Elements of fairy tales and co-construction of meaning
(Publisert i International Research in Early Childhood Education, vol 12 nr. 1, 2024)
This article examines the complexity of young children’s engagement with fairy tales through the art of storytelling. The focus is specifically on how children co-construct the narrative in and after a storytelling event through means provided by the fairy tale and the storyteller’s performance. The study is based on fieldwork with first-grade students aged 6–7 years old in a Norwegian school. The study shows how children seemed to continue constructing meaning after the storytelling event. In this construction process, they revealed individual experiences of the shared event, as well as elements of the story. Some children’s memories of the story seem closely related to their engagement in the storytelling event—whether verbal or nonverbal. Our findings support the relationship between narrative and thinking and the importance of engaging with stories and storytelling to learn this way of thinking, and thus, the importance of storytelling in the school curriculum.