That’s not a narrative; this is a narrative: NAPLAN and pedagogies of storytelling

For the past eight years, Australian school students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 have engaged in the National Assessment Program–Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) writing test, with a one-in-two chance they will be tasked with producing a ‘narrative’ genre. This paper examines the way in which the very notion of storytelling and narrative is conceptualised in the NAPLAN supporting documentation, and its potential negative consequences. The paper begins by providing a review of the literature on storytelling, paying particular attention to research which has established the ‘ComplicationResolution’ narrative as one type of storytelling. It then provides an account of how story and narrative are typically characterised and defined in the official NAPLAN documentation, that is, as the ‘Complication-Resolution’ narrative exclusively. The final section of the paper presents a genre analysis of eight student writing samples and the related comments and gradings from the NAPLAN narrative marking guide. The analysis found a number of student texts in the marking guide that were effectively structured stories, but which had been marked down for Text Structure because they did not comply with the specific structure of the ‘Complication-Resolution’ narrative. The analysis also found a number of texts that scored highly with respect to the Text Structure criterion, even though they were not instances of the Complication-Resolution narrative sub-type. Drawing on these findings, the paper argues that various inconsistencies and points of apparent confusion in these comments and gradings can be taken as evidence that other sub-types of storytelling are being inappropriately devalued, and that ultimately, there is a lack of understanding in the nature of storytelling in the NAPLAN documentation. By way of conclusion, the paper reflects on some of the negative consequences that may flow from storytelling being defined in this limited way, including the implications for how storytelling is taught by teachers and caregivers, the potential misdirection of students as to what constitutes a ‘good’ story, as well as the cultural implications of limiting stories to one specific type.