Table of Contents

Foreword by Gregory Cajete
Acknowledgments

1. Introduction
2. Strengthening Community through Storytelling
3. Drawing on Oral Traditions for a Contemporary Storytelling Event (with Regina Holyan)
4. Of Fables and Children
5. "The Wolf Really Wasn't Wicked": Ethical Complexities and "Troubled" Students
6. Rabbit Tales (Tails): Kenyan Stories with Multiple Meanings (with Tiffani Saunders)
7. "It's Hard to Admit, But Sometimes You Get Jealous": Lessons from the Hyena (with Oluwatope Fashola)
8. The Next Stage: Putting It into Practice
9. Coming Full Circle: Cross-Cultural Lessons

Appendix A: A Multimethod Approach to Storytelling
Appendix B: Examples of Focus Group Interview Questions
Appendix C: Editions of Aesop's Fables
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Promotional Information

2011 AAUP Public and Secondary School Library Selection

About the Author

Donna Eder is Professor of Sociology at Indiana University Bloomington. She is author of School Talk: Gender and Adolescent Culture.

Regina Holyan is currently a senior staff attorney with the Navajo Nation Department of Justice and was Assistant Professor in the School of Education at Indiana University Bloomington.

Reviews

Educatiors, scholars, and non-scholars alike will highly appreciate Donna Eder's study . . . In this book, she not only reclaims the significance of storytelling within Western culture but also reintroduces the act of storytelling into the school curriculum. March 30, 2011
*Journal of Folklore Research*

An Life Lessons through Storytelling by Donna Eder is an engaging and timely, cross-cultural study of storytelling as a vehicle for children's social and ethical learning. Eder begins with interviews of Navajo and Kenyan storytellers and educators, providing in-depth knowledge about the nature and value of their storytelling traditions. She then presents group interviews with fourth- and fifth-grade students, exploring their responses to teaching stories from different cultures, relating them to their own lives. Concluding sections contextualize findings within existing research and explore issues of practical application in the classroom. Readers will see how storytelling empowers youth to engage in discussions, explore a range of issues from power, respect and community to fairness, equality and justice, and come to frame their own understandings of complex ethical issues within a society. Examining Aesop's Fables and Kenyan and Navajo storytelling traditions as models for classroom use, An Ethical Compass demonstrates the value of a cross-cultural approach to teaching through storytelling while providing deep insights into the social psychology of learning.

[T]his book offers a cross culture, indterdisciplinary study of breadth and depth together with [Eder's] acknowledgements, analysis and advocacy.
*B.C. Folklore*