'Storytelling for diverse voices' in 'Creating an inclusive school environment', edited by Susan Douglas

Available at: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/J157_Creating%20an%20inclusive%20school%20environment%20report_FINAL_web.pdf?fbclid=IwAR22K0XX25omA7QQAACDxiADivDVtzilpvHf9VrNhrS5SqB6Cl-lpvfcx6s (accessed 29/3/22)

From the introduction to this chapter:
'Humans are primed for telling and being told stories. Neuroscientist Antonio
Damasio writes, ‘Storytelling is something brains do, naturally and implicitly …
it pervades the entire fabric of human societies and cultures.’ We filter the
information we are bombarded with every day and make sense of what we retain
in the form of narrative. This is true not only of personal stories, but also of stories
from the world’s oral cultures; folk tales, myths and legends have been honed
by communities over generations and draw on collective experience to convey
universal truths. These stories tell us about who we are, our values and our
aspirations. Since the exchange of knowledge began, being passed on by our
earliest ancestors, storytelling has been an effective educational tool. It takes
us beyond boundaries of ethnicity, language, culture and gender so we can
imagine being anyone and anywhere while we are engrossed in a tale.'