Module 26: Story and storying in Holistic Education – including Maths and Science!
Module description:
In relation to a working definition of the process of holistic development this module looks at the nature of, and use of, the idea of ’story and storying’ by the teacher, or other practitioner, so as to encourage learning, professional development and/or personal growth.
‘The telling of stories can be a profound form of scholarship moving serious study close to the frontiers of art….’
— Joseph Featherstone, “To Make the Wounded Whole” (Harvard Educational Review, 1989)
‘To dwell within the story’ is one way that communities stay together and encounter the deeper reaches of truth.’
‘Stories are tribal. They are told in particular ways amongst those who feel that their lives are given shape by their telling. …..
Stories are the womb of personhood. Stories make and break us. Stories sustain us in times of trouble and encourage us towards ends we would not otherwise envision.’ SEE http://www.oikos.org/mairstory.htm
” ‘Fairy tales’, Bettelheim writes, ‘unlike any other form of literature, direct the child to discover his identity and calling, and they also suggest what experiences are needed to develop his character further.’
“Above all, fairy tales call forth from children an imaginative activity of their own. The picture-forming, image-making activity of the mind, essential to the development of a thinking capable of insight, is engaged and brought into play from the very first hearing and acting out of the fairy tales. The images evoked need not be only visual, they may be auditory, kinetic, and spatial as well, but they provide the connections between inner and outer meaning. Here can be sought, in the modest fairy tale, the beginnings and basis of a living-thinking.” SEE Sloan, p.229, Insight-Imagination
Introductory reading/s to get started:
http://www.readingonline.org/articles/handbook/alvermann/
http://www.ericdigests.org/2003-4/adult-teaching.html
A sense of the field can be obtained from Roger Stack’s ‘Map’ of Holistic Education see also his blog
