Research question

The research question being investigated in this study was:

What role can a partnership between community and school play in promoting storytelling as a teaching strategy?

Objectives

The researcher sought to reach the objective of this study by determining what role a partnership between community and school play in promoting storytelling as teaching strategy.

 Theoretical framework

Bronfenbrenner's Ecosystem model was a useful tool to gain more clarity on how the individual is influenced by the interaction of the meso, exo and macro systems of the individual's social and cultural context (Berger, 2005:514; Engelbrecht & Green, 2005:7; Donald et al., 2010:36). It was found that various role players are involved at these different levels. These levels work like a permeable membrane and therefore the role players in these contexts influence each other mutually. This mutual influence not only play roll in  the individual's education - it also affects the community's education, taking into account the sum total of all role-players in a certain environment (community) views and ideas of social networking relationships.

A teaching strategy refers to a strategy used to help individuals achieve identified outcomes (a certain education task). These methods should include various activities supported by modelling, intensive coaching, supervision and monitoring (Akdeniz, 2016: 95). Storytelling can be seen as a teaching strategy, because storytelling has many features that focus on teaching. Worldwide, adults tell stories to children to educate them, nurture good moral values, and prepare them for the future. Linabary (2017: 435) endorses that storytelling has three primary functions, namely epistemological, transformative and methodological.

The residents of the community of inquiry all speak Afrikaans as Home Language and therefore the school-going children all take Afrikaans as Home Language. The guidelines of Speaking and Listening as prescribed by the National Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) (Department of Basic Education, 2011) for Afrikaans Home Language Grades R-12 were examined. A conclusion was made after examining the CAPS that there is a gap in the curriculum regarding storytelling that has to be intercepted. Partnership between the community and the school as a possible creative solution to accommodate storytelling as teaching strategy was investigated.

Educating a child requires the cooperation and involvement of teachers, parents and the community, therefore in partnership. Storytelling has the special features as a strategy to create a space for all participants in the partnership. Loseke (2001: 109; 2007: 664) found that it is precisely the similarities in stories that include diverse narrators in their stories, which carry power. Hinyard and Keuter (2007: 779) again found that people who were exposed to stories were more likely to change their behaviour as a control group.

The life story model of McAdams (2006: 76) was also been investigated. McAdams's identifies two types of themes in individuals' life stories, namely (1) agency towards community as well as (2) redemption towards contamination, which determine that storytelling can be used as a teaching strategy.

When storytelling is learned in the community, storytelling should not be a strange concept for the individual when confronted in class. In this way, storytelling should facilitate the teacher's task in class. Storytelling should therefore be established as a culture in the community so that storytelling can serve as an asset for all the role players in the partnership between the three main spheres of influence (family, school and community). In other words, this partnership must be of such a nature that the partnership becomes the medium through which the participants are educated and the participants are enabled to lead others to the same disclosure of education, so that the partnership benefits all stakeholders pose.

Qualitative research methodology was followed by using PALAR (Participatory Action Learning and Action Research). The life stories of the participants were collected in accordance with this methodology. The participants told their stories through various methods during different cycles, namely through interviews (cycle 1), Photovoice (cycle 2) and journal entries (cycle 3). A fourth cycle has also been realized by one of the participants' initiative to implement her own storytelling activities in the community following her participation in the previous three cycles. Observations were made by the researcher and recorded by means of field notes. The collected data were analysed using the software program ATLAS.tiTM. Content analysis was used to encode and analyse data from the interviews, Photovoice and journal entries. The results were discussed in accordance with the objective of the study in an attempt to answer the research question from the findings as comprehensively as possible. Change can serve as a guideline when change is based on how we see ourselves and the world we live in. The researcher therefore tried to form a true picture of how the participants see themselves and the world in which they live through all their stories. The researcher's familiarity with the community could make a positive as well as a negative contribution to the research. This familiarity made it possible for the researcher to understand statements and behaviours that might be obscured by an outsider or the finer nuances can escape outsiders, but at the same time the researcher had to be extremely careful to remain objective in all situations at all times because it could possibly lead to prejudices. The researcher has determined the ethical guidelines laid down by the Ethics Committee of the North-West University and endorses informed consent, transparency and privacy of the participants.

Storytelling as a strategy cannot exist in isolation, but forms part of an existing strategic plan of, for instance, the school. Storytelling has been found to serve as a participatory strategy that encourages ownership through dialogue and productive participation among individuals of a community when storytellers share their stories with each other. Therefore, storytelling can be regarded as a medium through which people create and negotiate knowledge in a social context (Senehi, 2010: 111). A partnership needs to be established that focuses on storytelling as an asset, therefore a partnership must be formed in which members of the partnership support each other in the strategy. Individuals from the community should be cautiously recruited as mentors in a partnership between school, family and community and be trained in storytelling as teaching strategy. These adults take a quasi-parental role and act as advisers, give acceptance and support and are role models to individuals from the community (Rowley,1999: 20-22). Storytelling must be performed in such a way that storytelling can achieve a particular purpose, namely to educate the community. For this purpose, the family, community and school act in partnership, as educating an individual requires the cooperation and involvement of teachers, parents and the community. Therefore, the model plan as rolled out in this study can be implemented to sustain storytelling. If a storytelling culture is created in the community as an extension of the school and parental home, it contributes to educate individuals and strengthening the hands of both the school and the home in their education task. According to Hatch (1998: 16), this meaningful community involvement through storytelling will trigger a chain of events that change the school's culture and the community serving the school.

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