In this chapter, I will focus on some social aspects of storytelling. First, I will explore the ways in which teachers and children in Sunday School participate together in storytelling. The impact of narratives on children's development depends, in part, on the ways in which children are involved in telling and listening to stories. Mehan, Lintz, Okamoto, and Willis (1995) criticized an African-American Christian academy as containing highly structured, teacher-centered classrooms in which children were not encouraged to have meaningful discussions about different perspectives. In chapter 6, adults at First Baptist Church described socialization beliefs and practices that displayed some overlap with the interpretation of Mehan et al., in that the adults viewed themselves as leading children in acquiring critical cultural knowledge. However, adults' descriptions of their beliefs and practices also differed profoundly from the interpretations of Mehan et al., in that they emphasized the importance of actively involving children in the learning process. In this chapter, I will describe the simultaneous ways in which teachers lead and children actively participate in storytelling at First Baptist Church.

Second, I will describe some socialization strategies through which teachers highlighted for children key concepts within narratives. Narratives are important to socialization, in part because stories communicate that particular events are meaningful and why (e.g., see Haden, Haine & Fivush, 1997; Labov & Waletzky, 1967; Ochs & Capps, 1996; Polanyi, 1985). Stories are told to make a point, often including the narrator's moral evaluation or critical judgments (e.g., Polanyi, 1985).