Jennifer Moon on Using Story in Education

Jennifer Moon's book Using Story shows how story is a complex social and communicative phenomenon with multiple conditions, purposes, and effects. While explaining the use of story in higher education, she touches on the characteristics of story that I believe are useful when considering it as a professional development tool. I’ll highlight six of those characteristics and add some of my own thoughts.

One, stories are an implicit and connotative form of communication. Certain elements of the story are difficult to put into language; they are contextual and deal with ideas manifest in specific and concrete situation. As a result, important elements of the story are conveyed symbolically. Description in a story exists to make the story work, not to inform or persuade the audience.

Two, stories happen within a frame that separates them from reality. The frame is part of what gives meaning to the events within the story; the frame is the setting and it’s also the underlying principles that determine which events and which characters are relevant to the story and relevant to the lessons the story conveys.

Three, stories present representative norms and behavioral expectations just as much as (or maybe even more than) they convey factual information. We like to say that stories (esp. myths and folktales) tell us what and why nature is the way it is (e.g., a story that explains the origins of a particular mountain in the shape of a bear). But really, many stories actually help us navigate the complexities of living in nature by showing us the moral and behavioral alternatives we face in day-to-day living.

Four, stories are good for studying underlying assumptions as well as alternative actions and implications. Assumptions, implications, and actions are not always explicit to us in the same way as clear explanation or explicit argumentation. Because stories trade in the currency of implicit and symbolic ideas, they anthropologically reveal our underlying beliefs about and what we expect will result from our actions in the world here and now.

Five, stories tend to express the exceptional as opposed to theory which expresses the commonplace. Stories are about change: unexpected change in the status quo or needed change in the face of stagnation. Stories reveal and give meaning to the exceptional events that interrupt the stasis of the commonplace.

And six, stories are correlated with identity; hence, changing a story might be correlated with changing personal and institutional identity. Obviously stories chronicle events, but those events happen to the characters of the story, to people. The events aren’t as important as what the events mean to the characters; the characters’ identities are in play as a result of the events that happen.

citation: Jennifer A. Moon. Using Story: In Higher Education and Professional Development. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Patrick Lowenthal on Online Storytelling as Professional Development

Patrick Lowenthal opens with the claim that current professional development activities don't actually change faculty behavior. As a result, he advocates storytelling (and specifically online storytelling) as a potential solution to this problem. Storytelling, he goes on to say, is not discussed much in the professional development literature, but it is discussed in the educational literature, and that's where he borrows many of his ideas from.

Stories, according to Lowenthal, have four characteristics that make them worthwhile professional development tools and that also separate them from other types of explanatory discourse. First, stories deal with concrete examples (rather than vague abstractions).

My commentary: Stories deal with common (or even universal) issues and conflicts that people experience and that audiences relate to. Likewise, stories also involve specific characters, acting in specific settings, with specific plot events. Insomuch as stories address larger themes, those themes are manifest within concrete and detailed situations.

Second, stories provide frameworks and contexts that situate meaning (rather than meaning embedded in the message itself, independent of any context).

My commentary: The situatedness of a story shows us how the story's meaning is bound to that context and makes sense mainly within that context. Explanatory messages, on the other hand, are meant to convey ideas that exist and make sense separate from the situation and without much of a context.

Third, stories build personal experiences that facilitate meaning making and memory (rather than merely transfer information).

My commentary: The audience of any communication event will experience that communication event personally and socially. If that communication is explanatory, on the one hand, our experience of the discourse will be information-rich, literal, and we will feel disconnected from the sources of that information. If that communication event is a story, on the other hand, our experience of the discourse is more likely to be eventful, symbolic, we are more likely to feel like we're participating in the events themselves.

And fourth, stories are embedded with the social context in which meaning is created socially (rather than other forms of discourse which create meaning in the language of the message itself).

My commentary: Because stories reveal specific and concrete instances, and because stories are embedded within contexts and frameworks, and because stories build experiences, the social quality of storytelling means the relational aspects of the communication are as important (or more important) than the content aspects. Stories are understood through relationships and social interaction more than explanations (which are understood largely through clear and effective expression).

Lowenthal makes one more point which I'm mostly glossing over here. He claims that moving professional development storytelling online means that digital storytelling applications become a viable option for professional development.

citation: Patrick R. Lowenthal. “Online Faculty Development and Storytelling: An Unlikely Solution to Improving Teacher Quality.” Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. 4.3 (Sept. 2008): 349-356. http://jolt.merlot.org/vol4no3/lowenthal_0908.pdf

Storytelling Retreat at the Center for Teaching Quality

This past summer the Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ) facilitated a retreat for teachers from across the country to learn about telling their professional teacher leader stories.

At the retreat, the teachers worked to “…develop and share their stories of teacher leadership impact in the hopes of shifting the current cultural narrative surrounding teaching and learning” (para. 1). This statement explains what they did and why they did it; the statement also shows us some of the assumptions made by and motivations for the retreat.

First, the description tells us something they did: the retreat taught teachers how to develop their stories of teacher leadership. Teachers, one assumes, need to understand what a teacher leader story sounds like and how to draw those stories out of their experiences.

Second, the description tells us another thing they did: the retreat taught teachers how to share their stories to others. Teachers, one also assumes, need to convey their teacher leader stories in expressive and compelling ways.

Third, the description tells us a reason why they did it: individual personal narratives are being used to shape the larger cultural narrative. An assumption here is that the larger cultural narrative needs to be changed; there’s something harmful about that narrative that is keeping teachers from doing their best work.

Another assumption is that conveying individual (personal) narratives is a kind of first step toward building or influencing a larger (cultural) narrative. Pick your favorite metaphor here: personal narratives are bricks in a larger wall of cultural narrative; individual change is a catalyst toward cultural change, etc.

The rest of the retreat description identifies other, more specific storytelling skills participants learned: identifying your audience, refining your message, assessing the impact of your story, and the more relational goal of getting to know your colleagues who also have compelling stories to tell.

At the bottom of the webpage are links to three participants’ blogs about their experiences at the retreat. A couple of points are salient here.

Tricia Ebner explained how participants questioned their stories: whether their stories had value to others, whether their stories were well-told, and whether their stories would have impact. This shows that storytellers—especially those who are learning to tell their own stories—need to build confidence in their stories and their storytelling.

Noah Klein explained how our stories are tied to their failures, successes, strengths, and weaknesses. We learn from all kinds of stories: stories about what we’ve done well and stories about what we have done poorly.

This description of the CTQ storytelling retreat leaves a rough outline for developing storytelling as a form of professional development that also cultivates professional community.