Learning Stories: Constructing Learner Identities in Early Education - Softcover

Carr, Margaret; Lee, Wendy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0857020935 ISBN 13: 9780857020932

Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2012

Synopsis

Margaret Carr′s seminal work on Learning Stories was first published by SAGE in 2001, and this widely acclaimed approach to assessment has since gained a huge international following. In this new book, the authors outline the philosophy behind Learning Stories and call on the latest findings from the research projects they have led with teachers on learning dispositions and learning power to argue that Learning Stories can construct learner identities in early childhood settings and schools. By making the connection between sociocultural approaches to pedagogy and assessment and narrative inquiry, this book contextualizes learning stories as a philosophical approach to education, learning and pedagogy.

Chapters explore how Learning Stories:

" help make connections with families;

" support the inclusion of children and family voices;

" tell us stories about babies;

" allow children to dictate their own stories;

" can be used to revisit children′s learning journeys;

" can contribute to teaching and learning wisdom.

This ground-breaking book expands on the concept of Learning Stories, and includes examples from practice in both New Zealand and the UK. It outlines the philosophy behind this pedagogical tool for documenting how learning identities are constructed, and shows through research evidence why the early years is such a critical time in the formation of learning dispositions.

Margaret Carr is a Professor of Education at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. Wendy Lee is Director of the Educational Leadership Project, New Zealand.

About this title

About the Author:

Margaret Carr is a Professor of Education at the Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research at the University of Waikato, in Hamilton, New Zealand. Before she joined the Faculty of Education at Waikato, she was a geographer at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, where there was a strong focus by the professors on social and cultural change.  This formed a background for her interest in the role of education in society, and in Hamilton she gained a qualification in early childhood education and worked as a kindergarten teacher before becoming a lecturer in education at the university. Her PhD thesis was entitled ‘Technological Practice in Early Childhood as a Dispositional Milieu’. New Zealand has provided a number of opportunities for professors to research with early childhood teachers on topics chosen by the teachers, and Margaret has frequently published with teachers. Learning Stories as an assessment practice was developed for the 1996 Te Whariki bicultural curriculum (later revised in 2017); the development of narrative assessment is told in the 2001 Sage book, Assessment in Early Childhood Settings: Learning Stories, and further developed in the 2012 Sage book Learning Stories: Constructing Learner Identities in Early Education. The latter book was co-authored with Wendy Lee, and this partnership has combined academic and professional wisdom in many publications and presentations over many years.

Review:

′Margaret Carr and Wendy Lee weave together a powerful book full of respect for children′s ideas, interests and identities as learners. Using theoretically informed and practically focused discussion and examples, they provide extensive evidence of the role of narrative assessment as teachers, children and families co-construct stories of competence′
- Sue Dockett, Professor of Early Childhood Education,
Murray School of Education, Charles Sturt University

′What a fabulous read! Any practitioner already engaged in collating learning stories or learning journeys as a means of recording children′s achievements and progress should absorb this life-enriching read of a beautiful book′
-Early Years Educator

′Illustrated in colour, this is a fascinating and timely book which will make rewarding reading for both experienced practitioners and for students on degree and higher degree level courses. There is much here to think about, reflect upon and discuss as we endevour to equip young children with the skills and dispositions they need to live in a global democratic society′
- Early Years Update

About this edition

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0857020935
• ISBN 13: 9780857020932
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 168