VALUING CHILDREN'S STORYTELLING FROM AN ANISHINAABE ORALITY PERSPECTIVE

• Main Author: Peltier, Sharla
• Other Authors: Long, John, Faculty of Education
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: Storytelling in education; Storytelling ability in children; Ojibwa children > Literacy; Verbal ability in children; anishina*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/92898

This thesis / dissertation was completed and submitted at Nipissing University, and is made freely accessible through the University of Toronto’s TSpace repository Aboriginal children do not have the same degree of academic success as non-Native students. My cultural membership as an Anishinaabe person and my professional experience providing speech and language pathology services in First Nation communities, fuel my commitment to facilitating positive change. Educational outcomes can be improved with understanding First Nation children's distinct speech and language characteristics, communicative contexts and usage patterns, and the development of more effective approaches for these children. This research supports a paradigm shift. It has examined Anishinaabek children's narrative structure and content through an emically derived investigation, that is, an exploration from within the students' own culture, language, and community. Such an approach is effective in curbing the application of inappropriate etically derived procedures, those borrowed from the well-established clinical body of knowledge and recommended assessment procedures based on Western perspectives. This investigative process reveals features of Anishinaabek children's stories and narrative components that are highly valued by Elders, who are teachers of language in the First Nation community. The Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software program provides analysis of the story transcripts. The Elder components are assigned codes used for hand-coding and for comparison, the Narrative Structure Score (NSS) grammar is applied using SALT. A protocol for "revaluating" Anishinaabek children's stories has emerged for educators and speech language practitioners. Oral language supports literacy development and this research supports teachers to increase opportunities for oral storytelling in the classroom, thus enhancing educational and social experiences of Aboriginal children and all learners in the classroom. M.Ed.