Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied

Theatre and Performance

ISSN: 1356-9783 (Print) 1470-112X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/crde20

The impact of narrative-based learning in

classroom

Chipo J. Marunda-Piki

To cite this article: Chipo J. Marunda-Piki (2017): The impact of narrative-based learning in
classroom, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, DOI:
10.1080/13569783.2017.1399055

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2017.1399055

Published online: 07 Nov 2017.

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 RIDE: THE JOURNAL OF APPLIED THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2017.1399055

The impact of narrative-based learning in classroom

Chipo J. Marunda-Piki
Department of Theatre Arts, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Narrative and story play a central role in cognitive and cultural Narrative pedagogy; process
development of children. In this article, I explore a narrative- drama; teaching; learning;
centred pedagogy used to address the teaching and learning class; play
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concerns of my pupils from Helena infant school, Zimbabwe. I

document how, as a novice teacher, I deployed narrative learning
in my teaching of English as a second language and I discuss
both story and narrative as a methodology that offers a
curriculum relevant for my learners. As well as outlining the
features of narrative as constructivist learning, the article draws
from African education theories in order to argue for narrative
pedagogy as a method that is very responsive to African oral-
based teaching and learning approaches and behavioural styles. I
explore how our enactment of story and narrative pedagogy in
the classroom offered an opportunity for adequate education and
language acquisition in my class. The fundamental hypothesis is
that by focusing on narrative and story-centred learning we can
foster learning environments that elevate the power of culture,
connection-forming and meaning-making, which ensure learners
achieve academic success when learning English.

The moment I stood in the doorway of Helena Infant school, a private school in Harare, ‘the
capital city of Zimbabwe’, all the children ran back to their seats, and there was silence.
Their desks neatly aligned in rows, the children sat, legs together, mouths shut, hands
on their laps, waiting for me to speak. This created some nostalgia for me, as it was the
exact layout of my own classroom when I was in grade one in 1991. Memories of my
own primary school days returned as I walked to my desk, creating a cold chill in my
spine. As, the weeks went by I tried to teach, but the moment a learner stood up and
uttered a word that was unsolicited I would ‘shhh!’ them. I found this to be exhausting
and I had a hangover from my own memories of being a prefect at school, taking
down names, keeping order and making sure my peers stayed seated. During break-
time, however, I observed that ‘drama’ occurred naturally and spontaneously in myriad
ways for the learners. Children would independently act out imaginary scenes and tell
stories in which they were teachers, heroes and warriors. I observed how learners,
through such narratives, presented a wealth of knowledge about material relevant for
their learning.

CONTACT Chipo J. Marunda-Piki chipojeanmarunda@gmail.com

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 2 C. J. MARUNDA-PIKI

The premise of the research process reported in this short article is that by focusing on
narrative-centred learning we can foster a learning environment that ensures learners
achieve success. According to Asante and Asante (1985), the oral cultural traditions of
the African continent have central significance for the way children learn, and their
work is highly suggestive of the value of oral teaching and research methods. Using an
action research approach, I developed and reflected on a narrative pedagogy deployed
to effectively teach my class of 18 infants ages 5–7 years. The article examines the
dynamics, concerns and potential of narrative-based teaching with infants. I draw linkages
between English pedagogies, curriculum and narrative-based learning and describe the
research methodologies I employed as I reflected on the use of narrative in teaching. I
identify elements of narrative-based learning that contributed to the teaching and learn-
ing process in the classroom and outline practical arrangements suitable for their use in
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teaching.

Narrative in the classroom

Participants telling and hearing narratives make priorities, note what is appropriate, and
package information. My learners, when engaging with narrative, had to translate terms
and information in their minds. When I began to engage narrative in my teaching I
observed Fordham and Ogubu’s (1986, 177) phenomenon called ‘acting white’. Learners
in my class were under pressure to sound white or act ‘white’ when giving their narratives.
They were in continual conflicts between culture as experienced and the learned culture.
For example, we began one English lesson by giving a narrative of holiday experiences.
One learner said ‘I went to America and met Justin Beiber’ (the famous Canadian born
popular music star). I asked the learner why she had included information that was not
true. She said she thought she had to tell a more interesting narrative because all she
had actually done was go to the village and herd cattle, which is not something celebrated
in school. Using my own narrative to foster more culturally relevant narratives I told the
learners of my childhood experiences growing up on a farm, feeding the chickens. Lear-
ners became excited about this. After the giggling and shock at my use of English
terms to explain very traditional experiences, the learners began to link their experiences
with mine. As we continued, learners developed a richer vocabulary than they had in the
previous term, using extended vocabulary in ways that were culturally relevant. The lear-
ners became more comfortable with sharing their experiences through narrative. They
drew on their experiences more freely, thus contributing to a cultural body of knowledge
that became useful in the English lesson. By reinforcing their experiences my learners
began to understand and construct English language knowledge within their cultural
context. As learners participated in narrative activities they became comfortable expres-
sing their experiences and translated terms like ‘ghejo – plough’, ‘mahumbwe – playing
house’ and ‘kusakura – digging’. Learners not only became fluent in translation but they
also became adept at code-switching between English and their vernacular. Every new
word we translated we would include on the ‘word wall’, a designated wall for all the
new words learners wish to add or include throughout the term.
I observed that my learners were engaged more in these classes and developed
emotional ties to their topics. Ratner (1991) notes how one’s emotions, sensations,
motives, needs, perception, memory, imagination formulate cognitive schemata relevant
 RESEARCH IN DRAMA EDUCATION: THE JOURNAL OF APPLIED THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE 3

for knowledge acquisition. By employing narrative my learners would develop speech,

senses, emotions and motor skills. As I explored narrative beyond cultural compliance
my learners began to engage more deeply in the world and with each other. They devel-
oped emotional schemata that helped them recall and use what they had learnt. Shizha
(2007) postulates that Zimbabwean culture, like other cultures, has an orientation to learn-
ing that can be metaphorically represented in an art form. The use of the arts as a base for
learning was not a foreign concept for my learners. Use of narrative play allowed learners
to encounter a concrete experience. Our narrative sessions developed to include
imaginative play, role-play and other forms of play where the learners could pretend
they were someone else or that they were somewhere else. Through plenary and post-per-
formance discussion learners contributed to ongoing reflective observation on the
experiment.
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During one lesson I employed a combination of Dorothy Heathcote’s and Peter Slade’s
theory on imaginative play (Heathcote and Bolton 1994; Slade 1954) and here learners’
imaginative play happened in real time. From this, I developed an interest in the impor-
tance of simplicity and of symbols extracted from cultural experiences. In week 6 of the
second term of this endeavour, I began the lesson by asking the learners to walk
around the room as fast as they could without bumping into each other. After five
seconds I said that the ground they were walking on was getting very hot. Bethel
began to scream jumping up and down rubbing her feet. Anesu joined in with a fit of
laughter but also rubbed his feet, and the rest of the class joined in. I then told them
the ground was sticky and as they were walking through it Leandra began dragging
her feet and pulling them up with both hands, waddling through the classroom. Our
unprompted use of the imagination helped us to explore narrative pedagogy through
action. Learners such as Tanyaradzwa and Ropafadzo, who rarely participated in class,
got the chance to explore and express themselves through movement in a more forthright
way. I began to direct the imaginative play less as learners created their own narratives and
directed their own play. They sometimes found it challenging and did not seem to under-
stand the motivation of the play. As I read more into Heathcote’s practice I discovered the
value of questioning and realised this could improve the implementation of narrative. In
my next lesson, the classroom was transformed into a vegetable market, a device used to
introduce collective nouns. Using narrative, my learners showed an understanding of the
concepts introduced and also we shared our experiences of being at the market. The lear-
ners easily participated in this form of narrative because it borrowed from ‘mahumbwe’, a
local form of pretend play, and there was a power shift as the learners presented them-
selves as experts in this form of play. By doing this the development of the learner’s voca-
bulary was structured in a familiar culture of play. In a later lesson, when we learnt about,
‘Work people do in the community’, the class began by giving a narrative of the different
responsibilities people have in the community. I introduced the word ‘Doctor’, and we par-
ticipated in a knowledge harvest about what a doctor does, and learners offered narratives
of their experiences with doctors. We then developed the character of English Language
Doctor, a role shared across the learners, as presented by the following transcription from
the recording of the class:

Teacher: Please check your work. If we don’t check our work what happens?
Children: Our work will go to the Correction hospital.
 4 C. J. MARUNDA-PIKI

Sarah: The Language Doctor will check if you started a sentence with a capital letter and
ended with a full stop. The Doctor will also check the spelling words.
Elton: And also punctuation Miss Chipo.
Teacher: That’s true. Now we can all be Language Doctors, I need your help. Please do a
‘checkup’ before you bring your work to my desk. For example, yesterday I
received an exercise where one of you said the past tense of put is putted?
Word Doctors, do a quick check up and tell me if this is correct.

As the term progressed the role of the language doctor became voluntary – the learners
would ‘play doctor’ and correct each other’s work. The lessons that made use of narrative-
based learning were recorded and the learners had an opportunity to watch their videos.
This gave the learners an opportunity to listen and reflect on their own language use. They
were able to notice and point out their own mistakes while watching the video. In a
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phonics class exploring the sound ‘igh’, we gave the ‘igh’ a personality. I offered a narrative
about the one-eyed monster that visited the village, terrorising and capturing villagers, in
order to make up words. His name was ‘igh’. For example, when the monster saw Mr S and
lady t walking in the forest and ran between them to make the word s-igh-t they got such a
fright. But then the wood cutter Fr and lady t fought the monster and the word fr-igh-t was
no more. The learners followed the story, noticing different words as they held up the
different supporting phonics. Words such as sight, light, thigh and might were created
in the process and these became spelling words for the week (Figure 1).
The results were encouraging: it was surprising to observe the commitment the learners
had to the different narratives presented. All the learners participated in the creation of the
story, including Tanyaradzwa, who hardly spoke in other classes. Throughout the rest of

Figure 1. Tanyaradzwa’s creative writing exercise about a ‘Monster at Helena’. The learner was able to
include the keywords introduced during the narrative. Photograph courtesy of Chipo Marunda-Piki.
 RESEARCH IN DRAMA EDUCATION: THE JOURNAL OF APPLIED THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE 5

the week, learners were keen to point out any word that had the ‘igh’ sound. During
Environmental science, for example, I wrote the word light on the chalkboard and Brett
jumped up and exclaimed ‘look Miss Chipo the ‘igh’ monster so that word is l-igh-t,
light, Miss Chipo, light’.

Narrative positioning for power and authority

Learning to use any new creative teaching approach requires a level of personal motiv-
ation and willingness to take risks. When I began to share my stories with the class,
having the learners looking at me and listening made me feel a little vulnerable. Using nar-
rative in my class demanded a significant shift in my attitude, away from meeting curricu-
lum objectives and towards the embrace of open-ended discovery. In the everyday world
of my classroom, narrative became a multifaceted, dynamic social and cultural space and
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time that offered multiple possible frameworks for a teacher and learners to interpret the
world. During my observations, I noticed that learners were being affected by what I called
‘wrong englishes’. These manifested when they played games – I would listen to them
incorrectly pronouncing words, distort meanings or use incorrect sentence construction,
as noted in my research journal:
The children have a game they play called ‘My chocolate’. Using the ‘Shona English’ learners
are distorting the pronunciation of the English words. My chocolate is pronounced, ‘mayi cho-
koleti, mayi chokoleti hayi dhure hayi dhure … ’. This mispronunciation also appears in class-
room discussions. The Shona English is against the rules since the schools feel it does not
contribute positively to the children’s grasp of English. There are so many games where
they have memorised the wrong Englishes.

When learners came across the word chocolate they struggled to read it and would pro-
nounce it incorrectly. I also realised that words that my learners would encounter daily,
had the ‘Shona English’ pronunciation (for example, firiji for refrigerator, sawuti for salt,
corning for turning). Faced with this type of English, narrative-based learning became
invaluable as a learning strategy that allowed my learners the opportunity for cultural
expression. As noted by Shizha (2007) and Marira (1995), a teacher ought to be culturally
relevant. It became important to design narrative that existed in the cognitive realm and
social culture my learners operated in. By using sound, voice and movement in narrative I
respected local expressions of Shona-inflected English, but also enforced ideal learning
habits in my learners and transferred relevant encoding skills for English language profi-
ciency. Szauder (2005) discusses how fables, myths and folktales are mediations of
social and moral expectations restrictions and prohibitions. My learners represented
diverse language backgrounds and had diverse learning needs. I needed to engage
methods that motivated learning and induced the love for learning English. By using nar-
rative strategies in learning I was able to offer opportunities for learners to personalise
their English language experience, thus making it possible to adapt and use the language.
Through the use of narrative, we were able to share power in the classroom. As the
teacher, I would hand over power to the student delivering the narrative and they
could also share it with their peers. Like the traditional Zimbabwean story teller, the
teller was not the expert but the channel through with oral education was transmitted.
This shared power fosters a culture of inquiry, authentic knowledge generation and
shared information.
 6 C. J. MARUNDA-PIKI

Responses to story-based learning

Prompted by my observation of a group of girls in the class huddled on the classroom
carpet flipping through the pages of the class’ Big Story book, I began to conceive of a
second investigation into the impact of narrative on English proficiency. When my learners
would go onto the carpet they would lie down quietly or huddle up in a corner to read. It
became our class culture to sit on the carpet as if around a fire as we continued with our
storytelling and shared our narratives. This is a common practice in the village in Zim-
babwe. The space became sacred, with a set of rules of engagement that the learners
created and enforced. For example, learners suggested that anyone seated on the
carpet would sit with their legs crossed and hands on their lap. Learners would also use
a call and response approach to a story typical of Zimbabwean storytelling. For
example, as the teacher I would say ‘Once upon a time … ’ the learners would respond
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with ‘ … time time time’, and then the session would begin. Narrative served as an ideal
strategy to achieve mutual respect and prepare my learners for learning from each other.
A learner’s ability to learn and use a language has much to do with the environment. I
began to analyse my learner’s behaviour as I read the story of the old woman who lived in
a shoe. With interest, the learner’s allowed me to read the story. However, when I began to
ask questions to assess their understanding of the text I realised my learners could not
relate to the idea of people living in a shoe, as this notion is not familiar within our cultural
context. During this process, we explored the dynamics of family and family relationships
through my own learners’ stories. Learners got into pairs and told each other about their
families and where they lived. I asked the learners to talk about the rules they have in their
houses to make it a safe place. The learners gave narratives of situations where they fol-
lowed or disobeyed these rules. I then told the story a second time and we created dra-
matic moments in the narrative where the learners contributed voice and sound. Using
my voice as teacher-in-role, I was able to model the Old Woman in the shoe, her behaviour
and emotions, creating the imagined world of the text. The learners became audience at a
play, and developed their own speculations and anticipation, as in the process described
by Kao and O’Neill (1998, 126). My learners communicated their feelings – their familiarity,
empathy or even boredom – through their bodies. By simply watching my learners I was
able to adjust my performance to foster a more authentic understanding of the language.
By using narrative and performance, the English lesson became a holistic learning experi-
ence where my learners encountered oral performance – in which indigenous cultural
practice was fused with Western literary approaches. Learners were able to develop an
understanding of a Western story by relating this to their cultural experiences.
Narrative proved effective as a tool for achieving English proficiency because it set my
learners free from the printed text and yet still fostered enough curiosity for the learner to
go back to text and make comparisons. Therefore, my second language speakers could
develop an understanding of material before they were required to write it. Learners
made strong connections to unfamiliar vocabulary through gestures, facial expression
and body movements. As I adopted this methodology, I discovered that learners could
use their narratives as a form of survival and learning strategy for English. Family traditions,
morals and lessons are passed on through narrative, and I would hear my learners retell
narratives that their parents had told them to model respect, generosity or love. As the
class huddled around Elton giving a descriptive narrative of his mother I could not deny
 RESEARCH IN DRAMA EDUCATION: THE JOURNAL OF APPLIED THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE 7

its transformative power. I stood in the class and listened in awe as the learners reviewed
their own stories and offered corrections for of others’ use of the English language. As a
class, we made use of story-making skills from our traditional culture to come to under-
stand that literacy and language proficiency is not unattainable.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Chipo J. Marunda-Piki serves the field of the Arts as an Educator and researcher in Africa. With a
passion for Drama and Education, Chipo is constantly looking for ways to improve her practice as
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a teacher and provide opportunities for non-drama teachers to deploy drama strategies in teaching
and learning.

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