Storytelling with COVID19. Quality Stories in early childhood

Abstract

This contribution aims to offer a reflection on storytelling in early childhood. It plays a fundamental role in training and development of the person, especially as far as emotion is concerned, as it constitutes an attempt to translate part of one's inner world into words, thanks to the aid of a literary genre that allows one to represent and socialize it in culturally defined ways.

The training process is always peculiarly narrative: one tells and everyone expresses himself; the training process is intrinsically relational and in this very relationality the negotiation of one's self with that of others is an element of vital importance. In this sense, storytelling can be considered valid training tool.

Storytelling there­fore assumes value to the extent that it is configured as an in­dispensable tool for the construction of meanings and for the facilit­ation of the process­es of social and org­anizational
change.

After a careful and accurate reflection on the narration and structure of a well-made story according to the model presented in "T­he Grammar of Stories" by Stein and Glenn (1979), during the lockdown period, an investigation was launched with the aim of ver­ifying whether cartoons put on display by the Italian digi­tal networks dedicat­ed to children aged 3 to 5 met these criteria and therefore they offered “w­ell-formed” stories.