Storytelling and Perspective-Taking
As one develops a concept of self, one also develops a concept of those around oneself. The notion that there are other people in the world and that they have other points of view is something that Piaget proposed happens at around five years of age. However, work in infancy and toddlerhood has demonstrated that children’s awareness of others starts much earlier and occurs differently in different cultures.
Storytelling Through Oral Traditions
The storytelling tradition facilitates the development of an awareness of others as separate beings with separate perspectives, and it has done so across all human cultures. Think about what it means to tell a story and how you must keep track of different characters, what they do, and what they think others have done.
Tsethlikai (2015) discusses how storytelling in First Nations and other Indigenous societies has played an important role in perspective-taking. Because stories often involve lessons, they act as a sort of road map to understanding others’ perspectives and how to behave towards others. Tsethlikai argues that this complex social knowledge in perspective-taking enables a sort of “other regulation” through which children see themselves as integrated within the needs of others.
Storytelling exists in all cultures of the world and is typically passed down orally from generation to generation. West African stories, including the famous Ghanaian “Anansi” stories, are used to teach young children about moral behaviour. In so doing, such fables and folktales also teach children to take perspectives among the characters involved.
Consider the following traditional West African story and the many perspectives of the characters, particularly around the ability of one to “trick” another.
Video: Arit’s Fables: Jabu and the Lion (duration: 3:19).
Captions were not provided by the authors of this third-party video, but a transcript is available.
(AritsFables, 2011)
Reflection Journal
Have you ever used a storybook to foster perspective-taking? Think about a favourite children’s book that you have read and remember reasonably well – perhaps it’s one you even have in your own collection!
Reflection 7.2a: Share the title of the book.
Reflection 7.2b: Identify instances from the book that come to mind that might support children’s perspective taking.
Reflection 7.2c: Generate two questions for young children that may get them to see a character’s perspective in more detail.
Storytelling Through Pretend Play
Another way of thinking about storytelling is how it is created and enacted by children themselves as they take on characters and role play, either on their own or in interaction with other children. Consider the following two videos that illustrate these two types of pretend play: solitary (or individual) and collaborative. As you watch these videos, observe how perspective-taking is involved.
Video: Individual/solitary Pretend Play (duration: 0:16)
Video: Collaborative Pretend Play (duration: 0:21)
In the solitary situation, how is the child considering the coworker on the phone?
In the collaborative situation, what roles are the children taking on, and what rules have they jointly established that are evident from their actions?
As you can see, they must take on the perspectives of both roles and consider each other as co-creators of story and play.
In early childhood education, we think of pretend play as an opportunity for children to learn about such social roles in their society and culture. We see this enacted in many family roles (parents, children, grandparents), professions (firefighter, cook, builder) and fantasy characters from stories (superheroes, queens/kings, fairies, tricksters) amongst children in pretend play scenarios. These scenarios may have elaborate social settings, or they might have no props or costumes and simply rely entirely on the children’s role-playing. We see play embedded into early learning approaches in childcare, preschool, and kindergartens, often in the form of “play stations” that include daily living or dramatic play settings and materials.
The link between telling a story orally or in writing is strongly linked with the telling of a story through enactment or dramatic/pretend play in the following ways:
- Both involve characters(s)
- Both often include a plot/goal of some sort
- The characters will often have to collaborate with one another towards that goal
- Communication is often required to accomplish goals
- Pretense or imagination
If you think about the last bullet point, you may realize that in order to establish goals with other characters, you must share perspectives among one another. To collaborate, you must compromise, negotiate and agree on paths forward for the play. It is also possible that if you engage in solitary pretend play, you will still have to communicate with imagined characters as you navigate the scenario you created.
In the case of collaborative pretend play, pretense or imagination is truly remarkable. In order to engage with others, there are many assumptions: you are enacting roles that are not real, you are engaging with materials that represent materials in the real world, and you all agree on how this real-world functions and how to meet goals within it.
This complex process takes a tremendous amount of negotiation, so pretend play (as with other forms of storytelling) is clearly an excellent mechanism for developing perspective-taking. And in turn, perspective-taking relates to another aspect of social cognition: theory of mind.
