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Young people, learning & storytelling

Emma Parfitt — Tue, 11 Dec 2018 17:00:26 +0000

Young people, learning & storytelling. Bascially, many years of storytelling research in schools later… Check it out here.

Book summary

This book explores the lives of young people through the lens of storytelling. Using extensive qualitative and empirical data from young people’s conversations following storytelling performances in secondary schools in the UK, the author considers the benefits of stories and storytelling for learning and the subsequent emotional, behavioural and social connections to story and other genres of narrative.

Storytelling has both global and transnational relevance in education, as it allows individuals to compare their experiences to others. Young people learn through discussion that their opinions matter, that they are both similar to and different from their peers. This in turn can facilitate the development of critical thinking skills as well as encouraging social learning, co-operation and cohesion. Drawing upon folklore and literary studies as well as sociology, philosophy, youth studies and theatre, this volume explores how storytelling can shape the lives of young people through storytelling projects. This reflective and creative volume will appeal to students and scholars of storytelling, youth studies and folklore.

Reviews

Some reviews below:

This book is an exceptional study of how storytelling cannot only help us understand children’s experiences under difficult conditions, but also how children use storytelling to cope with problems facing them in their daily lives. Dr Parfitt has a firm grasp of the art of oral storytelling and interdisciplinary methods, and develops keen insights into the emotional behaviour of children as they tell and listen to stories. Her book is a significant contribution to the fields of childhood studies and folklore and will interest anyone concerned with improving relations with children in schools and at home.

(Jack Zipes, Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota, USA)

“Beautifully written, with imaginative metaphors from the stories themselves, she offers really accessible theory and vivid compelling accounts infused with the real voices and personalities of the young people themselves. This is not a manual, but something more precious, a guide to reflective practice to inspire teachers and storytellers practically in the classroom.”

(Nicola Grove, Founder of OpenStoryTellers, UK)

Reflections in 2023

It seems surreal now, that I finally got a book accepted and went through the whole publication process with Macmillan. I’m proud of myself. It feels like another person wrote this now. Four years ago the final version left my desk the same year as my wedding! It had taken me four years of research and writing and working parttime to obtain my PhD as a mature student. The book feels well earned for that reason. I faced emotionally draining times living in student accomodation to provide well-being support to students.

During that process I learnt a lot about myself. And the few individuals, you know who you are, I really helped, that appreciated an ear to talk to and talking through their options to get the outcome they wanted for their educational journey made it worthwhile. Thought, I’m sure the fab residental team would have had them anyway. For if a student reached out we were there. The being woken up to deal with emergencies and noise disturbances I would rather forget.

The process of hard, exhausting work that got me on that stage collecting my PhD is an experience I constantly remind myself of whenever I doubt myself. It has eased the doubts of my educational ability, past scarring from previous university experiences that ‘I was not good enough’, that I see now is a narrative I had heard from others and constantly reinforced in my own head. I was good enough then, and I am good enough now, always striving to be better. Not just in the way I write, but as a human being.

And I would not be the ‘me’ I am today without the people that challenged and support me along the way. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I don’t say it often enough. I’m getting emotional thinking about all the friends I miss, some no longer with us, some across the world seperated by the cost of a flight ticket. Thankfully we have the technology to stay connected. And to those who I have lost touch with … I think of you sometimes with gratefulness for the periods of life we shared along the way.

My writing

If you are looking for another book to read, this time a fictional tale about sisterhood … I have also published A Friendship of Thistles.

Or you can contact me for proofreading.

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group authored article published

Emma Parfitt — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 11:12:00 +0000

A Group Interview about Publishing with Professor Jack Zipes

Emma Louise Parfitt, Emine Erdoğan, Heidi Fritz, Peter M. Ward

Click here to for open access paper

Abstract

The conversation piece is the product of a group interview with Professor Jack Zipes and provides useful insights about publishing for early career researchers across disciplines. Based on his wider experiences as academic and writer, Professor Zipes answered questions from PhD researchers about: writing books, monographs and edited collections; turning a PhD thesis into a monograph; choosing and approaching publishers; and the advantages of editing books and translations. It presents some general advice for writing and publishing aimed at postgraduate students. Professor Zipes is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, United States, a world expert on fairy tales and storytelling highlighting the social and historical dimensions of them. Zipes has forty years of experience publishing academic and mass-market books, editing anthologies, and translating work from French, German and Italian. His best known books are Breaking the Magic Spell (1979), Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion (1983), The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre (2012), and The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (2014).

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We are excited to welcome Professor Jack Zipes to visit Warwick in June

Emma Parfitt — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 15:23:00 +0000

‘How We Have Happily Rationalized Child Abuse through Storytelling.’

Visiting speaker: Jack Zipes

6 p.m. June 1st

Ramphal Building, Room R0.21

(Main Lecture Theatre)

Please send an email to

zipeslecture@gmail.com

to reserve your place.

We anticipate seats for last minute visitors

booking is advised for wine reception

This event has been organised by Emma Parfitt, Sociology Department, and funded by an IAS

Residential Fellowship, the Humanities Research Centre, English & Comparative Literature and Sociology at the University of Warwick.

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The Fantastic Binomial

Emma Parfitt — Fri, 07 Aug 2015 13:53:00 +0000

During June and July I was travelling. My last trip was to the US to work with Dr Ingram at the University of Minnesota, advising her on possible methodology changes in the implementation and assessment of the Neighborhood Bridges Program used to analyse critical literacy in storytelling and drama. Here is a bit of fan fiction to illustrate the fantastic binomial at work in one classroom I visited during the trip.

Fantastic Binomial

Tegan was called up for the fantastic binomial. ‘Yes!’ she said, jumping out of her seat and seizing the white board marker. She usually never got picked for anything.

Maria, the Bridges storyteller, bent towards her. Tegan was instantly aware of being the smallest in the class. ‘Choose a place where you could get lost,’ said Maria, ‘and write it on the board.’

There was already a list of prepositions that the class had generated on the white board. Tegan thought of a word and began to write it carefully in capital letters to the left of the prepositions list. Dalen had the other marker. He was writing down an object that could be found in a classroom. He was hiding his word from the class with both hands. Once the words were written Maria would make up a story on the spot linking Tegan’s word to Dalen’s via the magic of a preposition word like above, behind, between or under.

Tegan thought that it was fun. You never knew what the story was going to be. Last week the words were ‘Clay inside mum.’ Maria had repeated the title carefully, then said, ‘My mum is a trickster. A trickster who is always playing tricks on me. You might think she looks a little odd, because my mum is green from head to toe with large eyes so she sort of looks like a….’

‘Troll!’ the classroom called out, ‘Ogre!’

‘Yes,’ Maria said, ‘we’re both ogres. I’ve lived under dark smelly bridges my whole life. Life under a bridge is kind of boring so mum would play a lot of tricks on me. This one morning, while I was sleeping, she had a great idea for a trick. She got some clay and pulled, and pulled, and moulded, and pulled it, until it was a giant circle full of holes. And then chuckling she painted this big holey ball of clay. Can you guess what colour?’

‘Green!’ a group of boys decided.

‘Yes, green. How did you know? Because my favourite thing to eat for breakfast in the whole world is green cheese. How I love green cheese!’ Maria rubbed her hands together. ‘So she painted the clay green and arranged it nicely on the breakfast table, on a plate, on a checked table cloth. While this was going on I was peacefully sleeping, unaware of what was going on. Breakfast! My mum called. I got out of bed and went into the kitchen and there was the largest green cheese I had ever seen. Boy was I excited!’ Maria did a little dance of joy. ‘Oh man, this was going to be a delicious breakfast. I took a big bite! Urgh! It’s clay! I spat out the green painted clay and it flew across the room into my mum’s mouth. Her mouth was open wide, she was laughing so hard, and gulp!, she swallowed it whole. And that’s how the clay got inside my mum. And it hasn’t been seen since.’

After last week’s story Tegan was excited to see what would happen as she added the final letter onto her word.

FOREST

She was still smiling as she fell through the whiteboard and found herself in a forest.

This wasn’t a dream. Often in stories like this it’s all made up but Tegan had a class room of witnesses. One moment she was writing on the board in Mrs Hennepin’s class, the next moment she had vanished. Obviously she found a way back if I can tell you this story. At the time she didn’t know this. Tegan was all alone in a dark forest, behind her in the air was the word FOREST in large red capitals. The trees were taller than any Tegan had ever seen before. They clustered together hiding the sky, and the sun, so that little vegetation grew on the ground. A dark shape in the dark made her jump, and the back of her sweater rubbed out part of the T in FOREST. Tegan blinked as part of the forest became transparent. Was that part of someone’s foot and a desk? She quickly turned around and wiped all the letters away and found herself in Mrs Hennepin’s classroom once more where Maria was telling the story about how Tegan wrote a word on the board and vanished and then returned to the class room.

Tegan didn’t imagine it though. Did she?

[For more information about The Fantastic Binomial check out the book Speaking Out by Jack Zipes]

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Future Research Trip Funded to US

Emma Parfitt — Thu, 15 Jan 2015 18:41:00 +0000

[view of Minneapolis taken by myself]

Following a proactive approach to Professor Jack Zipes in 2013 I went to Minneapolis in September 2014 to work as an assistant on the Neighbourhood Bridges Program (Bridges), an arts for education charity. During that trip I spoke to Dr Ingram at Minnesota University to ask questions about the way in which the charity assesses its critical literacy targets and talk about some research ideas I had on oral storytelling.

In 2015 Dr Ingram will be analysing data for both Neighbourhood Bridges and Building Bridges—an anti-racism project which uses story to connect people in the community through the reading and discussion of fiction and nonfiction. I was invited me to join her analysis team as a research assistant. I also intend to present my research findings to the faculty.

Good news, I applied to my department and was successful in being awarded the funding to cover my trip to Minneapolis in the coming year.

This month has also been taken up with research software courses such as SPSS, and a seminar on the 15^th on Field Research, Transparency, and Analytic Rigour through Coding which was useful to reframe some of my current thesis ideas and refine future research ideas.

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Minneapolis Research Trip Sept 2014

Emma Parfitt — Fri, 03 Oct 2014 13:56:00 +0000

In September I was invited to Minneapolis by Professor Jack Zipes to participate in the work of Neighborhood Bridges. This involved presenting my research to staff, teachers and teaching artists of Neighborhood Bridges, meeting with academics, and going into a number of different schools to see the project in action.

A brief overview of Bridges

Walker Sculpture Garden (Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburgh)

Bridges is recognised by the US Department for Education as a national model for arts education. Highly trained teaching artists take storytelling and drama into schools and work with the teacher and their classroom from autumn to spring. The breadth of the work is impressive as Bridges works with almost forty teaching artists and teachers in schools across Minneapolis. I assisted four teaching artists in the class room during their first sessions. The teaching artist works with the teacher and a classroom of approximately twenty to thirty young people within primary and secondary schools. Throughout the year the classroom works on encouraging the students’ individual and group storytelling and drama skills, including creativity and the ability to question story from their own experiences. The year cumulates with storytelling performances created by the students at the Children’s Theatre Company which is an opportunity to see performances from other schools and meet other classrooms on the program. Dr Deborah Ingram at the University of Minnesota, and others, assess the program to ensure critical literacy targets are met.

Presenting storytelling research at Warwick

After introducing myself to roughtly forty teachers and teaching artists on September tenth Maria Asp at Bridges kindly arranged a two hour slot on the fifteenth. This was an opportunity to hear the perspectives of various teaching artists, teachers and Bridges staff. My research aims to investigate if oral storytelling, within a school context, can be used to understand and/or assist the transitions of young people of 12-14 years into adult roles. To answer this question a total of thirty focus groups were conducted across three schools over five weeks using an innovative storytelling method called the storytelling space because it creates an area within a school separate from conventional goal-focused education.

After presenting an outline of this work I asked how storytelling research might support the work currently done in education. A number of themes arose during this discussion.

The social aspects of storytelling

Bridges Program Director and Teaching Artist Maria Asp reflected, ‘To me it just seems right on that the social trigger is where the learning happens. That’s because everything that we know about true critical pedagogy is that learning is relational, that when they’re in a space where they’re knowledge is valued, and their experiences, if it’s family or whatever, is seen as valuable sources, as opposed to another author or something, that’s where kids, that’s where they show their greatest compassion and understanding for each other.’

Education

The group discussed how current assessed education stifles potential and creative thinking. Maria Asp said ‘Making space for non-scripted teaching is an argument that I think storytelling could support’ for example in terms of information retention. Storytelling in education over text-based work led has in the group’s opinion led to an astounding recollection of details from Bridges’ storytelling games from the start of the year. Narratives are remembered, they see this in action working with the classrooms. Sandy Agustin, Teaching Artist, points out education is ‘about asking questions it’s not about right or wrong. It’s what do you think?’

Bridges teaching artists described the way in which storytelling breaks barriers so teachers see pupils differently and vice versa. They have seen how the program improves class relationships, and how the teachers learn and enhance their own skills over the year and beyond. Engaging the teachers engages the students.

The role of the storyteller

The group I presented to were surprised, and shocked!, when the storyteller was asked to leave the room during the research focus groups (the storyteller’s role being to deliver the story then leave the group to their discussion). The purpose of this, due to lack of time to train the storytellers in the research method, was to avoid adult-led discussion. This technique avoided leading the storyteller to perform in a particular way to enhance the research goals which I felt would be interference. Although by being present and conducting the research this has an effect. Tessa Flynn, Community Engagement Manager and Teaching Artist, said ‘It’s interesting too, that it’s just the kids. Just taping what they are talking about’.

Professor Jack Zipes said, ‘you’ve got to talk to the storyteller. They’re going to emphasise certain things. All teaching artists in bridges go in with the intention to animate students, to think about particular problems. The way they tell their stories will emphasise certain things.’

This I saw in action whilst assisting Bridges in different schools across Minneapolis. The teaching artists told the same introductory story of Minnie and St Paul; a folk tale about the founding of the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St Paul). However the relationship between the two characters, Minnie and Paul was retold in many different ways. Jay Scoggin for example emphasised Minnie’s gratefulness to Paul for building a bridge to return her cows to her that had wandered onto his land. In Katy McEwen’s version Paul gave Minnie back her cows, which allowed Katy to ask the classroom what else Paul could do to say sorry. A student suggested that Paul could offer Minnie another cow and Katy wove the idea into the story. Aaron Radatz’s version of Paul captured his love of pranks so that Paul purposefully hid the cows in his barn as a joke as he cleverly drew the students into the story. And Tess Flynn had her classroom feeling comfortable enough to be acting out the character of Minnie, copying her actions of Minnie’s cranky personality whilst telling the story.

Storytelling is relational, and in education research the relationships between storyteller and teacher has time to evolve into a richer learning experience. In the Bridges program the storyteller facilitates discussion of the story by placing questions in the students like ‘who has the power in this story?’.

Differences between US and UK research

I was able to obtain school approval to record the audio of student’s conversations. Shannon McManimon who did her PhD on Bridges wasn’t allowed to record and had to take notes by hand. This creates an obstacle to research. Though she noted, as I did, most of the time the students forgot that they were being recorded. And that a researcher by being present is an interfering presence. Shannon’s PhD was based about a story she narrated: ‘who told the story was no longer important because they had taken ownership of that story’.

I was stuck with how to end this blog because there is much more that came out of the discussions. However it is most fitting to end with a question from a Bridges member of staff.

Rachel Austin Bernstein, East Metro/Early Bridges Manager

‘These students were doing this means nothing against all the standardised test scores. Yet this is serious educational research. That’s a different research language than analysing test scores. How can we compare the two different kinds of research?‘

With many thanks to Professor Jack Zipes, to everyone involved with Neighborhood Bridges Project for being so welcoming, and the Sociology Department at Warwick for their support

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Funding Success

Emma Parfitt — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 12:17:00 +0000

When I met with Jack Zipes in November 2013 to talk about my research into storytelling he kindly invited me to Minneapolis, US, to work with Neighbourhood Bridges, a charity for underprivileged youth advancement in literacy and communication skills. Neighbourhood Bridges is recognised by the US Government for as a national model for arts education. The catch of course being that I had to raise the money to go.

I was advised and supported in my application to the departments IMPACT fund by my supervisor, Mick Carpenter, Anton Popov and Martin Prince (MYPLACE), and Nickie Charles. This Monday in a meeting with the head of the Sociology department Professor John Solomos I was awarded funding for my trip this coming September.

Success!

A big thank you for everyone who gave me advice and support.

This month I also met with Professor Simon Williams, due to his interests in the Sociology of Emotions. He gave me a friendly grilling about my research questions and methodology, it really helped me clarify where I was now positioning myself. And how much reading I have to do in the Sociology of Emotions whenever I get the time between my three part-time jobs and transcription. I returned to the office and rewrote my research questions inline what I have been thinking about this year.

And that was followed by a chat with Martin Price (Director of MYPLACE) about how my storytelling research could help research with people of all ages and political engagement in terms of using storytelling, and what sorts of stories to use, to support people in opening up about political engagement.

Coming soon… a bit of publishing news!

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Interview with Jack Zipes

Emma Parfitt — Sun, 15 Dec 2013 13:41:00 +0000

This month I went to Cambridge to talk to Professor Jack Zipes about my PhD in storytelling and socialization. Here is a podcast about my visit. it begins with an introduction of my work followed by a summary from Professor Zipes of his unusual career path including how he believes storytelling can benefit young people: Click for Podcast

After outlining the summer school widening participation project me and Paul Whitehouse ran at Warwick University this year and our hopes to form a permanent programme in schools Professor Zipes invited me to go to Minneapolis and observe the Neighbourhood Bridges Program that he co-founded Peter Brosius, artistic director of the Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis in 1997. The Neighbourhood Bridges literacy program runs from September to May each year. There are about 15 to 20 sessions per every week in different schools in Minneapolis and St. Paul in the USA.

For more information please follow this link: Neighbourhood Bridges Project.

I am currently seeking a grant to allow me to take up this fabulous opportunity.

I have also been invited to present a roundtable at the BSA conference this year but was unable to attend due to a family wedding. However I will be speaking at Leicester University’s conference on Education, Emotions and the Future on the 22nd of January 2014.

Thus far I have been able to continue in my PhD and related projects due to the generosity of the PREP fund at Warwick University, Warwick’s English Department, and the Adam Smith Institute.

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Emma Parfitt — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 11:30:00 +0000

‘life should be until you die’

Stated Felicity (Parfitt 2013a line. 87).

[Photo by Null Value at Flickr.com]

From an initial analysis of my focus groups young people seem to be aware of conformist and nonconformist elements in the stories—such as the compulsion to accept social “norms” and values—along with other potentially influential narratives such as media, film, television, video games, books, the internet, and education. I found it interesting that in the all-girls school Group One related the content of the stories to crime and how to treat other people. In week one whilst talking about the story MacCodram (MacIntyre 2012) the group’s conversation revolved around crime before they even reached my focus group question about conformist and nonconformist elements that they recognised in the story (lines. 82-91),

Mary I know this is getting off the subject a bit but if you murder someone you get ten years

RES If you murder someone you get a life sentence

Felicity A life sentence is about twenty-five years

Paris It’s not good enough

Felicity A life should be until you die

Paris You can get bailed out before then because if you’re good you’re allowed

Felicity If your family have enough money

Paris Yeah but and you’re let out if you’re good

Mary You shouldn’t do it though, just do your time

Two of girls in this group, Mary and Felicity, shared in their final interviews that they want to join the police force (Parfitt 2013c). Mary’s mum is a teacher and her step-dad works in the army perhaps explaining her strong stance on crime. Felicity’s mum works in school administration. What her father does is unknown but she does say that ‘I love CSI,’ and is knowledgeable about things happening the news (Parfitt 2013a line. 132). So TV and media may be influential on her desire to join the police force (though Felicity’s first choice is to be a vet). A little while later the group’s conversation returned to crime as Felicity mentioned up the case of a homeless man that was on the news, Felicity, Heidi and Mary explain what happened to Paris (Parfitt 2013a lines. 158-176),

Paris When? Where?

Mary A homeless man got beat up by three teenagers

Heidi They got dared

Mary A twelve year old, a thirteen year old and a seventeen year old

Paris They got dared?

Heidi They got dared to kill a homeless man

Mary They were dared to kill this man. They beat him up and then

Felicity Dared, saying I dare you to go kill that man

Mary No, they beat him up first, then they walked away, and their friend makes like, I bet you couldn’t finish him off and they were like, yeah, and then they battered him to death. The twelve year old didn’t do anything. He stood and watched. But he still got something like five years, three years for it

Felicity He got six years. Yeah, my teacher told me this, the homeless man, eye socket was missing, that’s how much damage they gave to him

Paris You what?

Mary His eye socket was missing, that’s how badly they

Felicity The seventeen year old who did most of the work, he only got ten years

Mary He should have got like twenty-five, he should have got murder

Felicity He should have got life

Note how Mary and Felicity relate all the facts of the case; it makes sense that they would take an interest when considering police work. Read the news story here: BBC News. Mary in particular as the police force is her first choice narrates what happened in order. Justice is very important to the group in a conservative way, they share a ‘do your time’ attitude that Mary expressed earlier (line. 91).

[Photo by Brim216974 on flickr.com]

The way people treat other people is also very important to this group, as Mary summaries in week two conformative to her means things that are ‘Illegal’ or ‘common decency rules’ (Parfitt 2013b line. 128). An example would be the way the husband treated the wife in Moon Bear. They see this as nonconformative to the way a woman expects to be treated by her husband (lines. 130-141),

Mary I reckon the nonconformative was probably the way the husband treated the wife, it wasn’t very nice. I wouldn’t have put up with that

Felicity I’d be like, get out my house now

Mary Well he wasn’t in it in the first place

Felicity Get out my forest

Paris Get out my life

Heidi What about conformative though?

Mary I guess you could say that the wife was conformative because she

Heidi Cared for him

Mary Cared for, yeah

Heidi She tried everything that she could

Felicity To get him back into the house

In relation to conformity the group also discusses appearances.

‘You’re not the same person than you are with nothing on’

Says Heidi (Parfitt 2013a line. 254). The way they describe makeup in relation to themselves, the way they describe others, a lot of it is visual. Make-up is seen as a surface act, a mask ‘When you’ve got your makeup off you tend to look at yourself in the mirror and you don’t usually see the same person that you do with makeup, when you’ve always got a disguise on’ (Heidi 250-253).

Heidi wears a bit of make-up but doesn’t ‘plaster my face in it’ (257), Felicity wears it ‘sometimes’ (260), while Mary says ‘I only put mascara on but I’m not wearing any today’ (266). The most obvious makeup wearer is Paris who has thick mascaraed lashes and smoky eyes. She regards this make-up as being essential to who she is and feels that her eyes look ‘horrible’ when ‘I’ve got no makeup on’ (267-268).

While some of the group, like Paris, view make-up as part of their self-expression and part of their day-to-day physical identity, at the same time the students also criticise other women’s sense of identity in today’s society in terms of make-up. Mary says, ‘I turned on the telly and Single Date was on and there was this girl and she had the biggest eyebrows you’d ever seen in your entire life and I took a picture, I’m going to show you now [gets out her mobile]. Like slugs on her face.’ Felicity responds, ‘You know the Liverpool, Essex or whatever, they have proper weird eyebrows’ (220-223).

When Felicity commented ‘they think it looks good but it’s not it looks really ugly,’ I asked the group, ‘Why would they think it looks good?’ Heidi said, ‘Usually you’d tend to get people, I mean I’m not trying to sound harsh or anything but, people who end up being like that do get attention from the lads and think they’re beautiful and then they keep on doing it all the time’ (238-240). Showing that in terms of social identity appearances do matter even if on a deeper level ‘whatever’s on the outside you don’t usually see on the inside’ (Heidi, 256). This group don’t seem to feel pressure to conform to the limited media images of female beauty at this stage though understand in terms of attractiveness that they will be judged by external appearances, by young men for example. And when referring to such things they are citing TV programmes like The Only Way is Essex and Single Date with a critical eye. In this way storytelling appears to be triggering conversations about what it is currently like to be a young person for these individuals.

Important themes in terms of social identity for Group one in the all-girls school were crime and appearances. Young people were aware of conformist and nonconformist elements, discussing them in the group before the focus group question was raised.

This month I am also writing a paper for The Warwick Research Exchange Journal about how the storytelling space in combination with social interaction triggers sharing conversations. I also have a meeting to discuss some of these ideas with Jack Zipes in Cambridge.

References

MACINTYRE, M. 2012. MacCodram and His Seal Wife. Video Bank. Education Scotland. http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/video/m/video_tcm4572221.asp

PARFITT, E. 2013a. All-girls School Transcript 1, 19 April 2013

PARFITT, E. 2013b. All-girls School Transcript 2, 26 April 2013

PARFITT, E. 2013c. Final Interviews, 22 May 2013

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PhD Progress update

Emma Parfitt — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:43:00 +0000

My PhD had changed alot since the very beginning when I had what seems like a really vague idea now about storytelling and mental health. I then became interested in how stories teach people about their culture, including emotional language and understanding. I have clarified my thesis statement to: The civilisation of emotion: does traditional storytelling or do stories have an effect on how young people identify and understand the language of emotion?

So in my thesis I am going to explore Arlie Hochschild’s concept of how society uses feeling in relation to young people and traditional storytelling. I intend to use Hochschild’s ideas to form a link between Jack Zipes’ application of Elias and civilitie and Bruno Bettelheim’s discussions on the possible meaning and understanding of fairy stories. While Zipes debates the behavioural influences of fairy tale literature on civilization Bettelheim’s focus was on children’s psychological maturity (which is important to well-being when it comes to coping with depression and anxiety). Emotions in this way are co-dependant knowledge, we learn the language of emotion how to recognise, label, and place meaning on feelings through our interactions with others. Fitting in with ideas of social constructionism the language, meaning and expression of emotion is socially constructed and under constant revision.

So what do I mean by ‘does traditional storytelling or do stories have an effect’? I believe that narrative can help young people to negotiate transitions from late childhood to early adulthood. My research methods (comprising of interviews, storytelling, and group discussion) act in an intervention capacity, in that the students’ interpretation and experience of the storytelling performance allows their ideas to be perceived and validated, in other words tested against the responses of others. Social influences such as media, the internet, and other people, have narrative elements which combined on many levels potentially inform our emotional language and understanding. The research may be used in part to begin to separate out the processes of meaning-making which may validate why storytelling may have psychological benefits because it is exploring the student’s words and interactions over a period of time. And I hope this may take us a step closer to understanding what a marvellous thing our culture is, and how we can encourage multiple layers of tolerance and understanding between different genders, class and culture, and empower young people to make a difference in society with the right support. The support they tell us they need rather than what, in good faith, we try to impose.

On other news, going part time has helped the money situation I’m working hard to complete my PhD in four years on schedule. If anyone hears of any grants or sponsorship that my PhD might qualify for please let me know. I’ve written to my local MP, and to the Minister of Education, to appeal for more consideration of PhD funding, such as for example changing the current Career Development Loan system. It is designed to cover two years of study and provides a maximum of £10,000 which then has to be paid back in roughly £200 instalments a month. It was never designed to provide for PhD students but some of us have no other choice. I used mine to support myself and cover the bulk of my first two years fees. This past year I have applied for funding and worked part time to save up money to pay off the loan and pay for subsequent year’s fees. However the unexpected move to Warwick University with my supervisor in September has eaten up my savings for next year’s fees because I was unable to find work from Sept – January. But as in the past if I work hard I know that I will create an opportunity to find the money I need to get by. Feeling forcibly optimistic. A big thank you to everyone who has supported me thus far.

Happy Easter J

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