Storytelling and literacy practices in community - bringing together place, people and texts

Abstract Community-based literacy research frequently positions storytelling and children’s literature as powerful sites for engaging learners in culturally responsive and critical literacy practices. This scoping review synthesises both professional and peer-reviewed research studies published between 2015 and 2025 to examine how such practices are enacted through relationships between schools, families, and communities across a variety of contexts. Analysis of 14 studies revealed that literacy learning is most commonly framed as relational and contextually situated, with storytelling functioning as a shared practice where identity and agency are negotiated. Across the literature, literacy practices and texts functioned as relational artefacts embedded within community life, rather than as standalone physical or symbolic resources. However, the review highlights a persistent limitation: while community-based literacy approaches frequently invited participation and rich meaning-making, fewer studies attended to how such practices were sustained through ongoing or embedded triadic arrangements involving people, places, and texts. The findings suggest that community-based literacy initiatives are most generative when they move beyond dyadic models of engagement and instead adopt relational triadic approaches that position schools, families, and communities as co-educators and co-creators within literacy practices.