Story-Telling in Lectures: How a Narrative Pedagogy can create meaning for students in large group settings

Abstract

Good teachers know real learning is not acquired through short-term memorisation or learning just enough to pass a quiz, with answers likely forgotten tomorrow (Warrall-Davies, 1999; Armitt, Slack, Green, & Beer, 2002). Effective teachers also know rote learning at best offers shallow or ritual knowledge, while genuinely acquired deep knowledge will be internalised to create personal understanding (Ivanitskaya, Clark, Montgomery, & Primeau, 2002, p. 101). Indeed, the dichotomy of deep and surface learners, first set down by Marton and Säljö in 1976, has been a central theme in higher education research for nearly 40 years. In that time, reflective teachers have come to know that passive learning is likely to create, at best, inert knowledge that “sits in the mind’s attic” (Perkins, in Meyer & Land, 2003): dusty data unlikely to offer students gateways to higher levels of cognition. Efficient teachers now also understand that active learning, where students and teachers travel sign posted paths together, encourages students to draw on their own initiatives to produce an even greater capacity for life-long learning (Niemi, 2002).