Seeking Through Lines: Storytelling With Students to Support Epistemic Agency in English Language Arts Classrooms

• In Event: Critical Literacies: Agency, Place, Story

Abstract

As we continue to seek praxis that embodies justice-oriented pedagogy, storytelling can act as a vehicle to allow students to voice their own funds of knowledge. This paper examines the ways that (re)storying (Stornaiuolo & Thomas, 2018) can position students as epistemic agents and knowledge creators in classrooms. Throughout the course of this year-long participatory design study, students examined the narratives in their rural school and community, while critiquing manifestations of systemic oppression and (re)storying dominant narratives. Framed by sociocultural theories, this collaborative ethnographic participatory design study explored questions around student agency and identity in the context of justice-oriented teaching. Findings demonstrate the potential of storytelling to re-center students as experts in representing their own lives and experiences within classrooms.

Author

• Kristina M Stamatis, University of Nebraska - Omaha