Critical Storytelling

Critical Storytelling for Students and Teachers

Before they can create a safer space for students, educators must do their own storytelling to challenge their own biases and find their own positionality. Critical Storytelling is one way to do this. Critical storytelling is a tool for sharing one’s academic research from the intersection of the storyteller’s identity. This leads to powerful narratives, backed by critical reading, that can expose systems of oppression based in the storyteller’s own experience. Thomas Barone sees critical storytelling as a means of sharing these injustices: “The critical educational storyteller is out to prick the consciences of readers by inviting a reexamination of the values and interests undergirding certain discourses, practices, and institutional arrangements found in today’s schools” (143).

Critical storytelling showcases social structures from a personal experience foundation. Nicholas Hartlep, et al also laud the benefits of critical storytelling, noting that people write to, “reap the rewards inherent in uncovering and revealing truths about our lived experiences that reach deeper than what is—to recognize the gaps and silences in dominant ways of knowing and seek to illuminate counternarratives.” Also importantly, for educators, narrative inquiry and critical storytelling lead to self-reflection. Diane Ketelle writes, “In narrative inquiry, stories are used to describe human experience and connect us with others” All of this comes back to the educator’s positionality or the intersection of identity, cultural status, socio-economic status, abilities, education, etc that leads to who they are.

Critical Storytelling is, in the simplest terms, telling one’s personal narratives backed by academic research. In this video, I explain the basic ideas of critical storytelling, share ideas on bringing critical storytelling into the classroom, express the importance of educators using critical storytelling themselves, and offer ideas for further research on the subject