Story-telling abilities of young Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian children across three protocols

Purpose: Little is documented about the story-telling skills of Indigenous Australian children. Therefore, this study explores the complexity of stories produced by Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian children in their first year of school. Method: An observational design allowed comparison across cultural groups and story protocols. Three stories were elicited from 49 Indigenous and non-Indigenous children aged 4;10 to 6;5. Stories were analysed using the Index of Narrative Complexity (INC) to generate scores for each story element. Story elements were further categorised and evaluated for level of use across participants. Story protocol and cultural group effects were explored using ANOVA. Result: Participant stories featured high use of characters, initiating events, attempts, and consequences; and little use of internal plans, formulaic markers, causal adverbial markers and evaluations. Story complexity scores did not differ between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous children, but significant differences were evident among the three, story protocols. Conclusion: Findings suggest that story elicitation protocols and analysis methods used in this study may be appropriate for use with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous children from urban contexts. However, caution is needed when making diagnostic decisions based on story complexity without well-developed, culturally appropriate protocols and normative data.