The Power of Storytelling in Teaching Practices: Narratives from Hong Kong and Afar

Featuring storytelling as a central theme, this book examines the role of narrative inquiry in social processes of establishing teacher knowledge and identity to provide new insights into the role of storytelling in education’s teaching and learning paradigm.

Gui and Wong engage with a body of academics, creative writers, and researchers looking at the role of storytelling in Hong Kong education. The book is split into three sections of storytelling: introspective, agentive, and collaborative. Examining personal accounts of teachers using storytelling to reflect on and transform feelings, the authors reconstruct the traditional pedagogical and learner practices into new opportunities for civic participation and generative community practices. With attention to educators who make use of collaborative experiences to develop narrative approaches and foster community identities, the chapters explore existing pedagogical, creative, and scholarly literature for re-purposing narratives, teacher transformation, and learner participation.

With the use of autoethnographic accounts, this book’s innovative approach to storytelling will appeal to professional educators, teachers, and researchers in the fields of literacy, narrative inquiry, and creative writing. Scholars engaging with reflexive, participatory, and collaborative modes of teaching and learning will find this an essential read.

Dean A. F. Gui is an ELC Instructor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and a doctoral candidate under the supervision of Dr. Jason S. Polley (HKBU), examining the transformative physical world potential of virtual world poetry. His most recent publication is Poetry in Pedagogy (Routledge, 2021), co-edited with Jason S. Polley.

Dora Wong teaches at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University. Her teaching and research focus on bilingual creative and journalistic writings, and translation studies. She has published on digital storytelling and use of peer assessment in L2 writing training. Her recent passion is translating and writing picture books.