the development of children's oral narratives across contexts

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The Development of Children'sOral Narratives Across ContextsAdina Schick a & Gigliana Melzi aa Department of Applied Psychology , New YorkUniversityPublished online: 03 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Adina Schick & Gigliana Melzi (2010) The Development ofChildren's Oral Narratives Across Contexts, Early Education and Development, 21:3,293-317, DOI: 10.1080/10409281003680578

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ORAL NARRATIVE DEVELOPMENTSCHICK AND MELZI

The Development of Children’s OralNarratives Across Contexts

Adina Schick and Gigliana MelziDepartment of Applied Psychology

New York University

Research Findings: Children across cultures begin the process of becoming literatewell before they begin formal schooling. The early narratives children share in con-versation with others lay the foundation for various academic and nonacademic as-pects of school readiness. Practice or Policy: The present review synthesizes the ma-jor work conducted on the development of oral narratives among children fromdiverse sociocultural backgrounds, especially those shared at home, at school, andwith peers. Contemporary research is discussed in relation to the socialization prac-tices across cultures and the role these practices might play in shaping children’s nar-rative discourse.

In most communities, storytelling, whether in oral or written form, has been usedas a primary way to preserve and transmit shared ideologies and traditions.Bruner (1986) defined narratives as forms of oral discourse that characterize andfacilitate culturally determined ways of communicating lived or imagined eventsto others. Narratives are, thus, a way in which individuals represent and makesense of past experiences, structure and evaluate those in the present, as well asplan and anticipate those of the future. The study of narratives has been ap-proached from various disciplines, including literature, linguistics, anthropol-ogy, and psychology, but its roots are in the structuralist investigations of thewritten narrative. In one of the earliest works of its kind, Morphology of the Folk-tale, Propp (1928/1968) examined the basic plot components of fairy tales to de-rive their simplest narrative elements. Breaking away from this tradition, Labov

EARLY EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT, 21(3), 293–317Copyright © 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1040-9289 print / 1556-6935 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10409281003680578

Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Gigliana Melzi, Department ofApplied Psychology, New York University, 246 Greene St., 5th Floor, New York, NY 10003. E-mail:[email protected]

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and Waletzky (1967/1997) examined the structure and organization of oral narra-tives shared by adults, paving the way for the investigation of oral stories. Theiranalyses showed that narratives serve two main functions: a referential functionthrough the recapitulation of the events experienced, and an evaluative functionthrough the narrator’s subjective interpretation of the experience (Labov, 1972;Labov & Waletzky, 1967/1997). Although Labov and Waletzky’s investigationwas conducted with adults, it became a springboard for later studies on young chil-dren’s oral narratives (Mandler & Johnson, 1977; Peterson & McCabe, 1983;Stein & Glenn, 1979). The early work on children’s narratives followed this tradi-tion, identifying the basic structural elements used by children and the ways inwhich these elements are organized to create a cohesive story (Peterson & McCabe,1983; Stein & Glenn, 1979).

Almost parallel to the interest in the organization and development of chil-dren’s narrative skills, the emergence of the ethnography of communication ap-proach (e.g., Gumperz & Hymes, 1972) led to various naturalistic studies on chil-dren’s language development, uses, and practices in diverse communities aroundthe world. The ethnographic work of Peggy Miller (1982) and Shirley Brice Heath(1983), for instance, explored language socialization practices in low-income ur-ban and rural communities in the United States. In their ethnographic studies, oralstorytelling about personal experiences emerged as a form of discourse used fre-quently with, around, or by children across cultural groups. However, the narrativepractices of the communities differed with regard to the frequency with which sto-ries were shared with children, the roles adults and children played in the creationof stories, and the socialization functions narratives played. Whereas in manymainstream communities in the United States children are encouraged to sharetheir own narratives with adults, in others children might be exposed to multipartyinteractions as listeners and observers. Moreover, children from diverse communi-ties are socialized to include different types of information in their personal narra-tives. For example, whereas in some White working-class communities childrenare socialized to adhere to the literal truth when sharing stories about personal ex-periences, in some African American working-class communities embellishingone’s experiences when sharing a personal narrative is acceptable. Heath’s study,in particular, made a pivotal contribution to the field of education, namely to thearea focusing on the intersection of oral language and literacy. Her study high-lighted how purposes and practices of narratives differ in diverse socioculturalcommunities and demonstrated how the narrative patterns expected and fosteredin classrooms differ from those used in the homes of some children. All childrenentering school must, therefore, adjust to the culture of the school if they are to be-come successful achievers in that milieu. Thus, the early work in the study of chil-dren’s narrative development highlighted developmental progression in the orga-nization and development of children’s storytelling skills, as well as the variationsin narrative uses and practices in diverse communities.

294 SCHICK AND MELZI

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In order to construct and share a story effectively, children must rely on a com-bination of skills from various domains, including memory, language, and the so-cial domain (Hudson & Shapiro, 1991). In turn, these early narratives lay the foun-dation for various academic and nonacademic aspects of school-related skills(Bliss & McCabe, 2008; Fiorentino & Howe, 2004; Johnston, 2008; Wishard-Guerra & Howes, 2009). Early narrative ability, for instance, is both correlatedwith and predictive of a wide range of essential literacy skills, including increasedvocabulary, print knowledge, decoding, story comprehension (Dickinson & Smith,1994; Reese, 1995; Snow, Tabors, & Dickinson, 2001), morphological and syntac-tic skills (Sénéchal, Pagan, Lever, & Ouellette, 2008), as well as various writingskills (Griffin, Hemphill, Camp, & Wolf, 2004). Early narratives are also related toaspects of socioemotional development, such as the creation and maintenance ofinterpersonal bonds (Fivush & Nelson, 2006; Nelson, 1993; Wang & Fivush,2005; Welch-Ross, 1995), as well as various sociocognitive skills, including emo-tional recognition, perspective taking, and an awareness of the human mind andbehavior (Charman & Shmueli-Goetz, 1998; Fivush, 1993; Nelson, 1996). In ad-dition, early narratives are related to children’s future recall and planning skills,among other enhanced memory skills (Jack, MacDonald, Reese, & Hayne, 2009;Rudek & Haden, 2005). As is evident, this area of inquiry is extensive, spanningvarious developmental domains.

Given the wealth of research on narratives, the present review is selective, fo-cusing on the development of oral narrative skills and how these relate to chil-dren’s literacy acquisition. As much of the contemporary work has focused onthe narratives shared at home, we begin our discussion by examining the waysin which parents across cultures scaffold their children’s early narrative skillsthrough conversations about past experiences and book-sharing interactions. Wethen review the work that has examined classroom narratives, focusing on the dis-course styles teachers in U.S. schools use to engage their students in narrative in-teractions. Both of these bodies of work have identified relationships between thenarrative styles adopted by adult caregivers (i.e., parents and teachers) and chil-dren’s development of school-related skills. In the third section, we review asomewhat less expansive area of research that has investigated children’s inde-pendent narrative skills when sharing stories without the assistance of adult scaf-folding and when sharing stories with peers.

IN CONVERSATION WITH PARENTS

In the past 30 years there has been a burgeoning of research within the field of de-velopmental psychology aimed at examining children’s narrative development.Much of this research has been heavily influenced by Vygotskian socioculturaltheory. From this perspective, adults scaffold the skills children require to com-

ORAL NARRATIVE DEVELOPMENT 295

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plete a task by providing guidance and feedback. With time, the child internalizesthe information the parent provides, and the external scaffold is no longer neces-sary (Vygotsky, 1962). Conversations shared between parents and children serveas an important source of narrative scaffolding (Haden, Haine, & Fivush, 1997;Melzi, 2000; Peterson & McCabe, 1994). Children as young as age 2 interact so-cially with their caregivers and begin to share stories with them (Eisenberg, 1985).At first, the adults take the lead, providing both the structure of the narrative aswell as the majority of the content. When children are very young, mothers guidetheir sharing of past experiences by asking closed-ended questions with yes/no an-swers; however, by the end of the preschool years, mothers shift to the use of moreopen-ended wh- questions to help scaffold their children’s independent contribu-tions to the story (Farrant & Reese, 2000). With time, children become less relianton parental scaffolding and become more adept at selecting and weaving informa-tion to construct and tell stories (Eisenberg, 1985). In this way, the input and con-tributions of the conversational partner act as a scaffold for the child’s narrativeproduction by guiding the selection of the content and by providing the necessaryorganization to construct a tellable story that will be understood and valued by thelarger community (Fivush, Haden, & Reese, 2006; Haden et al., 1997; Melzi,2000; Peterson & McCabe, 1994).

Most of the research on narrative interactions has focused on mothers1 and theirpreschool-age children (Fivush et al., 2006). This work suggests that maternal dis-course features shape not only children’s future narratives but also other skills nec-essary for a successful transition into school. One aspect of narrative scaffoldingthat has been greatly investigated is maternal elaborativeness. Elaboration is a dis-course feature through which parents either provide or request from their childnew information that sustains the story. Although all mothers use elaborative lan-guage during narrative interactions with their children, they differ in the extent andthe manner in which they do so (Fivush, 1991; Fivush & Fromhoff, 1988; Fivush etal., 2006; McCabe & Peterson, 1991; Peterson & McCabe, 1994; Reese & Fivush,1993). Specifically, some mothers are highly elaborative and engage their childrenin lengthy conversations, providing much of the structure and supplying rich, de-scriptive detailed information. These mothers encourage their children to co-construct the narrative as they ask open-ended questions and expand on their chil-dren’s utterances. By contrast, less elaborative mothers typically engage theirchildren in shorter conversations, supplying little detail and asking fewer ques-tions; the questions they do ask are repetitive, requesting the same type of informa-tion and seeking specific answers while providing little new information (Fivush


1Although less research has examined father–child narrative interactions, the existing research sug-gests that no significant differences exist between mothers and fathers in narrative style, amount ofelaboration, or themes discussed as they engage their young children in conversation (Cristofaro &Tamis-LeMonda, 2008; Reese & Fivush, 1993).

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& Fromhoff, 1988; Fivush et al., 2006; Melzi, 2000; Reese, Haden, & Fivush,1996). It is interesting that past research has shown that maternal characteris-tics such as level of education are not correlated with elaboration (Newcombe& Reese, 2004). By contrast, however, a number of child characteristics havebeen associated with maternal elaboration. For example, mothers are, on aver-age, more elaborative with children who are highly attentive (Farrant & Reese,2000) and more active (Lewis, 1999). Thus, there appears to be a relationshipbetween child temperament and maternal elaboration. Moreover, mothers ofsecurely attached children tend to be more elaborative and are more likely toadjust their degree of elaboration to their child’s developing skills (Reese &Farrant, 2003).

Research has shown that greater maternal elaborativeness is beneficial for chil-dren’s future development of narrative and literacy skills. Mothers who are highlyelaborative have children who share longer, more descriptive, and richer personalnarratives (Reese, Haden, & Fivush, 1993). In one of the few experimental studiesof its kind, for example, a group of mothers was trained to use a highly elaborativestyle as they discussed past events with their 3-year-old children. Children whosemothers were in the trained group told more sophisticated personal narratives twoyears later compared children of mothers in the control group (Peterson, Jesso, &McCabe, 1999). More recently, a longitudinal investigation of New Zealandmother–child dyads (mainly from European backgrounds) provided further evi-dence that children of mothers trained to use an elaborative style when engagingin talk about the past tell richer—and more accurate—personal narratives a yearafter training (Reese & Newcombe, 2007). In addition, maternal elaborativenessduring stories about the past is related to children’s emergent literacy, includingreceptive and productive vocabulary, concepts about print, and story compre-hension (Reese, 1995; Sparks, Reese, & Kalia, 2005). In the Peterson et al.(1999) study described above, as another example, children in the interventiongroup displayed more gains in vocabulary a year after training compared to thosein the control group. Researchers have suggested that mothers who adopt ahigh-elaborative style engage their children in higher levels of decontextualizedlanguage use—a foundational skill for literacy development. During talk aboutthe past, the experience is recreated solely through language, and therefore thelanguage used is decontextualized from the immediate environment, relying onmemory or internal representations. Decontextualized talk is cognitively and lin-guistically demanding, and thus helps prepare children for the various forms ofcritical thinking that will be required of them when they enter formal schooling(Snow, 1983, 1991).

Building on the early work on children’s narrative experiences across diversecommunities, contemporary cross-cultural and ethnographic work on narrative de-velopment has yielded compelling evidence that there are variations in the ways inwhich adults scaffold children’s narrative productions, and that these variations


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are reflective of cultural beliefs, values, norms, and practices (Fivush & Haden,2003; McCabe, Bailey, & Melzi, 2008). In other words, the extent to which moth-ers elaborate and the ways in which they do so as they scaffold children’s early nar-rative skills are contingent on the socialization goals adopted by their socioculturalgroups (Ochs & Capps, 2001; Wang & Fivush, 2005). Thus, because in the UnitedStates children are typically imbued with a sense of individualism and a feeling ofautonomy and independence, Euro-American mothers often adopt a high-elabora-tive style as they engage their children in conversations about the self (Wang,2001, 2004; Wang & Fivush, 2005). As another example, Latino mothers gener-ally emphasize the importance of interpersonal relations and social skills duringinteractions with their children. As a result, although Spanish-speaking immigrantCentral American mothers are as elaborative as Euro-American mothers, they typ-ically focus more on the social and conversational aspects of the narrative task andserve as a participatory audience, allowing their children to take control of the con-versation (Melzi, 2000; Melzi, Schick, & Kennedy, in press). By contrast, Maorimothers in New Zealand tend to adopt a low-elaborative style that uses frequentrepetition as a way of encouraging children’s retention of memories. Their low-el-aborative, highly repetitive style is related to the culture’s strong tradition of oralnarrative, which places much value on the memorization of stories (Hayne & Mac-Donald, 2003).

Because extensive talk about the self is discouraged in most East Asian cul-tures, East Asian mothers also tend to favor a low-elaborative interaction style thatkeeps children’s contributions succinct, limiting the extent to which children areallowed to introduce their own topics (Minami & McCabe, 1991, 1995; Mullen &Yi, 1995; Wang, Leichtman, & Davies, 2000). For example, in a recent study ex-amining cultural variations in the use of emotions in Chinese and Euro-Americanmother–child conversations, Fivush and Wang (2005) found that Euro-Americanchildren argued and negotiated the emotional topics more than did Chinese chil-dren, which highlights the different functions narratives play in the two culturalgroups. Whereas among Euro-Americans the sharing of stories about personal ex-periences often serves as a venue for expressing opinions and affirming individu-ality, among East Asian populations sharing personal narratives serves as a forumfor teaching moral values and acceptable behavior (Miller, Wiley, Fung, & Liang,1997; Wang, 2001). Thus, it is not surprising that as they engage in conversationabout the past, East Asian mother–child dyads talk more about behavioral expecta-tions and social norms, compared with the focus of Euro-American dyads on thechild’s thoughts and feelings (Mullen & Yi, 1995).

Mother–child narratives about past experiences are one of the earliest contexts

for the development of narrative skills in young children, but they are not the only

important context. In fact, adult–child book reading is particularly important for

the support of emergent literacy development as well. For example, the number of

books in the home and the frequency with which books are shared with young chil-


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dren are related to children’s early literacy skills, including vocabulary, a skill crit-

ical to the ability to read and write (Potter & Haynes, 2000; Raikes et al., 2006;

Sénéchal et al., 2008). Equally important is the manner in which the books are

shared. Because they follow a set plot (predetermined by textual and/or pictorial

cues), book-sharing interactions are more structured than oral narrative interac-

tions. Most work examining the ways in which parents support children’s narrative

and literacy skills in this context has focused on maternal language and discourse

features used during the interaction, such as the amount of language, lexical diver-

sity, the degree to which mothers adhere to the text and the types of extratextual

contributions, as well as how these relate to children’s linguistic, cognitive, and lit-

eracy outcomes (Bingham, 2007; Curenton, Craig, & Flanigan, 2008; Haden,

Reese, & Fivush, 1996; Martin, 1998; Reese, 1995; Snow, Tabors, & Dickinson,

2001). One particularly interesting study identified three overall book-reading

styles mothers of preschoolers used in this context and showed that the styles were

differentially predictive of children’s emergent literacy skills (Haden et al., 1996).

Some mothers adopted a describer style; these mothers included rich descriptions

and focused on vocabulary, expository language, and concepts but did not engage

their children in discussions about the events that transpired. By contrast, collabo-

rators invited their children’s participation in the telling of the story and provided

positive feedback. Finally, comprehenders engaged their children in high-level

extratextual talk and encouraged them to draw inferences and make predictions.

Results showed that children of collaborators and comprehenders had more ad-

vanced vocabulary, print, decoding, and story comprehension skills 2½ years later

compared to children of describers. Thus, it appears that asking elaborative

open-ended questions and scaffolding analytical thinking when sharing story-

books with young children foster literacy development.

Building on this work, research suggests that dialogic reading, a renowned

reading intervention program for mothers and children that encourages mothers to

elicit information from their children and to foster children’s participation when

sharing storybooks, is effective in helping to build early literacy skills (Whitehurst

& Lonigan, 1998). Nonetheless, although the asking of questions and the scaffold-

ing of inferential and critical thinking are common features of book sharing in mid-

dle-class Euro-American families, these storytelling features might not be aligned

with the literacy practices of all communities, nor might they be as effective for all

children. For example, Reese and Cox (1999) found that for children with less ad-

vanced language skills, the describer style is in fact more effective than those

styles that focus on prediction and inferential thinking. Moreover, in a recent

meta-analysis investigating the effectiveness of dialogic reading on children’s vo-

cabulary development, Mol, Bus, de Jong, and Smeets (2008) demonstrated that

although dialogic reading is beneficial for mainstream Euro-American families, it

is not equally effective for all mother–child dyads, likely because the book-sharing

styles encouraged are not aligned with their cultural styles.


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Similar to other narrative contexts, cultural norms are embedded in the mannerin which books are shared with children. For example, when sharing picture bookswith their children, Euro-American mothers tend to ask challenging questions thatreflect the style used in elementary school classrooms in the United States. By con-trast, East Asian mothers strive to maintain interpersonal harmony and typicallyask questions that their children can answer (Kato-Otani, 2004). Similarly, low-in-come (English-speaking) Puerto Rican and African American mothers of HeadStart children view shared book reading as serving a social function rather than anacademic one. In other words, the goal of story sharing is to spend quality timewith the child and strengthen the mother–child bond and not necessarily to teachchildren skills that will be necessary for school success. Thus, when readingtext-based picture books with their children, mothers typically request little infor-mation from their children, reading to them directly from the text. Nevertheless,low-income African American mothers are more likely to serve as the primary nar-rators than are Puerto Rican mothers, who take more of a child-centered approach,allowing their children to take control of the narration (Hammer, Nimmo, Cohen,Draheim, & Johnson, 2005). Research with Spanish-speaking mothers from otherLatino backgrounds shows that these mothers adopt an array of styles when shar-ing books with their children, varying in the extent to which they actively engagechildren in the construction of the story. In their investigation of maternal book-sharing styles, Melzi and Caspe (2005) found that, by contrast to middle-classEuro-American mothers, who typically co-constructed narratives with their chil-dren, middle-class Peruvian mothers served as the sole narrators of an engagingstory with minimal child participation. In an extension of that work, Caspe (2009)examined the book-sharing styles of low-income Spanish-speaking Dominicanand Mexican immigrant Head Start families living in New York City. Corrobo-rating Melzi and Caspe’s (2005) findings, this study found that some mothersco-constructed the story with their children, requesting significantly more infor-mation than they provided, but the majority of mothers (68%) narrated the storywith minimal input from their children. Interestingly, controlling for years of ma-ternal education and children’s initial developmental competencies, it was thechildren whose mothers served as the primary storytellers who had higher emer-gent literacy scores at the end of the school year. One potential explanation for thisfinding is that the storybuilder style, although common among Euro-Americanmothers, is not a familiar cultural practice of all Latino mothers, and, thus, al-though they attempted to ask questions of their children, they did not do so in asmooth or natural manner (Caspe, 2009). Similar findings about the narrator–audience distinction as an important dimension of maternal scaffolding duringmother–child book-sharing interactions have been noted among a variety of cul-tural groups, including East Indian mothers (Harkins & Ray, 2004), Brazilianmothers (Zilles, Melzi, Knecht, & Lopes, 2008), and Spanish-speaking Puerto Ri-can mothers (Caspe & Melzi, 2008). (For a review, see Melzi et al., in press.)


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By the time children reach age 5, they have acquired the basic skills needed toproduce a narrative that approximates the canonical form of the oral stories valuedin their community through their participation in narrative interactions, such asconversations about personal experience and book sharing. The narrative skillschildren develop during the preschool years are critical for children’s school readi-ness, as they are predictive of their literacy skills throughout the elementary schoolyears (Griffin et al., 2004). Preschoolers’ oral narrative skills are robust predictorsof various reading skills, such as decoding, print knowledge, and story comprehen-sion skills (Dickinson & Smith, 1994; Dickinson & Snow, 1987; Reese, 1995;Snow, Tabors, & Dickinson, 2001) as well as writing skills (Griffin et al., 2004).Given the importance of the home context for children’s narrative development,much of the existing literature on children’s narrative conversations has focusedon parental scaffolding styles. Nevertheless, there is a need for further investiga-tion of how maternal narrative scaffolding styles influence children’s narrativestyles across cultures, as most of the existing work has been limited to Euro-Amer-ican populations. Moreover, despite their significance for children’s narrative de-velopment, parent–child interactions provide a limited snapshot of children’s dailylanguage exchanges, as they are only one of the many contexts in which preschoolchildren have the opportunity to engage in extended conversations. Young chil-dren engage in storytelling with others besides parents on a daily basis. They talkwith siblings, grandparents, and other family members. For example, in some Mexi-can American communities, older siblings frequently share storybooks with theiryounger siblings as part of their caregiving responsibilities (Orellana, Reynolds, Dorner,& Meza, 2003). Thus, it is important for researchers to investigate the narrative in-teractions children have with caregivers other than parents across communities. Wenow turn our attention to the conversations children have with their teachers in edu-cational settings, as the narrative interactions children have in this context providefurther support for the development of their narrative and literacy skills.

SHARING STORIES AT SCHOOL

In contrast to the home, where conversations are less structured and adults usuallyinteract informally with one or a few children at a given time, conversations in theclassroom are more scripted as teachers engage larger groups of children at once(Cross, 1989; Dickinson, 1991). The structure of classroom discourse dictates thetypes of narratives shared in preschools and the characteristics of these stories. Forinstance, narratives shared in classrooms are shorter in length than those shared athome (Dickinson, 1991). Research also suggests that children are frequently ex-posed to more diverse narrative forms and settings in classroom interactions thanin the home (Dickinson, 2001a). Over the course of the school day, children havevarious opportunities to engage in narrative interactions independently and col-


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laboratively with both teachers and peers. The type of narrative support childrenreceive during these conversations differs and might complement that which theyreceive at home.

In classroom conversations and discussions, teachers strive to scaffold chil-dren’s discourse such that language and concepts are within children’s zones ofproximal development. As children enter preschool classrooms with diverse lan-guage and literacy experiences, teachers face a challenge when trying to engage allstudents in a conversation that is both educational and within their cognitive reach(Dickinson, 2001a). The handful of studies conducted on teacher–child conversa-tions in early childhood classrooms suggest that sharing (or circle) time is a com-mon school activity during which children are encouraged to share experiencesand information with their teachers and peers (Cazden, 2001). Although the pre-cise structure of sharing time might vary from one classroom to another, in generalit is a time for children to share narratives about personal experiences. Teachersscaffold children’s narratives during sharing time by asking questions and provid-ing information to both “clarify and extend” children’s talk (Michaels, 1991). Attimes, however, teachers have difficulty understanding the stories told to them bytheir students (Cazden, 2001). Unlike parents, who are familiar with their chil-dren’s experiences and can therefore provide the appropriate scaffolding to helptheir children share coherent stories, teachers are typically unaware of the chil-dren’s experiences outside of school (Cazden, 2001; Dickinson, 1991). Therefore,they might experience difficulty following the stories told to them by their studentsand thus might be unable to provide the necessary prompts to facilitate the elabora-tion of the narrative (Cazden, 2001).

Cultural differences between teachers and their students might be a factor inteachers’ unfamiliarity with children’s narrative styles (Cazden, 2001; Heath,1983; Michaels, 1991). When listening to their students share their experiences,teachers typically expect particular types of narratives. The expectation is for chil-dren to tell stories that are “topic centered,” those structured around a particularexperience with a clearly delineated beginning, middle, and end (Michaels, 1991).This style is very much aligned with the style commonly used by middle-classEuro-American parents. As teachers are familiar with this style, they can easilyhelp children extend their narratives. However, not all children necessarily use thisnarrative structure. For instance, some working-class African American childrenshare “topic-associating” stories, long narratives that are marked by “the juxtapo-sition of several concrete anecdotes all thematically linked to make an implicitpoint” (Michaels, 1991, pp. 310–311). Teachers who are not familiar with this nar-rative structure have a difficult time understanding and scaffolding the narrativeproduction for the children (Gee, 1985; Michaels, 1991). Nevertheless, researchsuggests that it is important for teachers to encourage their students to share narra-tives with them. It is important for teachers to listen closely to the stories that chil-dren tell them not only during circle time but also during non-structured activities,


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such as mealtime and free play; to attend closely to the elements of those stories;and to ask genuine questions that will aid their comprehension of the stories andhelp them to become more familiar with diverse narrative practices and traditions(Curenton, 2006).

Like the research on home literacy, most investigations of classroom literacyenvironments have centered on book-reading interactions. This body of researchhighlights the importance of classroom book reading in building children’s earlyliteracy skills by demonstrating that talk between preschool teachers and their stu-dents around storybooks is correlated with children’s vocabulary and story com-prehension skills (Dickinson, 2001a; Dickinson & Smith, 1994; Snow & Dickin-son, 1990). It is somewhat surprising that although preschool teachers are aware ofthe importance of book reading for children’s literacy development, many teachersdo not systematically incorporate book reading as a daily activity in their class-room routines (Dickinson, 2001a). Moreover, shared book reading in classroomsdiffers greatly from mother–child book sharing. For example, classroom bookreading serves more of an instructional purpose than a conversational one, with thelatter a more common function of book sharing in the home (Hindman, Connor,Jewkes, & Morrison, 2008). In contrast to the sharing of storybooks in the home,book sharing in classrooms typically occurs in group settings with large adult–child ratios (Wasik & Bond, 2001). Teachers rarely read to individual students,and, consequently, it becomes difficult to tailor book readings to children’s pre-ferred styles (Hindman et al., 2008).

As do mothers, teachers vary in the book-reading styles they adopt when shar-ing books with their classes. The styles differ in terms of the content they include,the degree to which they engage students in pre-reading and post-reading conver-sations, the number and types of questions asked, and the degree to which the storyis enacted (Dickinson, 2001a; Dickinson & Smith, 1994). Some teachers, for ex-ample, use a didactic-interactional style that does not engage children in pre- andpost-reading conversations but rather focuses on the written text. Although there isa high level of student involvement during the book reading, this talk is centeredon basic recall questions teachers ask following each section of the text. In addi-tion, these teachers encourage their students to chant aloud familiar passages fromthe text. Other teachers use a performance-oriented style. Teachers who adopt thisstyle are dramatic and expressive as they read aloud to their class. During the bookreading itself, they encourage little conversation about the text. However, they en-gage their students in extensive conversation both before and after the book read-ing as they discuss the plot in great detail and link the events to the children’s per-sonal experiences. In the third style, the co-constructive style, the focus is on thestory itself. Although teachers who adopt this style do not include much pre- orpost-book-reading talk, they co-construct the story with their students, stoppingfrequently during the reading to engage the class in analytical and evaluative talkabout the story (e.g., exploring characters’ motivations and emotions, analyzing


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the sequence of events) and to draw connections between the plot and the chil-dren’s personal experiences.

Research has shown that the three styles differ in the extent to which they sup-port early literacy. Specifically, children whose preschool teachers encouragedthem to think about characters’ intentions and motivations, to analyze the se-quence of events, and to make connections between the storyline and their per-sonal experiences had more advanced language and literacy skills both at the endof kindergarten (Dickinson, 2001a; Dickinson & Smith, 1994) and at the end of thefourth grade (Dickinson & Porche, 2005). Nevertheless, some researchers havefound that preschool teachers’ talk during book-sharing interactions is low in cog-nitive demand and that there is little scaffolding of inferential thinking (Dickinson,McCabe, & Anastasopoulos, 2003). Others suggest that preschool teachers do fo-cus on higher order thinking, making predictions, and drawing inferences but ne-glect to teach print concepts and phonology (Hindman et al., 2008), skills that areequally important for young children’s emergent literacy development. In fact, re-sults of a recent randomized, controlled trial investigating the effectiveness of pre-school teachers’ use of a “print referencing style” that emphasizes the inclusion ofquestions and comments about print during teacher–class book reading demon-strated that teachers’ talk about print is related to children’s print knowledge andletter recognition skills (Justice, Kaderavek, Fan, Sofka, & Hunt, 2009).

Thus, contemporary work on early childhood classroom narratives has high-lighted the important role of teachers in building children’s literacy skills duringclassroom book reading and sharing (or circle) time. However, little is knownabout how teachers build on the culturally preferred narrative styles of childrenfrom diverse backgrounds. Moreover, there are many other important opportuni-ties for oral stories to be shared during the school day, including at mealtime andduring free play. For example, some work suggests that stories shared duringmealtime provide a good informal opportunity for children to become familiarizedwith diverse narrative styles (Stone, 1992) and that free play is conducive to thesharing of fantasy narratives (Dickinson, 2001b). Nevertheless, research on class-room storytelling has not fully investigated the various ways in which early child-hood teachers support children’s personal narratives throughout the school dayand how classroom narratives might be related to children’s development ofschool-related skills. As a result, additional research is necessary to ensure a com-prehensive portrayal of narratives shared between teachers and children in earlychildhood classrooms.

TELLING STORIES ON THEIR OWN AND WITH FRIENDS

Most of the contemporary research on children’s early narrative discourse hasfocused on adult–child conversations with mothers in the home and preschool


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teachers in the classroom. Fewer studies have examined children’s abilities toshare narratives independent of adult scaffolding or with their peers. This work hashighlighted that when talking about their past experiences, children as young asage 4 adapt the content of their stories to their target audience (Fivush & Ham-mond, 1990). As children get older, however, there is developmental progressionin their storytelling skills, as the stories children share become more complex andtheir narrative structure improves. Most of the work on children’s narratives hasfocused on identifying the basic structural elements used by children and the waysin which these are organized to create a cohesive story. Within this particular areaof research, two main perspectives have emerged. Grounded in cognitive psychol-ogy, episodic (or story grammar) analysis (Stein & Albro, 1997; Stein & Glenn,1979) is directly based on Propp’s (1928/1968) work on Russian folktales and con-siders stories as series of episodes centered around a protagonist and his or her mo-tives, attempts, and actions to achieve a goal (Stein & Albro, 1997; Stein & Glenn,1982). Stein and colleagues view children’s narrative abilities as linked to the de-velopment of specific cognitive skills and thus posited that children’s stories be-come more complete over time. Children between the ages of 3 and 5 typically tellstories that include general descriptions of the protagonist and his or her actionswithout any order to the information presented, making it difficult for the listenerto follow the storyline. By the time children enter kindergarten, however, theyhave begun to develop the skills necessary to share well-structured goal-based sto-ries that are complete, coherent, and cohesive.

The other perspective, and one that has had, perhaps, the largest influence onthe study of children’s independent narrative abilities, is Peterson and McCabe’s(1983) high-point analysis. Based on a Labovian perspective, high-point analysisdepicts the “classic” narrative as a series of clauses—linked temporally or caus-ally—that build up to a high point (or climax) and ultimately come to a resolution.Inherent in a “good” narrative is the use of both referential and evaluative features,including orienting information that contextualizes the events that move the storyforward, descriptive detail, and subjective information. Scholars adopting this ap-proach consider narratives to be part of children’s development of discourse abili-ties and thus linked to linguistic and conversational gains.

Peterson and McCabe’s (1983) high-point analysis extended Labov and Walet-zky’s (1967/1997) work to allow for the structural analysis of stories told by chil-dren. They developed a method of eliciting narratives from children, known as theconversational map, that uses story prompts to engage children in storytelling.Their influential study on children’s narrative structure highlighted qualitative dif-ferences in the structure and overall coherence of the personal narratives told bychildren during early and middle childhood. Although children begin sharing sto-ries during their first few years of life, without the support of adult scaffoldingchildren younger than age 4 typically organize the information in a temporally dis-organized, unsystematic manner and neglect to include integral orienting informa-


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tion. Thus, the onus is placed on the audience to make sense of the story. By thetime children are 4½ years old, their utilization of this leap-frog style begins to di-minish and they begin to share chronologically organized narratives with temporalmarkers linking events. Nevertheless, the narratives are primarily referential (i.e.,events and descriptions), with little evaluative or subjective information included.Typically, children begin to integrate evaluation into their stories at approximatelyage 5. However, the stories they share tend to end at the high point, or climax,without coming to any form of resolution. By the time children turn 6, there is aqualitative shift in their storytelling abilities, as they begin to tell classic narra-tives, incorporating referential and evaluative information as they build up to ahigh point and then come to a full resolution. This classic pattern is considered tobe the most developed structure and one that is encouraged in U.S. schools. Conse-quently, the early childhood years are critical to children’s development of theskills necessary to share complete and coherent narratives.

Although Peterson and McCabe’s (1983) work focused on children’s narrativesabout personal experience, similar developmental patterns of growth in narrativeskill have been noted in studies that have examined other narrative genres, includ-ing scripts and fictional (or fantasy) narratives (Hudson & Shapiro, 1991). Al-though scripts—basic descriptions of routine events—are the first narrative genrechildren share independently, as they get older their scripts become better orga-nized and more developed (Hudson & Shapiro, 1991; Nelson, 1998). The mostcomplex narrative genre and the last to develop is the fictional narrative. As a re-sult, preschoolers’ fantasy stories lack many of the basic structural elements inher-ent in a good narrative (e.g., setting, sequence, perspective, resolution), and it isnot until age 8 that children share cohesive and sophisticated fictional accountswith complex plots (Hudson & Shapiro, 1991; Stein & Glenn, 1982). Even in thethird grade, children’s fictional stories include few references to internal states andgoals, a skill that does not appear to develop fully until age 10 (Hudson & Shapiro,1991). Thus, regardless of the narrative genre, over time children become increas-ingly capable of independently creating and sharing well-structured narratives, al-though the specific developmental trajectories vary based on the genre.

Recent work has explored variations in children’s narrative development acrosscultural groups, identifying both structural and thematic variations in the storiesshared. These variations have been attributed to cultural ideas about narrative usesand practices, maternal narrative scaffolding styles, and socialization goals (e.g.,Gutiérrez-Clellen & Quinn, 1993; Heath, 1983). For example, in the same way thatEuro-American mothers are more elaborative than their East Asian counterparts asthey engage their preschool-age children in conversation about the self (Wang,2001, 2004; Wang & Fivush, 2005), the independent narratives of Euro-Americanchildren are found to be more descriptive, to be more evaluative, and to includemore talk about the self than those shared by Chinese children (Han, Leichtman, &Wang, 1998; Wang & Leichtman, 2000). By contrast, the stories told by Chinese


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children include more themes of social harmony, social engagement, and obedi-ence to authority than those told by Euro-American children (Wang & Leichtman,2000). Cultural differences exist in children’s narrative structure, as well. Koreanchildren, for instance, include fewer temporal markers in their stories than do theirEuro-American and Chinese counterparts (Han et al., 1998). Moreover, childrenfrom diverse East Asian backgrounds (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Korean) shareshorter narratives about personal experience compared to Euro-American children(Han et al., 1998; Minami & McCabe, 1991). The personal narratives shared bychildren from Japanese backgrounds are especially succinct, typically consistingof three verses, reflecting the structure of a Haiku. Japanese children also tend toinclude multiple isolated experiences in their narratives, in contrast to Euro-Amer-ican children, whose personal narratives are centered on one main experience(Minami & McCabe, 1991). What is interesting, though, is that although their per-sonal narratives are very short, stories shared by Japanese children do fit Petersonand McCabe’s (1983) chronological pattern and are thus comprehensible to aEuro-American audience. African American children typically share narrativesthat contain several thematically linked episodes as well, but these narratives tendto be long and elaborative, even compared to those of Euro-American children(Michaels, 1991). Although this topic-associating style is the style most frequentlydescribed in the literature, close examination of the independent narratives sharedby African American and Haitian American children highlights the fact that thesechildren adopt a variety of styles when engaging in storytelling and incorporateculturally preferred discourse features such as repetition and extensive use of de-tail into their narratives (Champion, 1998; Champion, McCabe, & Colinet, 2003).Moreover, although some of the stories they share might be interpreted as tempo-rally disorganized and disjointed, paralleling the leap-frog style, African Ameri-can children do tell topic-centered, classic narratives as well, adjusting their story-telling styles to the interactional function of the narrative context (Champion,1998).

In addition to culture, narrative construction is also influenced by the structureof the language children speak (see Berman & Slobin, 1994, for a review). Differ-ent languages offer distinct linguistic resources for constructing well-organizednarratives. For example, languages differ in their number of verb tenses and inways of marking aspect, as well as in the number and variety of adjective and ad-verbs available to narrators. These linguistic differences influence the structureand content of children’s narratives (Berman & Slobin, 1994; Gutiérrez-Clellen,2002; Minami, 2008). Variations across languages as they relate to narratives havebeen the focus of recent work with bilingual children. Although research on thenarratives of bilingual children is quite limited, findings suggest that narrative fea-tures vary consistently across languages spoken (Anstatt, 2008; Gutiérrez-Clellen,2002) but that the strategies bilingual children use can be transferred across lan-guages (Anstatt, 2008).


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In addition to examining the overall structure of children’s independent narra-tives, scholars have also investigated developmental changes in the microstructureof children’s stories, namely causal connectives and temporal markers. These ele-ments are integral to the creation of a cohesive story. However, whereas pre-schoolers rely on basic connectives, such as then, because, but, and so, to achievenarrative coherence, as children get older they include more varied temporal mark-ers and use connectives in more sophisticated ways (Berman & Slobin, 1994; Hud-son & Shapiro, 1991; Peterson & McCabe, 1991). For example, when sharingwordless picture books, children between the ages of 5 and 9 are more likely to usecombined temporal markers, such as and then, to link sequentially events (Berman& Slobin, 1994). There are also gender differences in narrative microstructure,with girls including more temporal and causal markers than boys (Buckner &Fivush, 1998; Fivush, Haden, & Adam, 1995; Han et al., 1998). Finally, verb tenseis integral for the temporal anchoring—and by extension the coherence—of a nar-rative. Research has shown that it is not until age 5 that children show a preferencefor one tense (typically either the past or present) when they engage in storytelling.As a result, stories told by younger children often lack cohesiveness and coherence(Berman & Slobin, 1994).

The stories shared by children of different ages differ not only in structure butalso in content. For example, when sharing wordless picture books preschool-agechildren make few references to characters’ internal states. When they do talkabout characters’ emotions, they refer to those clearly identifiable through the il-lustrations. By contrast, during middle childhood, children elaborate on the inter-nal states of the protagonists in storybooks (Berman & Slobin, 1994). Moreover,gender differences in narrative content have been noted as well. Girls’ personalnarratives, for instance, are more relational and interpersonal and contain more de-scriptions, emotions, and internal states than the stories shared by boys (Buckner& Fivush, 1998; Fivush et al., 1995). These differences in narrative content mightbe related to gender socialization practices. For example, past research has shownthat mothers talk more about emotions with their daughters than with their sonsand that, in particular, mothers are more likely to discuss emotions in the context ofinterpersonal relationships with their daughters (Fivush, Brotman, Buckner, &Goodman, 2000). Nevertheless, these socialization patterns vary across cultures(see Melzi & Fernández, 2004).

Similar gender differences have been found for fictional narratives. Based onher study of stories shared by children between the ages of 4 and 6, Nicolopoulou(2008) found two gender-related narrative styles that differed in both structure andcontent. Girls typically preferred a “family genre,” as their stories tended to focuson “networks of social relations,” such as the family in the home setting. This fo-cus on collective family relationships helped the girls achieve coherence in theirnarratives, as it created a unifying theme. By contrast, boys tended to adopt a “he-roic-agnostic genre,” and their stories were marked by conflict and an overall lack


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of harmony. The stories were typically centered on disconnected characters en-gaged in conflict, and as a result, the boys had greater difficulty achieving coher-ence in their narratives.

The investigation of peer interactions is an even more neglected area, despitethe fact that peer interactions play an integral role in children’s everyday livesfrom the preschool years onward. Although this area of work began three decadesago (Ervin-Tripp & Mitchell-Kernan, 1977), the study of talk between peers hasnot been well developed. This is surprising, as children’s collaborations to co-construct stories provide an additional forum for the scaffolding of narrative skills(Küntay & Senay, 2003). Children as young as 4 years of age have been found toengage in peer narratives (Kyratzis & Ervin-Tripp, 1999; Umiker-Sebeok, 1979).Talk between peers provides children with the opportunity to “actively negotiatemeanings and relationships related to their local peer culture, creating a web ofcultural tools and possible worlds unique to childhood” (Blum-Kulka, Huck-Taglicht, & Avni, 2004, p. 308). Unlike the asymmetrical nature of adult–child in-teractions, in which children serve as the novices to the more knowledgeable adult,when sharing stories with their peers children become the experts (Blum-Kulka etal., 2004; Blum-Kulka & Snow, 2004). Consequently, stories told with peers con-tain more performance features than stories shared with unfamiliar interlocutors oradults (Leith, 1995; Wolfson, 1978). For instance, to engage their audience in thestory, the narrators employ repetition and include much reported speech alongwith changes in prosody (Tannen, 1989). Moreover, when engaging in conversa-tions with their peers, preschool-age children serve as active listeners, requestingorienting information, spontaneously providing information, and generally serv-ing to improve the coherence of the narratives (Nicolopoulou & Richner, 2004).Thus, the sharing of narratives with one’s peers serves to facilitate children’s de-velopment of the diverse pragmatic and discursive skills essential to storytelling,skills that perhaps are not as readily facilitated in conversations with adults.

The existing work on children’s independent narratives and those told withpeers provides evidence of age-related, gender, and sociocultural differences inthe structure and content of children’s independent narratives. However, furtherresearch is needed to describe more fully the developmental progression of chil-dren’s narrative abilities across genders and cultures and to investigate the interre-lationships between children’s narrative styles and their school-related skills.

CONCLUSION

Oral storytelling is a form of discourse used frequently with, around, or by childrenacross societies. Cultural norms are embedded in the manner in which stories areshared, and thus communities differ with regard to the roles adults and childrenplay in the creation of stories and the socialization functions of narratives. Young


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children learn the culturally preferred ways of organizing and structuring narra-tives as they engage in everyday interactions with their caregivers. Narrative is aform of extended discourse that requires children to move beyond the observableand create meaning solely through language. Children’s early use of this type ofdiscourse is a powerful predictor of future literacy skills because texts presentedfor comprehension in academic settings typically require children to interpretcomplex messages without the support of a conversational partner or sharedknowledge with an audience. Thus, narratives are regarded as the quintessentialemergent literacy skill; the ability to share coherent, fully developed stories laysthe foundation for future literacy development and achievement. Children withbetter developed narrative skills have an educational advantage over children whoenter kindergarten with less well-developed narrative abilities. Hence, research onchildren’s narrative development is not only of academic interest but also has im-portant educational implications.

Most of the contemporary work on early narrative development has focused onmaternal narrative scaffolding as mothers engage their children in conversationsabout past personal experiences and during book-sharing interactions. This bodyof work has highlighted maternal elaboration as a major scaffolding discourse fea-ture, especially for children’s subsequent development of narrative and literacyabilities. Mothers who are highly elaborative have children who share longer,more descriptive personal narratives; have more enhanced vocabulary skills; andare better prepared for the types of critical thinking that will be expected of them atschool. Nevertheless, maternal scaffolding styles are influenced by culturally spe-cific socialization practices, and, as a result, elaborativeness might not be the onlyimportant dimension across all cultural groups. The elicitation styles selected bycaregivers parallel the socialization goals of the surrounding community. With adifferent goal in mind, mothers use different strategies to scaffold their children’sdeveloping narrative skills. Further investigation is needed with diverse culturalgroups, in particular research that focuses on the cultural factors that shape care-givers’ scaffolding styles and how these in turn are related to children’s independ-ent narrative abilities.

Teachers, too, play an important role in building children’s emergent literacyskills as they engage in storytelling during classroom book reading and sharingtime. However, many gaps remain in our understanding of how preschool teachersscaffold the narrative development of children from diverse sociocultural back-grounds. Educators need to take into account the fact that children come to schoolprepared in different ways to listen to and narrate stories. Heath (1983) demon-strated that teachers’ lack of knowledge about the unique culture-specific practicesof their students can lead to misunderstandings about children’s skills and thus canbe detrimental for children’s later success in school. As a result, it is essential thatteachers understand the cultural backgrounds of their students to ensure that theybuild on the home literacy practices the children bring with them to the classroom.


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One way this might be achieved is through increased diversity in the teacherworkforce, but perhaps what is most essential is providing solid training that ex-poses teachers to a variety of cultural storytelling practices. This type of training isespecially important for early childhood educators, as it would enable teachers tobuild on their students’ early narrative skills by finding ways to include home prac-tices in the classroom and to do so in meaningful ways.

Through the narratives shared with important others, particularly parents andteachers, children acquire the basic skills needed to produce a narrative that ap-proximates the canonical form of the stories valued in their community. The skillsgained in the home and school contexts are practiced and further developed duringconversations with peers. Despite the many contributions made by past research,however, much still has been left unexplored. As educators and researchers ex-plore the interrelationships between narrative and school learning, they must payclose attention to the diverse styles used to support children’s narratives acrosscultures, contexts, and conversational partners as well as how these styles are re-lated to child outcomes in diverse sociocultural groups.

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