Over the last decade, various organisations, scholars and educators across the globe have been arguing for the need to foster dialogue between and with children regarding the world they want to have, in terms of both justice and sustainability. Research has shown that stories and storytelling have a world-making and world-changing character that may trigger children’s social imagination on social justice issues and help them play a participatory role in society. In this context, the study presented here aimed to empower children to speak up for their beliefs and to become active agents of change in relation to social justice issues. To meet our research goals, we developed workshops around traditional folktales, which we implemented in four schools in Cyprus. During these workshops, we promoted critical dialogue for social justice issues through pertinent collaborative storytelling activities. Collaborative storytelling is a method that can involve participants in critical dialogue, enabling them to produce innovative and creative counter-stories. This can potentially deepen their perceptions about social justice, while also allowing them to communicate the knowledge they have built in engaging and accessible ways. Data collection included observations during workshops, as well as post-implementation interviews with a purposive sample of child participants. Our findings suggest that the children deployed either a ‘we are all different’ or a ‘we are all the same’ discourse to define social justice. Nonetheless, as the project progressed, they seemed to gradually turn to a ‘we need to see injustice to be able to act against it’ discourse. This project aims to contribute to academic discussions on promoting dialogue with children on social justice issues, and cultivating children’s metacognitive skills about societal injustices.

中文翻译：

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授权儿童就社会正义问题发表意见和采取行动：民间故事和协作讲故事作为社会想象工具的使用

在过去的十年里，全球的各种组织、学者和教育工作者一直在争论有必要在正义和可持续性方面促进儿童之间和儿童之间关于他们想要拥有的世界的对话。研究表明，故事和讲故事具有创造世界和改变世界的特性，可能会引发儿童对社会正义问题的社会想象，并帮助他们在社会中发挥参与作用。在这种情况下，这里介绍的研究旨在使儿童能够为自己的信仰发声，并成为与社会正义问题相关的变革的积极推动者。为了实现我们的研究目标，我们围绕传统民间故事开发了研讨会，并在塞浦路斯的四所学校实施。在这些研讨会期间，我们通过相关的协作讲故事活动促进了对社会正义问题的批判性对话。协作式讲故事是一种可以让参与者参与批判性对话的方法，使他们能够产生创新和创造性的反故事。这可能会加深他们对社会正义的认识，同时也使他们能够以引人入胜且易于理解的方式交流他们积累的知识。数据收集包括研讨会期间的观察，以及对有目的的儿童参与者样本的实施后访谈。我们的研究结果表明，孩子们使用“我们都是不同的”或“我们都一样”的话语来定义社会正义。尽管如此，随着项目的推进，他们似乎逐渐转向“我们需要看到不公正现象才能采取行动反对它”的话语。该项目旨在促进学术讨论，促进与儿童就社会正义问题进行对话，培养儿童对社会不公的元认知技能。