Teaching Trickster Tales: A Comparison of Instructional Approaches in Composition

A study compared two approaches to teaching 38 grade 4 students in Canada to write trickster tales. By integrating understandings from cognitive and neo-Piagetian theory into instructional method, a novel approach to writing instruction was created. The compositions of children taught via this method were compared to those of students who experienced a more typical instructional approach. Although both methods incorporated aspects of a writing process approach, only instruction of the experimental group was deliberately structured to support developmentally-referenced growth in narrative ability. Gender effects were also examined and the interaction of genre with development discussed. Results indicated that trickster tales, as a genre, were appropriate in supporting narrative development of 8- to 10-year-olds, when coupled with developmentally-based instructional techniques. Appended are story plot charts and a trick sequence. (Contains 6 notes, 1 table, and 63 references.) (NKA)