I have been engrossed in the science of story and storytelling last weekend and forgot to post!

With my bruised knee out of action for the usual long-weekend hill walks or cycles, there was naught to be done, but a short limp to see bluebells and reading. I know! I know! The suffering!

During my reading adventures I experienced a visceral a-ha moment realising, that when we teach our students how to read academic (scientific) papers, we basically teach them to find the story. We send them on a quest to identify the story amidst the academic writing conventions.

And these element map rather nicely with the 5 story elements identified by Haven (2007) see below.

• Character: We ask our students to identify the author(s), the funder(s), and the main subject, of the paper which is usually the data.
• Intent: We ask our students to identify potential biases introduced by the character, the purpose of a study, its justification, and the aims the authors declared.
• Actions: We tell the students to analyse if the methodology or research plan, data collection methods, and analysis are clearly outlined, coherent, and justified.
• Struggles: We actually ask our students to be vigilant and be attentive if the authors are honest about any issues they encountered with either the process or the data; and if they acknowledge the weaknesses of their project.
• Details: We ask our students to judge if there was enough information to replicate this research; or if it is a literature review, are inclusion and exclusion criteria clear? Are the details of the project clearly laid out or are some elements bypassed in the discussions?

After a–granted very brief and extremely superficial search–I solely identified publications that talk about storytelling in writing, for writing, for public engagement etc.

Thus, I began to wonder do we actually tell our students explicitly to look for the story, and judge if the story makes sense?

How this train of thought developed:

After reading my first book which almost threw me into a full blown existential crisis with statements such as:

“We’re all fictional characters. We’re the partial, biased, stubborn creations of our own minds. To help us feel in control of the outside world, our brains lull us into believing things that aren’t true.” (Storr, 2019, p.578)

Whew!

Right.

That explains a lot about stuff right now …

Haven (2007) managed to console me with a more practical analysis of story and storytelling. Identifying 5 elements of a story from a vast array of research across different disciplines. These 5 elements are:

1. Character. You need a viewpoint character to see who is doing the action and to gauge relevancy by assessing this character. […]
2. Intent. You need to know what story characters are after and why. […]
3. Actions. You need to see what characters do to achieve their goals. […]
4. Struggles. Struggles are never easy or trivial. […] Actions make no sense and elicit no interest unless we see that these actions represent an attempt to reach an important goal. […]
5. Details. Details about the character, settings, actions and events, and objects that drift through a story create the mental imagery that you use to envision and evaluate the story. Details facilitate blending and memory. (Haven, 2007, p.87)

So these are the ingredients each story-recipe must have to turn a narrative into an actual story. Because:

“All five must be presented (or created) in order for the mind to relate to, understand, and decide to pay attention to, an incoming narrative. These then are the informational elements that uniquely define a story.” (Haven, 2007, p.86)

However, it is not the sole responsibility of Story to work on the meaning making

‘‘Good readers are aware of why they are reading a text’’. (Pressley, 2001 in Haven, 2007, p.120)

And this last quote made me realise that we do indeed teach our students to go on the hunt for the story when we teach them to read academic texts. We teach them why and how to read.

References

Haven, K. F. (2007). Story proof: The science behind the startling power of story. Libraries Unlimited. https://doi.org/10.5040/9798216019312
Storr, W. (2019). The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human, and How to Tell Them Better. Harper Collins. https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/the-science-of-storytelling-why-stories-make-us-human-and-how-to-tell-them-better-will-storr