Edited by Bronwyn Davies, University of MelbourneGabrielle Cliff Hodges, University of CambridgeNarratives are integral to multiple literacies – for example, print literacy, media literacy, emotional literacy, social literacy. They are integral to the development of identities, cultures, social movements, and knowledges of all kinds. Today we are inundated with multiple and contradictory narratives – in books, films, games or picturebooks, stories told to us by friends or the stories we narrate to ourselves and others about our lives, about who we are and how we make sense of and relate to the world. We use a variety of media to create narratives and we consume them across media, often without realising, through advertisements, news stories and in our everyday encounters with others. Some argue that storytelling is a basic human impulse. Others argue that narratives are accounts of something real that precedes the narrative. Or narratives may be understood as constitutive not just of individual identity, but the possibilities through which life can be imagined and made real. This special edition of Literacy, focussing on narrative, aims to juxtapose different perspectives on narrative, opening up new insights into the multiple ways in which narratives are imbricated in learning, in becoming literate, and in the complex practices of social being. It will also explore the ways in which researchers use narratives to conceive, produce and analyse research questions and data. Contributors are invited to submit articles that focus on narrative and literacy from different theoretical, pedagogical, practical, policy and/or research perspectives. Some of the questions we would like to see addressed include:
- How do narratives reflect and mobilise dominant ideologies?
- How do new narratives contribute to social change?
- How do narratives change historically and geographically, that is, how are they imbricated in the dimensions of space and time?
- What are the relations among the gendered nature of stories and preschool, primary- or secondary-school children’s readings of them?
- How can narrative research methodologies open up insights into the connections between narrative and literacies of various kinds?
- How are narratives implicated in thought?
- What are the links between narrative and pleasure within and beyond school?
- How does narrative composition and production work within and beyond the classroom e.g. writing, drama, film-making?
- What new insights can we gain from interdisciplinary and/or intercultural work on narrative?
- How is narrative relevant to learning in out-of-school contexts e.g. in studies of spoken language narratives in the workplace or home or museum and gallery education?
Please refer to the ‘Notes for contributors’ on the back cover of Literacy or athttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1741-4369 Please mark submissions ‘Narrative Special Issue’.Deadline: 30th June 2012
