Narrative Learning Theory and Open Educational Resources

 Ron Striegel, M.S.Ed.

"If we make sense of our experience through storying it, it follows that we construct our understanding of ourselves narratively" (Clark, 2010).

Storytelling is ancient, but the "narrative paradigm" is relatively new. In 1984 Walter Fisher first posited that all complicated and descriptive communication could best be understood by Homo sapiens in a narrative format (Fisher, 1984). Literature reviews show studies building on this idea. New information transcending scientific disciplines is at the forefront of research even though it is applied to ancient knowledge transfer techniques.

 In a study of hospitalized children, storytelling was found to increase oxytocin, which when released as a natural hormone in the brain reduces pain and increases human bonding by creating a feeling of empathy. Storytelling also reduces the stress hormone cortisol (Brockington, 2021). This study may seem like an outlier; however, evidence suggests that scientists across disciplines are using their education and skills to dissect the science of storytelling. This is done not casually, but causally, with frequent conversations and academic studies on the subject. Scientific storytelling communities such as The Story Collider focus on the shared benefits of narrative learning in sessions at academic conferences as alternatives to other research methods (Suzuki, 2018). Long held to be a practice related to the humanities, storytelling has jumped to the sciences.

In her article' Dialogues: The Science and Power of Storytelling,' Suzuki found that each scientist she interviewed focused on a particular aspect of how the science of storytelling affects their understanding of their scientific discipline (Suzuki, 2018). Each interviewee had their subjective take on narrative learning and how it impacts their field. Educators studying the science of learning have their emphases as well. As an educational researcher in Indigenous and Latino serving community colleges, my focus for the past three years has been narrative learning theory as it applies to open education resources (OER). Using OER best practices, my students and colleagues can create their own lesson plans and academic critical texts generated from traditional storytelling.

Early childhood and secondary educators are effective at telling stories in preschool through the fourth grade and using those stories to teach STEM. "All of the components of STEM can be infused into every classroom using children's literature. Consider the opportunities that teachers have to read stories aloud to their students. Either through the textbook or from classroom literature selections, learners of all ages can be pulled into a good book" (Maslyk, n.d.). By middle school, the Eurocentric education model silos subject matter, disconnecting subjects in a way that disrupts holistic learning and cognitive acceptance.

Why does storytelling work, and what sets storytelling apart from learning rote facts? Jerome Bruner's work on narratives and learning speaks to the natural methods that humans have employed to learn throughout history (Bruner, 1991) argues that we make sense of the world through narrative constructs, and our minds are highly structured in how we organize these narratives. Similar to assembling a jigsaw puzzle, we try to place each piece of information where it fits within our understanding. When a textbook introduces information that doesn’t follow a narrative form, our brains may struggle to integrate it. This difficulty arises when we attempt to fit the information into an existing framework, and if it doesn’t fit, we often attribute this to cognitive overload or other mental strain.

He suggests that when a narrative follows a predictable pattern, it becomes familiar and cognitively expected. For example, in a romance novel, the cycle of a boy meeting a girl, a boy losing a girl, and a boy getting a girl back is a sequential pattern commonly expected in such narratives. His interpretation of the Hermeneutic Circle is not just about understanding isolated facts but about how meaning is generated by relating parts of the narrative to the whole and vice versa. When instructional facts are embedded in a narrative, the mind recognizes them as part of the story, making them easier to comprehend and retain in long-term memory by integrating them into the broader narrative context.

 Narrative structures can vary across genres, such as fairy tales and postmodern literature, and our understanding of the sequential nature of the story will vary depending on the developmental level of the reader. However the story is presented, we make sense of it the way we make sense of the world. When introduced to storytelling in preschool by caregivers at the age of 3 or 4 (Engle, n.d.), we learn from a constructivist point of view that stories are sequential, even if the construct of the novel we are reading does not move in a linear fashion. We cognitively search for patterns in narration that mimic our reality. By interweaving learning opportunities through narratives, the teacher can leave well-placed neuro hooks on which to place their pedagogy that the learner will remember. As Bruner points out in describing his ten principles of the narrative, the storyteller has constructed "…a world of reality according to narrative principles". (Bruner, 1991).

To explore the potential of OER-linked stories, a novel was scanned by AI for use in STEM and social sciences classrooms. Ten chapters of the novel were taught in college-level English courses at Lamar Community College. Subsequently, the instructor and I presented our results at the American Library Association's LibLearnX Conference in 2024 (Striegel & Goodland, 2024). The cohort experienced textbooks in the first semester, then the novel and OER in the second semester. They reported high interest, even requesting to see the next week's readings in advance. The instructor reported improved critical thinking and writing skills (Striegel & Goodland, 2024). Neural activity increases when storytelling is used to educate, and my practicum reflects current research (Lazauskas, 2019).

When presenting our research at LibLearnX, our presentation was expanded to include a workshop for librarian-educators. We included an Ojibwe children's book, "Meet Your Family," and invited participants to contribute their stories to produce their own OER in a template. The workshop included educators from several grade levels, school librarians, and staff from the Library of Congress that are currently working on an indigenous storytelling project. (Striegel & Goodland, 2024)

Concurrent with this project I have been applying and refining these techniques and concepts to teaching licensure classes at San Juan College, a Native American and Hispanic-Serving Institution in Farmington, New Mexico. Introducing alternative licensure candidate teachers to a combination of narrative learning theory and OER improves critical thinking and deepens their understanding of how to create pedagogical material for their K-12 school in communities with limited resources. This approach not only introduces new teacher candidates to the concept of OER and narrative learning theory but also serves to decolonize education because the stories that teachers can use come from any cultural perspective. This approach is also in step with the New Mexico Supreme court decision known Yazzie-Martinez which found  that educational opportunities in New Mexico are not equal and reflect a bias against Native American and Latina students. (Yazzie/Martinez 2018) The potential of narrative learning theory to legitimize the benefits of storytelling in an academic context is rife for expansion and serves to elevate perspectives often excluded from academic content creation.

Open educational resource (OER) creation is not a fringe activity. A cursory literature review reveals that the U.S. Department of Education has provided guidance on involving teachers in creating content for their classrooms. An article in the I-manager's Journal of Educational Technology advocates for training pre-service teachers in OER content creation. The term "OER" was originally coined in 2002 during a forum by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) with the purpose of facilitating the sharing of unique information among member countries (Kumar, 2012). The article in the Journal of Educational Technology, published more than a decade ago, appeared ten years after UNESCO outlined steps for institutions to develop courses that can be incorporated into a teacher education curriculum.

It is interesting to note the pushback against OER creation a decade ago. Kumar states that the chief complaint for teachers who created OER is their lack of knowledge for finding peer-reviewed work. (Kumar, 2012)

A factor driving the explosion of OER content in education is textbook cost. Between the first mention of OER at UNESCO in 2002 and the article in the technology journal in 2012 textbooks cost increased 82 % (GAO 2013) and from 2012 until 2023 they rose another 83% (Education Data 2023). Cost has been a driving factor in legislation that addresses the perceived overcharging for textbooks. In 2023, half of all states have considered OER legislation that requires universities and colleges to maintain a certain percentage of classes that use only OER for instructional purposes (Rodriguez).  OER creation specialists are part of the librarian landscape now with more and more two year and four-year institution hiring those MLIS degreed librarians that have a background in OER creation.

Information on creating OER content for pedagogical use has been around for almost 25 years. Educational researchers and theorists have been studying narrative learning theory for decades. These two disciplines can work in harmony to create a learning environment that complements the natural way that humans create and make sense of reality in the unique space that they occupy. Narrative learning is innately unbiased and has applications that can be supported by different teaching and learning theories. Narrative learning can be teased from classical writing, graphic novels, readers at every level, and even family stories of events and customs. Peer-reviewed research that compares educational outcomes of narrative learning with convention pedagogy should be considered. It is a fascinating topic, and with the introduction of AI, the research space is large.

Citations

Average Cost of College Textbooks [2023]: Prices per Year. (n.d.). Education Data Initiative. Retrieved May 10, 2024, from https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-textbooks

Brockington, Guilherme, et al. “Storytelling Increases Oxytocin and Positive Emotions and Decreases Cortisol and Pain in Hospitalized Children.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 118, no. 22, 2021, p. e2018409118, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2018409118.

Bruner, J. (1991). The Narrative Construction of Reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), 1–21. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1343711

Clark, Carolyn. “Narrative Learning: Its Contours and Its Possibilities.” New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, vol. 126, no. Summer, 2010, pp. 1–10, https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1002/ace.367.

Students Have Greater Access to Textbook Information. (2013, June). GAO Highlights. https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-13-368.pdf

Engle, Susan Storytelling in the First Three Years. (n.d.). ZERO TO THREE. Retrieved May 9, 2024, from https://www.zerotothree.org/resource/storytelling-in-the-first-three-years/

Suzuki, Wendy A., et al. “Dialogues: The Science and Power of Storytelling.” The Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 38, no. 44, Oct. 2018, pp. 9468–70,

Fisher, Walter R. “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument.” Communication Monographs, vol. 51, no. 1, 1984, pp. 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1080/03637758409390180.

Huges, J., Oliveria, Justina Bickford, C. (n.d.). THE POWER OF STORYTELLING TO FACILITATE HUMAN CONNECTION AND LEARNING [Magazine]. Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning Boston University. Retrieved April 19, 2024, from https://sites.bu.edu/impact/previous-issues/impact-summer-2022/the-power-of-storytelling/#:~:text=Stories%20elicit%20student%20attention%2C%20giving,help%20students%20connect%20with%20others.

Lazauskas, J. & S., J. (2019, July 12). The Strange Thing That Happens In Your Brain When You Hear a Good Story -- And How to Use It to Your Advantage [Blog]. An Introduction to Marketing Psychology. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/the-strange-thing-that-happens-in-you-brain-when-you-hear-a-good-story-and-how-to-use-it-to-your-advantage

KUMAR MISRA, P. (2012, September). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1102031.pdf. U.S. Department of Education. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1102031.pdf

Maslyk, J. (N.D.). Educators Blog [Blog]. Supporting STEM Learning Through Literacy. https://blog.definedlearning.com/blog/engaging-students-in-stem-learning-through-literacy#:~:text=All%20of%20the%20components%20of,in%20to%20a%20good%20book.

Rodriguez, J. (n.d.). LibGuides: Open Educational Resources (OER): OER Legislation. Retrieved May 10, 2024, from https://oakland.libguides.com/OER/Legislation

Striegel, R., & Goodland, J. (2024, January 21). Narrative Learning Theory and Open Educational Resources Across the Grade Levels. LibLearnX, Baltimore, Maryland.

https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1942-18.2018.

Yazzie/Martinez v. State of New Mexico Decision. (n.d.). New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty. https://nmpovertylaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Graphic-Yazzie-Martinez-