I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a natural storyteller. Some people seem to have a gift for weaving compelling stories that capture the attention of everyone in earshot. My stepfather has this ability. When I was young he would craft elaborate, choose-your-adventure type, narratives that would keep my brother and I riveted at dinner time. And one of my best friends from high school could make even the most mundane daily events, like a trip to the shopping mall, seem so interesting that everyone would be on the edge of their seats listening to his retail escapades. Not me though, I’ve always been a matter-of-fact, get to the point, type of person.
I realized, however, that my aversion to storytelling would have to change after the birth of my first son. Like most children, he absolutely loves to listen to stories.
After climbing into our bed at around 6:30, “Can you tell me a story dad?” is the typical way I am awakened on the weekends.We even have a running series of narratives that include my son, his imaginary best friend (a character named Mikey), and his little tag-along-brother Emerson. The stories follow a typical pattern: while visiting a local park the kids find a hidden hole in the ground behind the jungle gym that leads to a giant cave filled with glowing crystals and vampire bats; or while enjoying a relaxing vacation in Costa Rica with the family the kids get lost in the jungle, stumbling upon a den of baby jaguars, and have to build a log raft to escape an angry crocodile; or while visiting a space museum the kids accidentally get locked inside a spaceship headed for Mars piloted by a chimpanzee trained in sign language.
My son cannot get enough of these stories; they are a potent and seductive drug for his little brain.
My son loves stories so much that my wife and I soon realized we could use stories as a useful parenting tool. Nothing grabs my son’s attention quicker than saying, “I want to tell you a story.” Upon hearing these words, my son will usually cease whatever chaos he is perpetrating, quickly climb into my lap, and say, “What is the story about dad?” I imagine anyone who has experience with young children is nodding their head at this point. Most parents I know are fully aware of the power that stories have to capture a child’s attention and their magical ability to sustain a child’s interest far beyond what their short attention spans generally allow.
But Stories for Learning?
But here is a secret I want to share: Stories are not just for children and they are not just for entertainment — stories package information in a way that is perfectly designed for mental consumption. As a dad I get to see how stories supercharge my son’s learning every day.
For instance, my son frequently refers to stories my wife or I told him weeks, or even months, previously — connecting new experiences with these past narratives — while quickly forgetting or losing interest when I try to explain something directly to him. Furthermore, my son is never more mentally engaged than when he is listening to a story, his mind continually anticipating what comes next and always asking questions. Finally, stories are an invaluable tool for helping to teach my son ideas like empathy, allowing him to emotionally simulate how he would feel in a given situation, and using that experience to guide his behavior.
This claim that stories are ideal for learning, however, is not based solely on my anecdotal experiences as a father. The power of stories to improving learning is also supported by empirical research. In fact, stories are widely regarded by researchers as “psychologically privileged” in the human mind (Graesser & Ottati, 1995; Willingham, 2009). Compared to expository methods, information presented in the form of stories has consistently been found to be more interesting (Britton, Graesser, Glynn, Hamilton, & Penland, 1983), more quickly and deeply understood (Graesser, Hoffman, & Clark, 1980; Gibson & Levin, 1975; Moore & Zabrucky, 1999), and more likely to be recalled later (Black & Bern, 1981; Graesser, Hauft-Smith, Cohen, & Plyes, 1980; Zabrucky & Moore, 1999).
So what’s so special about stories when it comes to learning? A lot, actually.
Based on what we know about how people learn, stories have a number of inherent benefits compared to alternative methods for presenting information:
- Stories are better able to capture learner interest and sustain learner motivation — critical for optimal learning — through the inclusion of uncertainty, novelty, puzzles, and surprises (Jarvela & Renninger, 2014)
- Stories help convey the value and importance of instructional material; they provide a context that helps to persuade learners’ brains that the material matters (Zull, 2002)
- Stories situate knowledge in a concrete and embodied way, starting at a personal and relatable level and moving up to more abstract concepts
- Stories leverage the natural human propensity for mental simulation and transportation; we mirror the feelings and experiences of story characters creating a richer and more emotionally compelling learning experience (Stephens, Silbert, & Hasson, 2010).
- Stories engender an active listening disposition; researchers have found it is nearly impossible for people to resist engaging in the mental work of inference and the crafting causal explanations when listening to a story (Hassin, Bargh, & Uleman, 2002)
- Stories provide a relationally dense and causally rich framework that reflects the contextual way that our memories are encoded in the brain (Marcus, 2008)
- Stories provide a familiar and comfortable latent structure (story grammar) that aids listeners as they attempt to link ideas and make sense of complex relationships
In summary, stories are deeply interesting and motivating, they provide a familiar and useful structure that aids comprehension, and they improve recall by actively engaging the brain in simulation and continuous acts of mental inference.
As a fun illustration of that last point, consider the following statements:
Where is Paul?
I really shouldn’t say anything, but I saw a Sarah leaving the bar alone.
Try to answer the following question before reading on: “What is going on here — what is the relationship between Paul and Sarah?”
I bet your brain quickly and easily came up with a plausible answer. What your brain did not do was say, “Oh, there is not enough information to make any sense of these statements.” Rather, your mind automatically constructed a plausible story connecting these statements together. We crave stories because that is how we naturally make sense of the world — we understand events, relationships, and ideas in terms of stories and our brains will create them if they are not provided.
Stories in Teaching
Given this evidence, I would argue that stories should have a far greater role at all levels of education. Stories offer a potentially powerful and relatively inexpensive strategy for increasing student interest, comprehension, and retention of material. Unfortunately, most educational content is presented to students using purely expository methods — a hierarchically defined sequence of objective and neutral explanations. A great example of this is the typical school textbook. Research on learning and stories suggest this overreliance on expository approaches in education is misguided.
While the additional work involved in crafting a compelling story may initially appear to be superfluous details, it’s these details that make information conveyed in stories ideally suited for human learning. Whether you are four or eighty-four, there is nothing better for capturing the human imagination or supporting meaningful learning than a good story.
On that note, I think I’m going to go tell a story to my son now…I need all the practice I can get!
References
Black, J. B., & Bern, H. (1981). Causal coherence and memory for events in narratives. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 20, 267–275.
Britton, B. K., Graesser, A. C., Glynn, S. M., Hamilton, T., & Penland, M. (1983) Use of cognitive capacity in reading: Effects of some content features of text. Discourse Processes, 6, 39–57.
Gibson, E. J., & Levin (1975). The psychology of reading. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press.
Graesser, A. C., Hauft-Smith, K., Cohen, A. D., & Pyles, L. D. (1980). Advanced outlines, familiarity, and text-genre on retention of prose. The Journal of Experimental Education, 48(4), 281–290.
Graesser, A. C., Hoffman, N. L., & Clark, L. F. (1980). Structural components of reading time. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 135–151.
Graesser, A. C. and Ottati, V. (1995) Why Stories? Some evidence, questions, and challenges.Knowledge and Memory: The Real Story: Advances in Social Cognition, Volume 8. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ.
Hassin, R. R., Bargh, J. a., & Uleman, J. S. (2002). Spontaneous causal inferences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 515–522.
Jarvela, S. & Renninger, K. A. (2014) Designing for Learning: Interest, Motivation, and Engagement. In Keith Sawyer (Ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences 2nd Edition. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Marcus, G. (2008). Kludge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Moore, K. M. & Zabrucky, D. (1999). Influence of Text Genre on Adults’ Monitoring of Understanding and Recall. Educational Gerontology, 25(June 2015), 691–710.
Stephens, G. J., Silbert, L. J., & Hasson, U. (2010). Speaker–listener neural coupling underlies successful communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(32), 14425–14430.
Willingham, D. (2009) Why Don’t Students Like Schools? A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Zabrucky, K. M., & Moore, D. (1999). Influence of text genre on adults’ monitoring of understanding and recall. Educational Gerontology, 25, 691–710.
Zull, J. (2002). The Art Of Changing The Brain: Enriching the practice of teaching by exploring the biology of learning. Sterling, Virginia: Stylus Publishing, LLC.
