s the story? Zahid, of the several options we proposed to you to continue exploring the topic of the journey of your dad from Mexico to the United States, you chose a canvas, skinny paint brushes, and acrylic colors to represent the word  frontera . Until now, you had hardly showed any interest in using painting tools, the process of writing, or making graphic representations of your ideas. Your preferred mode of expression was to communicate orally, and you have been doing it quite well! The fact you chose paintbrushes and acrylic paints reveals that every child should have the right to be an active participant when it comes to making decisions about their individual learning.

What is the significance of this story? Zahid, I’m very pleased to see your determination to make a graphic representation of the word frontera. After so many sessions singing the initial sounds corresponding to each letter of the alphabet in Spanish, I thought you would be inclined to sound out the word  frontera  phoneme by phoneme and spell it out to write it on paper, but that was not the case. Instead, you decided to undertake something more complex, and you chose a paint brush and acrylic colors to represent (write)  la frontera  the way you perceive it based on the experiences you have lived with your family and, especially, with your dad.

What possibilities emerge? Zahid, you could perhaps share with your classmates and your family your creative process. Throughout the entire process of sketching and painting you demonstrated remarkable patience since you had to wait at least 24 hours for the first layer of paint to dry before applying the next one. You chose the color brown to paint the wall that divides Mexico and the United States because that’s what you saw in the photos that popped out in the computer screen when we looked for images of the word “ frontera .” You insisted on painting a yellow sun on this side of the wall because according to you, that’s what your dad would see on his arrival to California, along with colorful, very tall buildings with multiple windows. I hope one day you and your dad can play together under the same sun.

What’s the family’s perspective? I think it is good for my son to have support from his teachers at school and that he can express what he feels or thinks. Although sometimes I wonder if it’s better to avoid the topic altogether. These months have been very difficult for everyone in the family but especially for him because he is the eldest. He says that he misses his dad even though he hasn’t seen him in a long time. And he says that he wants to go to Mexico when he’s older to be with Dad. —Mom

The Learning Stories framework honors multiple perspectives to create a more complete image of each learner. These include the voice of the teacher as narrator and documenter; the voice, actions, and behaviors of children as active participants in the learning process; and the voices of families who offer—either orally or in writing—their perspectives as the most important teachers in their children’s lives.

Teachers in different types of early childhood education settings can use this framework to observe, document, preserve, and share precious moments of learning and transformation in young children’s school journeys with specific examples of their questions, puzzles, discoveries, and growth (Knauf 2020; Nyland & Alfayez 2021). Through these child-centered stories, teachers engage minds, touch hearts, and enhance their pedagogical and intellectual work. They humanize the early childhood profession, paving the way toward innovative modes of observing, analyzing, and understanding the complexities of children’s learning and behaviors. Children’s active participation in classroom life and curriculum planning supports a sense of inclusiveness, agency, and belonging when they see themselves as the protagonists of their own stories in a school environment that celebrates their voices, experiences, and talents.

This article includes content from Escamilla’s chapter in the  Advancing Equity & Embracing Diversity in Early Childhood Education  book as well as content from an original manuscript by the author accepted for  Young Children.

Photographs: Getty; courtesy of author. Copyright © 2021 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. See Permissions and Reprints online at  NAEYC.org/resources/permissions .

This article supports recommendations from NAEYC's advancing equity position statement Recommendations for Early Childhood Educators Create a Caring, Equitable Community of Engaged Learners Item 1: Uphold the unique value and dignity of each child and family. Observe, Document, and Assess Children’s Learning and Development Item 2: Use authentic assessments that seek to identify children’s strengths and provide a well-rounded picture of development.

Benham, M.K. 2007. “Mo’ōlelo: On Culturally Relevant Story Making from an Indigenous Perspective.” In Handbook of Narrative Inquiry: Mapping a Methodology , edited by D.J. Clandinin, 512–533. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. 

Carini, P.F. 2001. Starting Strong: A Different Look at Children, Schools, and Standards. New York: Teachers College Press.

Carr, M., & W. Lee. 2012. Learning Stories: Constructing Learner Identities in Early Education . London: SAGE Publications. 

Carr, M., & W. Lee. 2019. Learning Stories in Practice . London: SAGE Publications. 

Carter, M. 2010. “Using Learning Stories to Strengthen Teachers’ Relationships with Children.”  Exchange 32 (6): 40–44.

Carter, M. 2017. “Growing Ourselves as Leaders: A Conversation with Annie White.”  Exchange 39 (6): 46–51.

Edwards, C., L. Gandini, & G. Forman, eds. 1998. The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach: Advanced Reflections , 2 nd ed. Greenwich, CT: Ablex.

Edwards, C., L. Gandini, & G. Forman, eds. 2012. The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Experience in Transformation. 3 rd ed. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.

Escamilla, I.M., & D. Meier. 2018. “The Promise of Teacher Inquiry and Reflection: Early Childhood Teachers as Change Agents.”  Studying Teacher Education  14 (1): 3-21.

Helm, J.H., & L.G. Katz. 2016.  Young Investigators: The Project Approach in the Early Years . New York: Teachers College Press.

Himley, M., & P.F. Carini. 2000. From Another Angle: Children’s Strengths and School Standards: The Prospect Center’s Descriptive Review of the Child . New York: Teachers College Press.

Knauf, H. 2020. “Learning Stories, Pedagogical Work, and Early Childhood Education: A Perspective from German Preschools.” Education Inquiry  11 (2): 94-109.

Malaguzzi, L. 1998. “History, Ideas and Basic Philosophy: An Interview with Lella Gandini.” In The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach Advanced Reflections , 2 nd ed., edited by C. Edwards, G.E. Forman, & L. Gandini, 49–97. Greenwich, CT: Ablex.

NAEYC. 2019. “Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education.” Position statement. Washington, DC: NAEYC. www.naeyc.org/resources/position-statements/equity .

Nyland, B., & S. Alfayez. 2012. “Learning Stories–Crossing Borders: Introducing Qualitative Early Childhood Observation Techniques to Early Childhood Practitioners in Saudi Arabia.”  International Journal of Early Years Education  20 (4): 392–404.

Rinaldi, C. 1998. “Projected Curriculum Constructed Through Documentation—Progettazi-One: An Interview with Lella Gandini.” In The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach: Advanced Reflections , 2 nd ed., edited by C.P. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman, 113-126. Greenwich, CT: Ablex.

Southcott, L.H. 2015. “Learning Stories: Connecting Parents, Celebrating Success, and Valuing Children’s Theories.” Voices of Practitioners 10 (1): 34-50. 

Turner, T. & D.G. Wilson. 2010. “Reflections on Documentation: A Discussion with Thought Leaders on Reggio Emilia.” Theory into Practice 49 (5): 5-13. 

Isauro Escamilla, EdD, is assistant professor in the Elementary Education Department of the Graduate College of Education at San Francisco State University, where he teaches Language Arts in K–5 Settings and Spanish Heritage Language and Pedagogy for Bilingual Teachers, among other courses.

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An Introduction to Narrative Values

In the second half of this course, we were introduced into an intriguing way of viewing lives and their meaning. In his book, A Significant Life, Todd May proposes what he calls Narrative Values, in an effort to assess the meaning in someone’s life. Narrative values require us to think of lives as overall trajectories or stories, as opposed to a summation of smaller events. Rather than assessing the meaning of lives by their participation and success in projects, narrative values are used to assess meaning as if the person were a character in a story. Narrative values themselves are common themes which can be exhibited in the overall trajectory of someone’s life. May goes on to say that not any theme can be a narrative value, and he provides a few examples of narrative values.

May claims that there are only certain themes in life which qualify as narrative values. May believes that while honesty, fairness, or kindness are good values of morality, he does not believe that a life characterized by these themes will receive meaning from that characterization. He constructs this belief in the presumption that nonmoral lives, ones which are neither morally good or bad, can be meaningful, such as the lives of athletes or artists. These people do not need to exemplify strong moral values to be considered as having meaningful lives. By separating the need for morality in leading a meaningful life, the pursuit of meaning becomes possible for people who do not live exceptionally moral lives. This does not mean that there is no relationship between morality and meaning. On the contrary, May believes that severe immorality, evil, can actually detract or take away meaning from a person’s life, even if they exhibit narrative values. Meaning is derived from narrative values since the person is subjectively engaged in the objective values of steadfastness, courage, sincerity, or whatever value it is that characterizes that person’s life. If a person is engaged in narrative values for immoral causes such as torture, genocide, or exploitation, the narrative values do not lend the life meaning. Immoral lives have the capacity to exhibit narrative values such as intensity or creativity, but if the narrative values of their lives are expressed toward immoral ends, they actually work to detract meaning rather than add meaning. Simply put, the life of an immoral person such as Adolf Hitler would exhibit narrative values of intensity, steadfastness and creativity. These are undeniable observations about the way he lived his life, but the question about whether he lived a meaningful life does not solely lie in his expression of these narrative values. Since he exhibited these narrative values in the pursuit of his highly immoral acts of imprisonment and genocide, his life is not meaningful. Since he used the narrative values in immoral actions, the potential meaning of his life is taken away. May’s construct of narrative values is unique with this sort of asymmetrical relationship between morality and meaning.

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Introduction: Narratives in Ethics of Education

• Published: 11 April 2014
• Volume 33 , pages 575–585, ( 2014 )

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In introducing the works included in this special issue, this essay identifies some general ways that these and other narratives can function in ethical explorations in the field of education. The essay not only articulates ways that narratives can be useful to education scholars, but it also provides pedagogical reasons to connect stories with ethics in classrooms. It concludes with a brief nod to the dangers that Plato, contemporary scholars and teachers have about combining narratives with ethical inquiry, and touches upon some ways to temper them.

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Curriculum and Narrativity: Understanding Curricula as Narratives

1.3 A Rhetorical Approach to Classroom Narrative Study: Interpreting Narration as an Ethical Resource for Teaching in the USA

The value of using narratives in any classroom depends upon the perceptive and facilitative skills of teachers. Teachers can have constructive aims, choose excellent material to work with and still fall short in their work with stories. For more on what the skilled teaching of narratives might entail (see Verducci and Katz 2011 ).

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Acknowledgments

My gratitude goes to Michael Katz, Ron Glass, and Gert Biesta for their critical eyes and constructive comments on this essay.

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Faculty of Humanities, San José State University, One Washington Square, San Jose, CA, 95192-0092, USA

Susan Verducci

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Verducci, S. Introduction: Narratives in Ethics of Education. Stud Philos Educ 33 , 575–585 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-014-9411-x

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Published : 11 April 2014

Issue Date : November 2014

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-014-9411-x

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