The Impact Of Storytelling In Education & Training

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Written By NR Medical Training

What is a story?

“a description, either true or imagined, of a connected series of events”

(Cambridge Dictionary, 2019)

 
“The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.”
— Mary Catherine Bateson

Essentially then, a story is a depiction of a set of events, true or imagined and told through verbal means, written word, dance, art, the list goes on! We can convey a limitless amount of ideas, feelings, thoughts and messages through story telling. It is as old as time itself, and is a powerful method of communication.

How can we / do we utilise story telling in education and training?

Learning through storytelling refers to a technique in which learning is arranged around a narrative or story as a means of ‘sense making’. To engage students and spread knowledge, it makes use of personal stories and anecdotes. (Moon, 2010).

Although educators have long utilised storytelling as a technique of disseminating knowledge and assisting their learners to make sense of difficulties until recently these stories typically occurred spontaneously and were regarded too lightweight to be vital to learning and teaching activities. However, with the growing understanding of the need for reflection within learning and the recognition that meaningful ties need to be formed between theory and practice the potential for learning through storytelling is beginning to be recognised. Alterio, & McDrury. (2003).

Stories are great aids for learning due to their capacity to enhance the following cognitive processes: i) concretising ii) absorption and iii) structurising.

 

i)                    Concretising — stories allow us to make sense of what may otherwise be an abstract or difficult subject by the provision of links with tangible or concrete examples. For example, the story of the impact of the market upon healthcare might provide a real example of marketization within the public sector something which may otherwise seem hard to conceive of.

ii)                   Assimilation — learning is a continuing process of integrating new information with current information and cognitive structures (cf. 'scaffolding' and Piaget’s phases of learning). The use of a tale particularly a well-known story or one to which everyone can relate can be an effective means of presenting a new topic to learners or enabling them to see earlier material from a new perspective. For example, the scene from Alice in Wonderland where Alice encounters the Cheshire Cat and begs for directions is a classic story which can take on a fresh perspective if brought to us as adults within the framework of ‘goal setting’.

iii)           Structurizing - the use of stories in education can enable students in transferring the concepts they have been taught to use in other scenarios not immediately related to the initial setting. Parkin (1998) & Simons (1984) explored the power of story for teaching complex subjects such as electricity. He examined 61 pupils and followed the teaching with 40-item multiple choice examinations. The results of Simon’s study indicated that teaching using tales led to increased performance in all students with those who learnt from narrative having a more palpable grasp of the topic and of the relationship between concepts than those whose learning did not contain story. (Evans & Evans, 1989).  

“When storytelling is formalized in thoughtful and meaningful ways it captures … everyday moments and turns them into learning opportunities. ”
— (McDrury and Alterio 2003).

What effects does story telling have on our memory?

There has been a fantastic article written on a research study that was carried out looking at the brain weaving in newly formed memories and the effect of how the initial story was told on these new memories. You can read this article here – LINK TO ARTICLE HERE

 

The key takeaway points -

  • People find it simpler to remember the specifics of numerous events, both in real life and in made-up universes, when the stories being told are coherent.

  • A strong storyline is necessary for memorable storytelling.

  • Recent fMRI-based study demonstrates how the hippocampus combines several elements of a tale into a single coherent narrative memory. (Cohn-Sheehy et al., 2021).

Ultimately, a cohesive and well told story made a huge difference in how the brain formulated the information and stored it as a memory. In disjointed stories, where things didn’t quite link up very well and the narrative was all over the place, the brain didn’t seem to retain the information as well as when the story was well told.

-          An interesting point to be aware of as trainers and educators.

These are yet more reasons why we use story telling within our training. There are so many benefits associated with it and in addition to all of that – it makes for a more enjoyable experience! We speak from experience and passion. We tell stories of events we’ve been involved with, patients we have helped at their most desperate moment, families of those patients, babies as young as just been born all the way up to those well into their 90s and taking their final breaths. We weave our own stories into our training and hold space for those undertaking training to tell their own stories.  

NR Medical Training
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