Enhancing Learning Through Storytelling
By Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel
Imagine you are enrolled in a life sciences course and learning about stochastic molecular motion in biological systems (i.e., how molecules move in random ways within cells and other parts of living things). You are given the option to study the topic using either a) expository instruction which focuses on explaining the topic, b) a narrative instruction where the explanation of the topic is embedded into a story-like narrative that offers additional background information (e.g., about the lives of the researchers who discovered the phenomenon), or c) a narrative blurb that is then followed by expository instruction. Here are examples of the three options:
Expository instruction: “The thermal energy leads not only to rotations or vibrations, whereby covalently bonded atoms move back and forth relative to each other, but also to translational movements, which move molecules from one location to another. This allows molecules to move very efficiently through the cell. In addition, individual molecules collide with each other and constantly change their direction of travel. As a result, molecules embark on a random path through the cytosol that allows them to move quickly from one side of the cell to the other…”
Narrative instruction: “Maud quickly realized that the thermal motion of particles that Robert Brown had seen in his light microscope also resembled the random motion of molecules in cells. Although the interior of the cell is very densely packed, all the particles rotate, vibrate, and move continuously through the cell without a destination. With meticulous care, Maud prepared experiments in her lab in Berlin to study the interaction of enzymes and substrates. She worked day and night, and when she finally had her data, everything suddenly seemed so clear: products were formed more quickly when more substrate was present…”
Narrative prior to expository instruction: “Historical background: Maud quickly realized that the thermal motion of particles that Robert Brown had seen in his light microscope also resembled the random motion of molecules in cells. With meticulous care, Maud prepared experiments in her laboratory in Berlin to study the interaction of enzymes and substrates… Theoretical findings: Cells contain countless different enzymes and molecules, often in very small numbers. The enzymes are responsible for catalyzing thousands of reactions of substrate molecules per minute…”
A recent experiment by Tobler et al. (1) investigated the effects of these three instruction methods on transfer performance in students and whether the effects depended on students’ prior knowledge. The researchers also examined a variety of learning mechanisms such as cognitive load, situational interest, cognitive engagement, and self-efficacy. Before revealing the results, let’s take a look at the potential benefits and pitfalls of using narratives and storytelling methods for learning.
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The one pitfall that comes to mind when considering using interesting narratives in instruction is the seductive details effect: The detrimental effects of introducing interesting details (e.g., narratives) that are weakly related to the material and mostly irrelevant to understanding the topic. We have discussed the seductive details effect before (see here and here). However, Tobler et al. (1) raise some valid theoretical explanations of why using narratives could be beneficial:
Enhanced Test Comprehension: Narratives can facilitate text comprehension in students. Particularly when it comes to more complicated material, narratives can offer a more familiar structure that makes the material meaningful to students. Story-like narratives make the material more concrete, too, which can ease students into a topic which, in turn, increases their comprehension of it.
Enhanced Cognitive Engagement: Narratives could potentially increase a student's motivation and interest to engage with the material more and wanting to learn the material which would contribute to better comprehension of the topic. Self-efficacy could be increased through narratives because of the experience of comprehending a topic and successfully engaging with the material.
Enhanced Cognitive Load Efficiency: Narratives cater to more authentic communication that students are familiar with (i.e., a story-like narrative is more consistent with how we communicate on a daily basis than expository text) which could facilitate the focus of mental resources on understanding the topic (i.e., germane cognitive load) by circumventing the more challenging aspects of text comprehension that are more prominent in expository texts (i.e., extraneous cognitive load).
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In their experiment, students took a prior knowledge test at the beginning, read one of the versions of the instructional text (i.e., expository, narrative, narrative-before-expository), and then took a test with transfer questions on the material. As mentioned before, the researchers also measured a range of other variables (e.g., interest, cognitive load, self-efficacy).
The results showed that the effects of instruction type on transfer performance depended on the level of prior knowledge in students:
Low prior knowledge: These students benefitted most from learning from the text that embedded the educational content into a story-like narrative (narrative instruction).
High prior knowledge: These students benefitted most from being provided with the story-like narrative first followed by the expository content (narrative-before-expository).
Germane cognitive load and self-efficacy were the two factors that seem to be particularly enhanced in students when narratives were used. The narrative nature of the explanations guided the mental resources to the essential details because the story-like features embedded the topic into a more concrete and familiar context – making the content easier to grasp and engage with. This could explain why the low prior knowledge students benefitted particularly from embedding the target content into the narrative. For students with high prior knowledge, the narrative part worked best when it was presented prior to (and separate from) the educational content. The authors suggest that the primary function of the narrative here was to prepare the learner for the learning of the more abstract content. The mechanisms involved in the learning of educational content through forms of narration and storytelling also contributed to higher levels of self-efficacy.
There is still a lot to unpick in regard to cognitive mechanisms and contributing factors to the findings, but the presented research reveals an interesting aspect for the use of narrative approaches and storytelling in education that is worth exploring further.
(cover image by Lum3n on Pexels)
Reference
(1) Tobler, S., Sinha, T., Köhler, K., & Kapur, M. (2024). Telling stories as preparation for learning: A Bayesian analysis of transfer performance and investigation of learning mechanisms. Learning and Instruction, 92, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2024.101944
