Storytelling As Pedagogy
What’s missing in educational content
It’s no secret that most educational content is pretty boring, especially when compared to all of the other information vying for learners’ attention.
High-quality digital content for the formal education sector is expensive to make considering the size of the addressable market, and it’s unclear that the educational benefits justify the current cost. In recent years, folks in the education community have pushed for greater investment in the creation of better educational videos, creative learning games and digital platforms with award-winning user experiences. The educational benefits of these investments, however, appear to be marginal at best.
Despite the murky ROI, these investments are not misguided. Early perhaps, but not misguided. Students at every level will benefit from quality educational material that provides an engaging and informative learning experience. It just may take some time for the economics to work out and the pedagogical frameworks of these tools to be more clear. I look forward to the day when we have West Wing-esque government lessons, Halo-quality learning games, and Slack-style learning platforms.
Even if we arrive at this utopian future full of high-quality learning content, we may not get the outcomes we hope for. Why? In my experience, educational content tends to be very modular. You might have a series of high-quality lessons to use for a given unit, but they don’t necessarily “fit” with the content for the rest of the course. Semesters don’t have through lines outside of the broadly defined subject matter.
What’s missing then?
Stitching it together with story
A small first step in the direction of (far) more compelling courses for students involves tapping into the power of story. Humans have always used narrative to make meaning, form identity and explain the world around us. In the context of learning, stories can stitch together information and place knowledge in the context of our experiences — using the all-important “real world applications” of learning to answer the question of “why does this matter to me?” in a way that feels natural.
To illustrate what I mean, let me tell you a quick story.
My senior year as a finance undergraduate began on the heels of the financial crisis in the summer of 2008. One of my professors threw out the textbook so to speak — getting away from the tightly-scoped-and-sequenced approach to explaining financial concepts — and asked us to read the Wall Street Journal before class. He told us to pay close attention to news about what was happening in domestic and global financial markets as a result of the housing collapse. The story of the Great Recession was unfolding right before our eyes, and that real-time narrative became the backbone of our course.
The news of the day became the story of finance for our class. There was an endless string of turns and twists, with heroes and villains entering the plot everyday. We used this driving narrative as the jumping off point for in-depth discussions and assignments related to the principles of finance at work. Our class explored the complexity of the mortgage-backed securities at the heart of the story, the rapidly fluctuating valuations of the companies involved, and the larger macroeconomic trends at play.
Just a few weeks ago, I went to see The Big Short and was reminded of this course. The movie was a course itself, first engaging the audience through story and pausing at key moments to explain what was happening from a financial perspective. It’s an illustrative example of what courses could be.
Some of you reading this will be quick to point out that it’s common practice for professors to use stories to supplement a course. I remember reading A Civil Action in a Business Law class. My point, though, is that we should consider elevating the role of story in our courses — from grade school through college — and make story more than just a feature.
A few useful stories-as-courses
As I thought about the importance of story as a framework for future course development, I racked my brain for similar examples that would be useful. Here are a few examples of books that offer a similar approach for mathematics, literature, and the social sciences:
MATHEMATICS: Mathematics for the Nonmathematician by Morris Kline
I found this book in a bargain bin at a book store in Tulsa, Oklahoma. While I have never read it cover to cover, I have gone back to it on a number of occasions both as a reference and as rainy-day reading. Kline explains the history of the development of the core ideas of mathematics starting from the time of the ancient Greeks. At each point, he tells the story of how various mathematicians arrived at their findings and what was animating their search for understanding before diving in to a nuanced exploration of resulting concepts. This provides a human framework for understanding why and how we arrived at each new discovery.
LITERATURE: S. by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst
This is one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever come across — a sort of book within a book. Lost creator J.J. Abrams and author Doug Dorst worked to together to first write the book Ship of Theseus by the fictitious and mysterious author V.M. Straka. Handwritten in the margins of this book is another story, described on Amazon as “[t]he chronicle of two readers finding each other, and their deadly struggle with forces beyond their understanding.” Another feature of the book, seen in the photo above, are a number of artifacts related to the story — postcards, facsimiles, newspaper clippings, maps and more — squeezed between the pages of the book. As a student learning to appreciate literature and the way it impacts our lives, I would have loved to engage both the story itself and the story surrounding the story. This gives teachers and students the chance to explore how a book itself can influence the lives of its readers.
SOCIAL SCIENCES: The Social Animal by David Brooks
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a big fan of David Brooks. I’ve always enjoyed the way he weaves politics and sociology into this semi-weekly New York Times column. I’ve read each of his books, and The Social Animal is one of my favorites. In it, Brooks tells the story of two characters, Harold and Erica, starting when they are children and tracing their story through to old age. At each phase of the story, Brooks weaves in the latest research from a number of disciplines, including psychology and sociology, to explore how our social lives shape who we are and are becoming. It’s easy to see how this story provides a nice backbone for a survey course of the social sciences.
Where we go next
The more I’ve learned about the power of stories, the more I wish they had factored prominently in my own education. When I consider the informal ways I learn now — the TED Talks I see, the documentaries I watch, the long-form articles I enjoy — I’m struck by the powerful stories that animate these learning moments.
As we think about the future of course design, my hope is that we’ll tap into the power of stories to drive curiosity and empathy, two of the key ingredients for creating lifelong learners. These learners, armed with insights and context for their coursework, will be inspired to live their lives with a sense of agency and curiosity that will lead to excellent academic outcomes.
