English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

In this paper, Indigenous and local understandings of the role of storytelling for children (nthanu) are contrasted with the didactic understandings of children’s stories that permeate the formal education frameworks of Malawi; frameworks which are deeply entangled in a colonial and (post)colonial history. For Chitonga speakers, the majority of whom live in rural communities along the northern lakeshore of Malawi, nthanu form a crucial part of what might be considered ‘education’ – as core components in the construction of the social-self, these oral stories play a critical role in the onto-epistemological formation of the young person. This storytelling is seen as marginalised by formal school systems. Through thick ethnographic material, the paper shows how people who are part of the ethno-linguistic group of the Tonga understand the role of story-telling for children as creating ontological notions of what it means to be human, to live in this world, and the sociality of being human that is seen as necessary for living a good life. In an examination of villagers’ fears about the disappearance of their stories, the paper locates the tensions between the literacy-oriented use of stories in formal schooling and the socio-ontological importance ascribed to stories in local learning modalities.

The power of stories: oral storytelling, schooling and onto-epistemologies in rural Malawi