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

A dynamic systems account incorporating eight narrative developmental stages
  • Keith E. Nelson and Kiren S. Khan
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Narrative, Literacy and Other Skills
This chapter is in the book Narrative, Literacy and Other Skills

Abstract

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.

Abstract

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.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgements ix
  4. List of contributors xi
  5. About the authors xv
  6. Introduction to narrative, literacy and other skills 1
  7. Part I. The importance of oral narratives for literacy, language and socio-cognitive skills
  8. Chapter 1. The developing language foundation for reading comprehension 21
  9. Chapter 2. Storybooks to promote emergent literacy in kindergarten classrooms 43
  10. Chapter 3. Do children’s oral retellings of narrative and informational texts predict scores on a standardized reading comprehension test? 69
  11. Chapter 4. Does emotional narrative context influence retention of newly learned words? 91
  12. Chapter 5. Enhancing mental state language and emotion understanding of toddlers’ social cognition 109
  13. Chapter 6. The effects of bookreading with and without mental state themes on preschoolers’ theory of mind 129
  14. Chapter 7. Using narrative thinking in argumentative writing 151
  15. Part II. Promoting narrative skills
  16. Chapter 8. New frontiers in facilitating narrative skills in children and adolescents 173
  17. Chapter 9. Precursors of narrative abilities 201
  18. Chapter 10. Enriching parent-child discourse during book sharing 223
  19. Chapter 11. Investigating the effectiveness of the Our Story App to increase children’s narrative skills 245
  20. Chapter 12. Using a storytelling/story-acting practice to promote narrative and other decontextualized language skills in disadvantaged children 263
  21. Chapter 13. Promoting narratives through a short conversational intervention in typically-developing and high-functioning children with ASD 285
  22. Subject index 313
https://doi.org/10.1075/sin.25.09nel

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgements ix
  4. List of contributors xi
  5. About the authors xv
  6. Introduction to narrative, literacy and other skills 1
  7. Part I. The importance of oral narratives for literacy, language and socio-cognitive skills
  8. Chapter 1. The developing language foundation for reading comprehension 21
  9. Chapter 2. Storybooks to promote emergent literacy in kindergarten classrooms 43
  10. Chapter 3. Do children’s oral retellings of narrative and informational texts predict scores on a standardized reading comprehension test? 69
  11. Chapter 4. Does emotional narrative context influence retention of newly learned words? 91
  12. Chapter 5. Enhancing mental state language and emotion understanding of toddlers’ social cognition 109
  13. Chapter 6. The effects of bookreading with and without mental state themes on preschoolers’ theory of mind 129
  14. Chapter 7. Using narrative thinking in argumentative writing 151
  15. Part II. Promoting narrative skills
  16. Chapter 8. New frontiers in facilitating narrative skills in children and adolescents 173
  17. Chapter 9. Precursors of narrative abilities 201
  18. Chapter 10. Enriching parent-child discourse during book sharing 223
  19. Chapter 11. Investigating the effectiveness of the Our Story App to increase children’s narrative skills 245
  20. Chapter 12. Using a storytelling/story-acting practice to promote narrative and other decontextualized language skills in disadvantaged children 263
  21. Chapter 13. Promoting narratives through a short conversational intervention in typically-developing and high-functioning children with ASD 285
  22. Subject index 313
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