Storytelling for Sustainability

mbirdmiller, MST Submission for OmetecaAssociate Professor of Education New England College

July 1, 2009

Storytelling for Sustainability

Like other exploratory processes (the scientific method) can be resolved into a dialogue between fact and fancy, the actual and the possible; between what could be true and what is in fact the case. The purpose of scientific enquiry is not to compile an inventory of factual information, nor to build up a totalitarian picture of Natural Laws in which every eventthat is not compulsory is forbidden. We should think of it rather as a logically particular structure of justifiable beliefs about a Possible World—a story which we invent and criticize and modify as we go along—so that it ends by being, as nearly as we can make it, a story about real life. ~Sir Peter Medawar, winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (qtd. in National Research Council, How Students Learn 406).

As a literacy and science education professor, a teacher of teachers, environmental educator, and storyteller, I am interested in how storytelling might meaningfully assist studentsof all ages in constructing scientific understandings across multicultural, temporal and spatial scales. Promoting children’s imaginative development by incorporating geological myths throughstorytelling (in the oral tradition) as an appropriate pedagogical strategy seems to have great potential for sustainable educational practice, and for creating emotional connections with the environment. I strongly believe that such emotional connections engender care, concern and sustainable environmental practice.

John Foster, in “Making Sense of Stewardship: Metaphorical Thinking and the Environment,” proposes that for “human sense (34)” in making good choices regarding the environment, we need to create “a society through whose institutions and practices theenactive understanding of metaphor is widely fostered and deployed (35)”. Foster suggests that such a society would

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July 1, 2009support “schooling that encourages children to recognize and develop their conceptual and linguistic creativity in all its forms (that is, takes the humanities, especially art and literature, with real seriousness) (35)”. This society would “build in reflexivity (It would have)… institutions that could both hear the past and make imaginative leaps into the future (35)”.

In the visits my students make to sixth grade classrooms to teachstorytelling, or in my own visits to local classrooms studying rocky shores, the integration of artistic, linguistic, imaginative, multicultural, and conceptual creativity is enacted through the telling. Facial expression and dramatic gestures contribute to the interaction between teller and audience. Tellers and students are making connections between the past and the future through the sharing of tales, while establishing interactive relationships with one another.

Story has been a successful communication practice for thousands of years; before written records it was the primary mode for transmitting information. Otherwise known as “narrative,” story is a cognitive structure that occurs prelinguistically ; meaning-making happens before one learns to speak while intent and actionare sequentially and consequentially organized in a way that is based upon metacognitive thinking (Bruner). Metacognitive thinking or “metacognition,” assists us in referencing images we create in our minds as well as retaining, and recalling concepts (Sadoski) by monitoring our thinking, discoveries, and understandings. It is a self-reflective process, and is necessary to both reading comprehension and scientific (and daily) problem-solving (NRC 140 – 142).

Enactive understanding, coined by Foster (35) involves awareness of our thinking about the connections we make as we try to comprehend situations and information. We become strategically aware of such mental processes through metacognition.

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July 1, 2009Metacognition assists us in making connections through story or narrative:

“Narrative forms bring to consciousness past or imagined experience and require gestalt level processes of linking similarities and dissimilarities across space and time (Heath 88).” “Stories…(encourage) and (contribute) to a respect for thethoughts, feelings, and interests of others (Martin 351).” Storytelling is an effective way for communicating science concepts [Cajete; Carroll; Egan (Teaching Storytelling); Koki; Martin; Poe; Sobel (Childhood)]. It has great potential for bridging the gap that has developed between science and the humanities, and between marginalized and dominant cultures.

The students I teach will be or are working primarily with children in kindergarten through the eighth grade. We discuss theory and practice, but most importantly, we share stories and practice telling stories to each other and to children. My purpose is manifold: I want to model oracy, also known as orality(storytelling) as an effective educational strategy, and to buildconfidence in my students, as teachers and speakers. I also wantto integrate the concepts I introduce regarding literacy instruction through active and engaged learning in the community.Finally, I hope to sustain oral tradition as a necessary and valued skill, as well as an archive and generator of shared narrative.

As a doctoral student in environmental studies, I am currently researching some potential natural connections between literacy and earth science education across cultures. By examining the educational possibilities in respectfully utilizing geological myths for building new understandings regarding sustainability through storytelling, I have made some new discoveries. Geological myths are defined in Myth and Geology, the first collection of peer-reviewed scientific articles on the nascent discipline of “geomythology” (Vitaliano) which informs geologicaland geomorphological study through mythological narrative of the

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July 1, 2009oral tradition . These papers emerged from a session at the 32nd International Geological Congress in August of 2004. The participating researchers have corroborated one another’s work; by exploring encoded messages of the past, they have found informative clues on how to select sustainable choices in the future.

In this essay I briefly define geological myths, and explore related pedagogical theories and approaches discussed in a variety of educational resources. Some of the teaching strategies I discuss apply specifically to the development of children’s imaginations, others to concept development, storytelling, or to a combination of more than one method. I provide a brief overview of a selection of resources; it is not by any means intended to be an all-encompassing examination of methods available to educators. It merely scratches the surface,introducing the relevance of geological myths in an interdisciplinary approach to earth science and humanities education, while describing how such an approach relates to educating folks of all ages about sustainability.

Geomythology, Sustainability, and Global Environmental Science

Geomythology offers a rare glimpse into the deep past through data encoded in story. Emerging islands and mountains, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis are all present in multicultural myths. In Myth and Geology, scientists compare the data in these myths with the physical data recorded in the earth to inform their understanding of global environmental change. Masse et al. state: “Mythology is the function of the oral transmission of linguistically encoded data…in a non-literature culture…information about important past events…must be encoded into language and transmitted entirely by talking and the next generation will then have to remember these tales (18).

In Global Change and the Earth System, Oldfield and Messerli (210), and Tyson (212) describe oral history as a proxy source supplementing physical records (Steffan W. et al.). For example,

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July 1, 2009Patrick Nunn, a geographer with the University of the South Pacific, has done extensive research on sea level rise, island subsidence, and uplift, as well as geohazards to inform global reconstruction (developing past scenarios for earth events and patterns) in the South Pacific.

In another study, Ruth Ludwin of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington recently led a team of researchers in examining myths related to an earthquake in 1700 on the northwest coast of the United States. This work, supported by U. S. Geological Survey grants, provided chronological information about an eruption that was scientifically substantiated by radiocarbon and tree-ring dating and written Japanese records.

This data is relevant to current global environmental change and sustainability research because it assists earth systems scientists in unraveling earth patterns of varying predictabilityand complexity. In order to more completely understand current global environmental change and to make further progress toward sustainability, such cross-disciplinary awareness and research has become necessary and more widely accepted. Establishing a bridge of communication between Western scientific thought and the traditional knowledge of those who have lived in landscapes and “storied the land” increases knowledge overall. Incorporating physical and ecological observations of transformation in landscapes through recent and deep time will provide data for informing global reconstruction and sustainable practices.

In 2002, work done by the Initiative on Science and Technology for Sustainability produced papers that emphasize the necessity to focus on the expansion of scientific knowledge to include the “endogenously generated knowledge, innovations and practices (Jäger 296). Prior to this initiative, the Amsterdam Declarationon Global Change, emerging from the Global Change Open Science Conference in 2001 urged an interdisciplinary approach to create

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July 1, 2009“an ethical framework for global stewardship and strategies for Earth System management…a new system of global environmental science is required…(and will) integrate across disciplines, environment and development issues and the natural and social sciences; collaborate across national boundaries on the basis of shared and secure infrastructure; intensify efforts to enable thefull involvement of developing country scientists; and employ thecomplementary strengths of nations and regions to build an efficient international system of global environmental science (Steffan et al. 298).”

Integrating the differing world views of indigenous populations with those of Western science will assist in formulating plans toadapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. The joint World Conference on Science sponsored by the International Council for Science and UNESCO in 2002 analyzed the place of traditional knowledge in science and sustainable development. Today’s Western scientific recognition that traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) interweaves empirical, spiritual, social, and other elements demonstrates a new appreciation of theworldview of indigenous people. However, by isolating such elements that are traditionally integrated within a holistic worldview, one runs the risk of misrepresenting both the elementsand the whole (UNESCO).

UNESCO’s 2007 conference proceedings (22) produced the following recommendations and frameworks for action:

Modern science does not constitute the only form of knowledge, and closer links need to be established between this and other forms, systems and approaches to knowledge, for their mutual enrichment and benefit.A constructive inter-cultural debate is in order, to help find ways of better linking modern science to thebroader knowledge heritage of humankind.

Traditional societies…not only harbour information as yet unknown to modern science, but they are also

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July 1, 2009expressions of other ways of living in the world, other relationships between society and nature, and other approaches to the acquisition and construction of knowledge…A closer linkage between science and other knowledge systems is expected to bring importantadvantages to both sides.

Changing Times

Does an interdisciplinary approach to global environmental changerequire an interdisciplinary education? I think so. This education must be founded on research that has proven its effectiveness.

One concept in scientific thinking that is difficult to address is the understanding of change through time. Developing a growing awareness of patterns of change over time provides “a deeper understanding of science,” but by the time students enter college, many have developed misconceptions about transformational patterns over great spans of time (Nuhfer and Mosbrucker). Geosciences education (i.e., in elementary school, the study of weather, rocks and minerals, etc.) has potential formaking abstract concepts related to great spans of time more tangible through imaginative literacy and science activities thatconnect the local to the global.

By examining a variety of interdisciplinary environmental change lessons and philosophies on educational curricula, I have realized that activities abound, yet narrative storytelling of the oral tradition [also known as orality (Ong) or oracy], implemented effectively over many thousands of years, is rarely considered as a serious pedagogical despite its effectiveness. At the very least, it is not popularly mentioned in most of the Western educational resources I examined.

Some exceptions are those researched and written by Kieran Egan, professor of education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, David Sobel, professor of environmental

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July 1, 2009education at Antioch University New England in Keene, N.H., Kendall Haven, research scientist turned storyteller, and BarbaraLipke, a veteran educator of twenty-four years, who is now a storytelling educational consultant. Sean Carroll, Professor of Molecular Biology, Genetics, and Medical Genetics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is also a proponent of the use of storytelling at the undergraduate and graduate levels and usesthe approach to teach concepts of evolution:

What I am very convinced of, from all sorts of experiences of trying to communicate science, is that storytelling is a really valuable ingredient of that. And I don't mean storytelling in sort of a simplistic way, but just engaging the audience, whether they are students or teachers or laypersons, with the drama of scientific exploration, scientific discovery, even scientific debate.

In Myth and Geology, Masse et al. agree with other geoscientists and transdisciplinary researchers that “myth can serve as both a model and a marvelous narrative tool for educating the lay publicabout geology and our place in the natural world (25).”

In the same volume, Lanza and Negrete (65) state:

Instead of delegating myth to the impoverished status of superstition, science education can introduce theseimportant stories into the classroom in order to help children realize that there are many facets to the representation of reality, each with an insight to contribute to human understanding.

Critical Intersections

Critical thinking about the perspectives of the people from whom stories emerge is another vital component of a thorough educationin sustainability, across disciplines. Developing a multicultural or multilogical (Kincheloe & Steinberg 138) viewpoint toward the meaning we make of the world fosters dialogue, mutual respect among cultures and more complete understandings of how the world works. Sharing multicultural

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July 1, 2009tales containing observational data regarding geological changes over time provides an optimum entryway into conversations with youngsters about the nature of science and knowledge. Geosciences exist in all cultures,but is perceived differently bydifferent cultural groups.

Promoting sustainable attitudes requires that the knowledges of western modern science and indigenous knowledges intersect on local and global scales. We have come to a point in time when the dominant western world view is beginning to be perceived as incomplete and inadequate to the challenges we face regarding sustainable practice and understanding global environmental change. A transformative science is evolving, which in turn may foster transformative education. Describing the concepts of transformative science and transformative education, Kincheloe and Steinberg state:

Keeping in mind the omnipresent danger of the Western exploitation of indigenous knowledge, it may be possible to examine the relationship between Western science and indigenous ways of knowing in a manner that highlights their differences and complementarities.

…the more we understand about the world, the more complex it appears to be. In this recognition of complexity, we begin to see multiple causations and the possibility of differing vantage points from whichto view a phenomenon (138).

“Like reality itself, schools and classrooms are complex matrices of interactions, codes, and signifiers in which both students and teachers are interlaced. Just as a complex and critical pedagogy asserts that there is no single, privileged way to seethe world, there is no one way of representing the world artistically, no one way of teaching science, noone way of writing history(139).

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July 1, 2009Geological myths (which, in the western world have been traditionally encapsulated within the humanities as folklore) provide natural channels through which such transformative science and education may emerge. Sharing such tales is one way of nurturing sustainable perceptions and transformative practicesamong educators and their students, who will hopefully become tomorrow’s globally and multiculturally aware citizens.

Multicultural Education: An Indigenous Perspective

Worldwide, great strides have been made toward developing curricula that is culturally responsive by diverse indigenous populations and their supporters. All refer to subsistence, sustainability, and storytelling in one form or another and the utilization of place-based traditional tales in a variety of lessons (Alaska Native Knowledge Network). Yet, most references do not explicitly include storytelling in the oral tradition as askill students should learn. Within the context of indigenous world views, all learning is integrated and interrelated and is automatically inclusive of traditional skills and knowledge, thus, storytelling is tacitly incorporated.

There are several links to curricula involving traditional tales and storytelling through the Alaskan Native Knowledge Network (http://www.saskschools.ca/~aboriginal_res/). Not only does thissite provide culturally responsive curricular resources particularly dedicated to the education of the diverse peoples ofAlaska, it also provides links to “indigenous education worldwide.” These links provide options to examine indigenous educational resources in Africa, America, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Russia, and Scandinavia. Those of us espousing transformative education promoting intercultural dialogue and a broader interpretation of how knowledge is created must examine these resources. Through an approach embracing complex perspectives, we may learn from them and develop multicultural and engaging place-based curriculum that also fosters sustainablepractice. Traditional storytelling has the potential to create a

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http://www.saskschools.ca/~aboriginal_res/


July 1, 2009direct link to the concepts of sustainability and change over time among diverse locations across the globe.

By incorporating geological mythology into the curriculum, we areutilizing the “environment as an integrating context (EIC)” for learning (S.E.E.R.). There is evidence that the integration of the environment as a contextual foundation in K – 12 education leads to improved academic achievement (Duffin et al.; Powers & Duffin; Lieberman and Hoody). Assimilating storytelling, geological myths, and the environment into educational practice promotes meaningful and effective learning, connecting students and teachers to multicultural perspectives as they examine globalenvironmental change and sustainability.

Ancient practices are new again

In his article, Seven Orientations for the Development of Indigenous Science Education Gregory Cajete speaks about storytelling as a traditionalindigenous art:

Storytelling was both an enjoyable and very effective means of teaching and learning in Native American traditional life. Through the mechanismof storytelling, every individual was introduced to various levels of meanings, practices, concepts, ethics, and codes of conduct that were meant to partially answer the ‘why’ of the ‘way of the people.’

The sophisticated nature of the storyteller’s art, which employs creative use of language, evocation of imagery, and theatrical ability, is becomingappreciated and accepted in modern education. The ability to tell and listen to stories develops a whole range of verbal and nonverbal skills, as well as what we today call right and left brain functions, in both the storyteller and listener. This is an especially significant characteristic for teaching and learning by children. Telling or listening to stories is an almost universal activity of younger children, but it is a capacity that is rarely capitalized on, guided, or developed toward positive learning. Page?

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July 1, 2009The traditional art of storytelling is being explored anew by educational researchers. Professor Kieran Egan suggests that educators utilize storytelling as a developmentally appropriate pedagogical tool to assist learners in constructing meaningful depth of understanding (Storytelling 211).

Egan defines orality as “the set of cognitive tools available to oral language users before literacy becomes fluent”Page (Imaginative). Professor Egan is a proponent of the development of children’s imaginations and utilizing storytelling and oralityto scaffold children’s ability to become literate and/or comprehend unfamiliar content. He has developed templates to help educators begin to incorporate oral and written narrative toassist students in constructing understandings. He encourages teachers to find some emotional connection to the content they must teach: “…unless teachers can identify in themselves some emotional response to the content, there is no way they can make it emotionally engaging to students ( Imaginative 214).”

In The Art of Changing the Brain, biochemist James E. Zull, Professor of Biology and Director of the University Center for Innovative Teaching and Education at Case Western Reserve University speaks about the biological necessity of engaging the emotions in order to encourage learning. By examining neuroscientific research, he encountered information about how physical connections among neurons are established: “When our network connections are awashwith emotional chemicals, synapse strength is modified and the responsiveness of neuron networks can be dramatically changed (qtd. In Zull 70).” Zull emphasizes engaging educational strategies that stimulate the emotions.

Professor of Science Education, Mike Littledyke on the faculty of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, also emphasizes the value of the affective domain in learning, and accentuates the significant outcomes that are possible in constructing understandings related to environmental

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July 1, 2009sustainability through the explicit integration of the cognitive and affective realms:

Science education has an important part in developing understanding of concepts that underpin environmental issues, leading potentially to pro-environmental behavior. However, science is commonly perceived negatively, leading to inappropriate and negative models of science that do not connect to people’s experiences…cognitive and affective domains need to beexplicitly integrated in a science education that informs environmental education, as a sense of relationship is necessary for environmental care and responsibility leading to informed action. Page?

Storytelling is emotionally engaging and establishes connections and relationships through, as Cajete page? described, the “creative use of language, evocation of imagery, and theatrical ability.” Littledyke suggests the incorporation of drama in teaching, and emphasizes its compatibility with learning theory; it “involves the whole person” and students may be able to identify how their actions lead to environmental consequences through such representations (10). Storytelling requires dramatic depictions;its implementation as a pedagogical strategy is harmonious with theatrical methods.

Dr. Egan also synthesized an assimilated affective/cognitve modelof human learning development in An Imaginative Approach to Teaching. He proposes that there are three “cognitive tool” sets that should be considered: oral language for the youngest, orality and literacy for middle childhood, to be joined by theoretic thinkingfor adolescents and young adults (Egan). Page #?

Ancient indigenous cultures knew that storytelling was effective for the transmission of information, and educators of the westerntradition are also beginning to realize how successful storytelling might be as a pedagogical tool in a modern context. Lanza and Negrete state that “…many authors agree on the fact

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July 1, 2009that reestablishing myths could help man again to have a healthy relation with nature. Gough (1993) writes that prior to the modern age humans sustained their sense of interdependence and relatedness with the Earth through metaphors of kinship (65).”

The National Research Council (2005recommends that students should have inquiry opportunities that involve the process of observing, imagining, and reasoning. In designing activities andlessons, it is emphasized that a primary outcome should be: “engaging children’s emotions and capturing their imaginations soknowledge constructed is embedded not only in their minds, but intheir hopes, fears, and passions” ( ). This goal is emblematic of the holistic and sustainable learning philosophies of native peoples; the telling of geological myths in earth science education integrates emotion, reason, imagination, and multicultural perspectives. The tales are ancient yet continue to be accessible in new ways, transmitting past observations for the purpose of unraveling mysteries of geological change and encouraging young students’ interests in the earth sciences, while increasing the awareness of indigenous knowledge and philosophies.

Place-Based Education: Present, Past, and Imagined?

Professor David Sobel, of Antioch University New England, is a proponent of place-based education. In his article Climate Change Meets Ecophobia he suggests a developmentally appropriate “Ladder of Environmental Responsibility,” and describes models in which schools engage their students in collaborative service projects. Sobel makes the case for both developmentally appropriate curricular models and environmental curricula. He contends thatthe goals of fostering behaviors that lead to environmental sustainability and civic participation are best achieved through a “culturally embedded” model that incrementally “ups the ante ofresponsibility as children mature” (page #). This model parallels the processes that have been continuously and

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July 1, 2009consistently utilized by indigenous cultures. Such processes are described by Professor Gregory Cajete in Native Science:

Beginning with the most basic skills, children learned to live respectfully in their environment, in ways that would guarantee its sustainability. By first watching and then doing, native children learned the nature of the sources of their food, community, and life relationship. They learned thateverything in life was a matter of kinship with all of nature (101) .

Sobel shares research on how environmental education influences adult behavior; there is evidence that experiences that connect children to nature, such as camping and hiking outdoors, engenderfuture environmental concern.

In contrast, Climate Change Meets Ecophobia also describes how some emotionally charged experiences may hinder such concern. Professor Sobel quotes a study by the Swiss National Science Foundation: “ ‘Fear and anxiety of environmental problems has the potential to turn environmental education into a counterproductive activity…when low fear is involved environmental knowledge and information do make a difference in terms of environmental behavior’” (page #).

Regarding child development Sobel shares his conviction in his books (page #s?) that children are prepared to learn about placesand ideas through an inward to outward developmental progression.He contends that it is most appropriate for them to explore theirhome, neighborhood, and country side (in that order), before beginning to explore a place half way across the world. Just as Egan proposes that increasing levels of complex thinking emerge in a sequential, yet reiterative, progression from orality to theoretical thought, Sobel advocates for curricula that increasesin complexity and distance as children’s development and experience naturally unfold.

The curricula that Sobel suggests incorporate imaginative, activelearning through intentional, playful movement, and talk. Children design places, maps, and hunts, and then they tell their

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July 1, 2009stories about these experiences, or the imaginative tales that occur as outcomes. Story has a place here, as it has in Egan’s models for learning.

Children are fascinated with the unfamiliar; I have seen many children respond to the allure of the photographs in National Geographic, although its text is generally above their reading level. It seems to me that embracing such captivation with exotic places or ideas beyond their prior experience in educational planning makes sense because it encourages emotional engagement in topics and related concepts.

Page #s This is one main point upon which Egan and Sobel seem to disagree. Egan (2003) philosophically believes, for sound reasons, that children are able to comprehend that which is beyond their current experience through their imaginations. Sobel (2002) implicitly agrees with this premise as indicated by his proposition that children’s inclinations for imaginative playshould be incorporated into educational curricula. However, Sobelemphasizes, also for sound reasons,that he does not feel it is appropriate to teach content that is beyond the concrete experience of the child.

Professor Egan (2003) advocates the use of story as a means of bridging the concrete with the abstract:

I wish to suggest that the common principle of “starting where the student is” may be both inadequate and restrictive in ways not often discussed. In its place, I suggest we might sensibly adopt a second principle of “asking what the student can imagine.” We can pose this question at any point in the learning process as a starting point for further inquiry (page #).

Clearly, storytellers don’t pay much attention to the principle of starting with what children know, in the way that the designers and defenders of the elementary social studies curriculum do. Storytellers might begin boldly with galaxies far, far away and long, long ago, if it suits them, confident that their audience will make sense of the content. They can

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July 1, 2009introduce strange characters and weird situations, like Harry Potter’s or Frodo’s, as long as they build their narratives on the kind of abstract concepts students are familiar with: good/bad, brave / cowardly, anxiety/security, and so on.

Let me conclude by pointing out the obvious—that I am not arguing for ignoring students’ prior knowledge and everyday experience. Rather, I amarguing that these have been taken as implying greater restrictions on children’s learning and curriculum possibilities than is warranted when we consider their imaginative lives. We can start with what they can imagine.

I agree with both Sobel and Egan; in my experience as an educatorand storyteller, I have discovered that children need many opportunities to incorporate play and to control a world of theirown creation, and they do think, imagine, and act in story.

Children around the globe need to begin to acquire awareness of sustainability on both local and global levels now to prepare them for behaving as both local and global citizens in the future. Place-based education is beneficial for engendering emotional connections with one’s immediate surroundings and to hopefully encourage future concern and environmentally-friendly and sustainable behaviors (Littledyke). Conversations with my young students and my own children have convinced me that the novel and the far-away are fascinating and may become meaningful and memorable when presented by emotionally engaging means. Storytelling may be used to bridge the concrete and the abstract,the past, present and future, as well as the local and the global. It provides a good basic foundation for further constructions of meaning; ecological connections exist between the local and the global, or between that which is place-based and that which is fascinatingly far-away.

Final Thoughts

In this essay, I have introduced how scientists are developing new attitudes toward local environmental knowledge transmitted

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July 1, 2009through the oral traditions of native peoples for the purpose of reconstructing geomorphological changes prior to the written record. Recent use of data encoded in traditional geological myths has sustained people in precarious circumstances. During the tsunami experience that occurred in the Indian Ocean in December of 2004, Moken people of the Andaman Islands used knowledge transmitted through a myth. By disseminating information about similar past events and by following the myth’scues, alerting one another and tourists, all survived the disaster. “This wave…was said to be brought on by the angry spirits of the ancestors, and could only be avoided by immediately running to high ground if the ocean is observed to recede rapidly (Masse et al. 18).” Geological myths are “…crucial, for the preservation of the group; as crucial as knowinghow to make fire or obtain food (Masse et al. 18) and may sustainby saving lives.

Not only are scientists perceiving geological myths as useful in risk reduction related to such geohazards such as the tsunami, they also recognize that “myth can serve as both a model and a marvelous narrative tool for educating the lay public about geology and our place in the natural world…study [of myths] should complement and add to our understanding of earth process and earth history. At the very least, our various geomythology researches provide us with a profound respect and appreciation ofthe observational powers of our ancestors, and help to demystify the mythological past (Masse et al. 26).”

Perhaps the respectful incorporation of geological myths through storytelling will assist educators in promoting sustainable global perspectives by metaphorically creating connections to what is familiar locally, and will foster complex multicultural perspectives and dialogue among dominant and marginalized cultures. By uniting science and the humanities in such a way, we begin to transform our knowledge by perceiving how the world works from diverse cultural vantage points. The traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) contained in stories of cultures

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July 1, 2009that depended primarily upon oracy, or orality (Ong), for encoding and transmitting data and experiences is valuable in assisting local and global citizens in imagining and determining innovative and environmentally sustainable solutions for the challenges they face.

Developing literacy skills across disciplines by purposefully learning stories through listening, reading, and speaking also fosters mental image-making in students. Creating mental images is valuable in developing the ability to comprehend. Students receive many images through technology, and have few opportunities for generating visual constructs themselves. Reading with expression, also known as “fluency” is another challenge for some students. Storytelling provides opportunitiesfor developing fluency skills as well through repeated oral readings and telling.

By sharing stories of my personal thought processes and emotionalconnections to the natural world from childhood through adulthoodwith my college students, I model why I care enough to behave with concern for the ecological well-being of this earth, my home. I share stories of interactions with nature, resources forteaching children about the environment, and tales about their implementation, as well as stories of pursuing sustainable habitsin my family and community. I talk about gardening, recycling, ecological interactions, and more, with humor and through conversational narrative. I ask them to share their stories too,and they participate willingly; stories generate stories. “That reminds me of when…” is the phrase that cues us to infer that newstories emerge from tellers’ establishing cognitive relationships. By describing my research about how geological myths give us information about changes in the earth over time, and sharing storytelling as a practice that builds literacy skills, I am providing them with the theoretical and pedagogical foundation for an engaging, interdisciplinary approach to literacy and earth science education.

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July 1, 2009My students learn to tell stories gradually in my classes at New England College; they start by narrating their own experiences extemporaneously, and then learn strategies for remembering and expressively telling existing tales, which they practice themselves. They then implement these methods in teaching children how to tell stories. One method we incorporate is “storyboarding” where students create concrete, sequential visualimages that they employ as devices to assist them in recalling the story. The engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology utilizes this approach to support students’ development in writing coherent research articles for publication (Poe). Authors of children’s picture books (Essley),script writers in the movie industry, and set designers all use this technique. Storyboarding is a method applied across disciplines. I have seen teachers use it effectively to support English speakers of other languages (ESOL, also known as ESL) in acquiring vocabulary and speaking skills as they learn English. Those who teach children or adults could apply a storyboarding approach to learning or developing stories, speeches, or reports for either speaking or writing; through asking probing questions related to the images students produce, educators may encourage elaboration and depth of understanding.

Finally, my students participate in a “Tellabration,” where they have the opportunity to share stories with professional tellers and each other in an authentic venue open to all at New England College. The young students they serve are also invited to this event, as either listeners or tellers; it is their choice. In the fall of 2009, we had young elementary and middle school students enraptured as they listened to the NEC and professional tellers without a break for two consecutive hours. Now that’s engagement!

I would recommend that any educator, who hopes to assist studentsin becoming more mindful of sustainability, foster concern by using personal stories that will engage the emotions of their students through humor and descriptive imagery. Such practice

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July 1, 2009facilitates learning and recall. Also, incorporating traditionalenvironmental tales that are found in the public domain is another method for potentially building emotional connections to the natural world while simultaneously increasing multicultural perspectives. Speaking candidly about distinctive cultural worldviews and how the respectful integration of western modern science and traditional environmental knowledge may engender a more complete picture of the world is vital. This will encouragestudents who will make ecologically sustainable decisions as citizens in an interconnected local and global ecosystem to thinkcritically and make informed choices.

Just as a child becomes more expansive in his/her understanding of the world, developing a perceptual shift from an egocentric outlook to one that embraces a broader community, the time is ripe for distinct cultures(whether these be defined by geography or academic discipline) to become more expansive in their thinking. Storytelling may pave the way for folk to move from provincially guided meaning-making to developing narratives that are globally significant. Synthesizing multicultural knowledge such as geological myths on a variety of levels would assist global citizens in constructing more complete environmental understandings.

Story-telling may provide a bridge between “once upon a time” andtoday, somewhere else and right here, as well as traditional and Western scientific knowledge. As an educational method, it is rooted in the deep past, and continues to prove its effectivenesstoday as a sustainable educational practice. Utilizing this imaginative and engaging strategy to assist students at all levels to connect emotionally to the environment may motivate them to behave in significantly sustainable ways.

Works Cited

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July 1, 2009Bruner, Jerome. Acts of Meaning. Harvard University Press:

Cambridge, Ma. 1990.

Cajete, Gregory. Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence.Clear Light Publishers: Santa Fe, New Mexico. 2000.

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Storytelling for Sustainability

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Transcript of Storytelling for Sustainability