Narrative learning within the new Social Studies Curriculum

Allan Taylor has been exploring using narrative learning as a teaching tool.This idea of storytelling as pedagogy is explained in Russel Bishop's book, "Teaching to the North-East​". Bishop suggests storytelling is a way to facilitate co-construction of the curriculum. Story is used as a catalyst to spark student imagination and share the power with students by asking them what they want to learn about. Bishop suggests, "Stories allow students to practise ways of critical, creative, and reflective thinking when making decisions and solving problems"

Allan sees this pedagogical approach as an effective way to develop culturally responsive practice and to integrate the new Social Studies curriculum​. He trialled using story with his year nine class. 9TAL were told the story of Huria Matenga and that story drove the learning in term three. Examples of topics explored by ākonga in response to that story included the Waikato Wars, Parihaka and cultural appropriation. Student feedback was mostly positive. Some examples are, "I liked watching the documentaries", "It gave us a good background", "I enjoyed the topic", "I liked to learn about the NZ Wars" and "I learnt something new I didn't know about"

Allan also ran a professional development session on storytelling with kaiako. The English Department has expressed their interest in learning more about the role of storytelling in developing a co-constructed curriculum and Allan hopes to work with them next year.

 Allan's next steps are to develop a cross-school cultural narrative within our Kāhui Ako​ and to lead the drive to include more narratives as the new Social Studies Curriculum is developed. Ka rawe, Allan!