Using e-mail to support reflective narration

This article presents an exploratory study of e-mail use for reflective narration. Narration is viewed from three perspectives: the narrating act, the narrative statement, and the story. These perspectives are used to characterize the 69 e-mails that were exchanged between 13 groups of children from three primary schools. The findings show that e-mail narration has monologic and dialogic qualities, and leads to cognitive and personal reflections on the learning task. We conclude that e-mail can serve a meaningful function in a narrative curriculum aimed at experiential inquiry. In addition, we suggest a need for future research that adopts a broad view of learning that includes different kinds of dialogues and values affective as well as cognitive aspects of these dialogues.