Writing? To write one must write. Also, improving one’s writing is a constant learning process. I wrote a book review in 2017 (published in 2018 in International Sociology).

Book review

Review: Ulrich Bröckling, The Entrepreneurial Self: Fabricating a New Type of Subject. 

Today, I recieved a box of hardback copies of Young People, Learning and Storytelling (published with Palgrave Macmillan)

Strange to read my short article after a year, even stranger seeing the book that took me four years to research, and one year to write (with book proposal writing inbetween).

When I reread the article I saw some room for improvement. I think this is more apparent to me now because I have read a lot of things about improving academic writing and edited the work of others. The article was gladly accepted, still I can see some room for improvement. For example, tip of the day: avoid the word ‘it’ and use something more precise.

When I looked at my research book I’m proud because I wrote the book I wanted to. The arrival of the box below tells me that it’s time to face a new writing challenge… bring it on!

Find out more about my book here.

Update: since writing this text I have started my own proofreading business as a way to support myself whilst writing. I have helped academic books be published such as Art as an Institution (Alberto Cossu) and published more fiction such as A Friendship of Thistles (a novel about friendship during Covid), Shattered Roses (a beauty and the beast retelling based in a nursing home) and Seascape (a collection of fairytales).

Who is Emma?

As an introvert haunting the corners of storytelling festivals, it’s incredibly difficult to track Emma down. She’s best known for writing Scottish fiction about working-class women and communities and their misrepresented lives.You can find her recent book A Friendship of Thistles here. Or hire her for proofreading here.

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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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I am happy to announce that Palgrave MacMillian will be publishing my book on storytelling research at the end of next year. This has involved 6 months of hard work, rethinking and amazingly kind reviews and suggestions (some by the fabulous Jack Zipes).

The book will be published as part of a special series: Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education. 

Photo credit: guvendemir (link to artist no longer available).

I think one of the difficulties will be finding an appropraite cover image as so many searches have resulted in primary children reading books, rather than secondary school aged youth listening to a tale. Any photographers or if you know a photographer with an appropriate image for sale please let me know.

Working book synopsis:

This book explores young people’s lives through fairy tales to demonstrate our complex relationship with storytelling including the emotional, behavioural and social aspects of story. Young people, learning & storytelling… provides excerpts from young people’s conversations following storytelling performances in secondary schools in the UK. The contents are based on storytelling research of international significance when considering the benefits of story and storytelling for learning; the interdisciplinary study of narrative; and the interaction of different narrative forms with young people’s agency (their ability to act independently and to make their own choices).

The journey

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I am already lucky to be doing research in such an interesting subject area bringing a variety of disciplines together. The real bonus are the nice folk you come across who are equally passionate about storytelling too.

Gratefulness

I am extremely grateful to the Society for Storytelling for providing me with a letter of support to aid my fundraising (see copy below). To Youngminds for expressing an interest in my work and letting me post a guest blog article on mental health and storytelling. And to the Adam Smith Institute for donating £250 towards my PhD.

I am grateful to my PhD friends Heidi, Maru, Laura, Selena, Celia, Dee, Donna, and those from the IAS fellowship, for sob stories over tea and the moral support to reach the end of the PhD marathon. Also to those who helped me find the parttime work to fund the PhD. For example, to Wendy in Cornwall, to Dean and J. in Warwick for all the laughs, and the super Learning Grid team. To the friendly faces around Warwick University’s Sociology Department who kept their doors open and hired me for transcription on fascinating research on artists and on politics. And to my husband Morgan for his constant support.

Meetings

I had a meeting today with Professor Mike Wilson, University College Falmouth (now Loughborough). His current research focuses on digital storytelling. He did some previous work on oral narrative and adolescents. And we discussed working together in his storytelling department on future projects. Though, I am missing Scotland … so we’ll see how it works out.

More information to follow in a future blog! That’s all for now. If you would like to support my work, or have any questions, please get in touch.

Learn more about Emma’s writing

09 August 2012

To whom it may concern,

Emma recently contacted us regarding her research into storytelling and its beneficial effects. We at The Society for Storytelling believe that supporting the completion of this project is a worthwhile cause, and complements our national aims and objectives. Our membership of nearly 400 practitioners and highly influential opinion formers – including the author, Philip Pullman – would find Emma’s work to be very informative. Her findings would be something that we would look forward to disseminating and, where relevant, share within our own newsletter, public website and annual general meeting of storytelling enthusiasts from across the UK. We can also see the value of this research as a potential tool for the Society and individuals to unlock partnership funds, from such organisations that could include primary health commissioning agencies, the Big Lottery Fund, Arts Council England and Creative Scotland.

The Society for Storytelling was established in 1993. It aims to increase public awareness of the art, practice and value of storytelling. To us, storytelling is more than just performance or entertainment: it can also educate, heal, lead to better practice in business, and inspire and change lives. We wish to assist the project by writing this letter of support and, where possible, assisting Emma with further advice, direction and encouragement. Our Directory of Storytellers is available as a resource to help Emma contact storytellers for her research.

In order to test her ideas, we are aware that Emma has completed a trial run with the notable Cornish Storyteller, Mike O’Connor. The school has been inspired by Emma’s work to establish a permanent storytelling club. The teachers have also started a summer school course to encourage students with learning difficulties to read, and this course now includes storytelling.

We therefore wish Emma all the best in her research and hope all relevant partners may join and support her action based research that is proposed.

Yours sincerely,

Chip Colquhoun

Chair

On behalf of The Society for Storytelling

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‘We may ask what is truth in the face of centuries of retelling? The answer lies with experience: as long as a tale is told, it has meaning (truth), will evoke response and can be understood.’

(Alida Gersie and Nancy King. Storymaking in Education and Therapy, p.29)

My research

I’ve had to change methods a few times this week as NVivo is not as user friendly, or flexible, as I’d hoped. Coding is complicated. And have you ever noticed how highly complicated emotions are? I have become emersed in lines of text, gone in the wrong direction, realised things weren’t working, and reined myself in to ask: What am I looking for exactly? How can I make this project more specific and manageable? I’ve also been reading up on emotional intelligence (EI).

A definition of emotional intelligence (EI)

EI has been defined by D. Goleman as ‘Being able to motivate one-self and persist in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and delay gratification; to regulate one’s moods and keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to empathize and to hope’ (Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More than IQ, 1996).

It’s a pretty high order in today’s technology bombarded world when we have to shut things off in order to concentrate on the task in hand.

I believe that EI is crucial to why traditional storytelling is relevant today. The benefits of group storytelling are rooted at a cultural and community level; something many feel we are struggling to maintain in the face of current global pressures and technologies.

Experiments with story or real-world situations?

Neil Frude came up with an experimental concept to focus on one emotion and set up different test groups. This has great potential. It is always great to talk to someone passionate about the same field of study. I considered his idea very carefully before deciding that I wish to focus on testing in real world situations for now: largely because a mixed-method approach may reveal unexpected patterns and themes which can be further explored at a later stage.

Neil Frude and Steve Killick are interested in how stories can be used to help children ‘develop cognitively and emotionally.’ Exposing a child to ‘a threatening storyline’ whilst in the present of a parent or caregiver ‘challenges the child’s sense of security’ and yet allows them to get ‘reassurance’ strengthening their bond with the adult (Family Storytelling and the Attachment Relationship, Psychodynamic Practice 17.4, 2011, pp.441–455).

Much work has been done on attachment theory. If early attachments to a caregiver affect the way we relate to others, then activities such as reading to our children become essential to create a society that we can be proud to live in.

Mixed models

How EI can be tested is still up for discussion. The area is a relatively new one. Bracket et al. did a comparison of methods such as MSCEIT and Bar-On. The first assesses the ability to manage emotions while Bar-On is more of a mixed model, relying on self-reports of competency, emotional ability and personality traits (Relating Emotional Abilities to Social Functioning, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91.4, 2006, p.780).

There is much work to be done on the best way to measure EI. Though we can simplify tests to deconstruct the processes involved it is when we reconstruct, and form more complex models, that we get a more complete picture of the emotional and mental skills comprising an individual.

Future directions

One of the future directions Brackett et al. suggests we focus on include the processes involved in interpersonal relationships and social situations: this ties into my hypothesis that storytelling will cause change over time in the emotional intelligence of adolescents. I am trying to discover what changes are taking place and the processes underlying them. I am trying to find meaning in the stories that allow communication between our inner and outer worlds.

Read my book about my final research here!

If you are looking for a book to read about sisterhood and the resilience of friendship check this out:

‘Infallibly, she knew a golden rope had been placed in her hands. She had only, with patience and wisdom, to draw it in.’

(Tanith Lee, The Golden Rope in Red As Blood).

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This week I have my first set of data. A local school, and parents, kindly allowed me and a volunteer storyteller to do a test run. Cornish storyteller, Mike O’Connor, wowed kids and adults alike with his fiddle playing and acting techniques. Teachers were sneaking in at the back, out of curiosity in the first week. After each tale the students discussed what they thought of the stories, and how they could relate them to their life. I have now finished transcribing their conversation. This took a lot longer than anticipated. Unfortunately now I’m waiting for IT to fix access problems with NVivo. This computer analysis software will allow me to search for patterns in the student’s word usage over the five week period. In the meantime I am looking at the conversations in the transcripts from a more literary analysis perspective. With books heaped beside me of ideas and possible ways to do this.

So far the most useful thing I have learnt is to change my expectations as I’m doing research. Storytelling doesn’t work in isolation. Social sciences methodology is naturally more flexible. A pure scientific approach as I envisioned initially wouldn’t work and now I understand why. To let the students conversation proceed uninterrupted would be chaos for a start. There is a tendency to talk all at once, over one another. Or to be reluctant to talk at all. These students are very brave to agree to their voices and thoughts being recorded on tape. I’m very grateful for their participation. In the class room environment it is normal for conversations to be guided by the teacher. So I quickly changed tack, allowing the teacher to ask questions, and teacher, storyteller, and me, to answer questions. Occasionally I began to steer the conversation back on track. This sounds like interference! I hear the pure scientist crying across the mountains. But, ah, you see this format allowed everyone taking part to relax. The conversation flowed and ebbed like a real conversation does. This is real world research after all. And research is not just about the relationships between storyteller and listener, but me as a researcher taking part, recognising the people present as individuals with many layers. People aren’t fixed sets of data to be manipulated and I want my analysis to reflect this. The advantage of being present was that it helped me identify voices on the recording, and to jot down observations. As the weeks proceeded I could see what questions worked and what didn’t. It helped me gain confidence in my role as a researcher and ideas on how to proceed from here. Now I begin to explore, through the data, if this technique worked, and if not, why not. It may take some time.

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