Teaching and Learning in a Storytelling Culture

ABSTRACT

In the classroom, the ability to tell the right story at the right time is an essential pedagogical skill. Storytelling speaks to what makes us human: a search for meaning. In diverse instructional settings, non-stories provide information while resonant narratives teach, inspire, and motivate students by engaging them emotionally and intellectually. Inspirational stories in educational environments provide a compelling challenge, narrate the struggle to overcome that unexpected challenge, and deliver an eye-opening resolution that calls listeners to action. Because our lives and our cultures are composed of a series of overlapping stories, a single story is almost never the definitive story of another individual or culture essentially due to its incompleteness.

KEYWORDS:

• Culture
• learning environment
• learning styles
• motivation
• resources