Living and learning inside the story: How storytelling can shape curriculum design
Written by: Alex Beauchamp
7 min read
Alex Beauchamp, Assistant Headteacher and Lead Practitioner, Hunter’s Bar Junior School, UK; CPD Expert Adviser, Teacher Development Trust, UK
Stories provide a powerful tool for creating meaning in our lives and contexts and, consequently, organising information in our long-term memories. The reason why stories are so effective is that we are predisposed to being ‘swept away’ by how they are told and the sentiment behind them (Green and Brock, 2002, p. 714). But why is this the case? What can psychology reveal about why stories have such powerful advantages?
The cognitive advantages of stories
In their paper ‘Knowledge and memory: The real story’ (1995), Schank and Abelson claim that people are wired to be sensitive to information received in a narrative format, and argue that stories about personal experience are the key components of human memory and knowledge. Stories are easy to understand, easy to remember and are of interest to the audience – their predictable, ca
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