Teaching as Story Telling: An Alternative Approach to Teaching and Curriculum in the Elementary School

by Kieran Egan

"I am very impressed by the practicality of [Egan's] introduction of the use of story-forms in curriculum for young children. His model is fascinating, and its various possibilities in a range of fields makes it worth a good look by many kinds of teachers."—Maxine Greene, Teachers College, Columbia

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Teaching

132 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1988

Reviews

[Penny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Egan argues that some of our assumptions about children's thought and learning – namely that they cannot handle abstraction and that learning must always start with the familiar and progress to the unknown – are inaccurate or oversimplified. Children are very good at understanding fantasy, which requires them to make sense of big abstract concepts such as Good Versus Evil, and to connect new, unfamiliar information to these abstractions. By using storytelling, rather than the current "assembly line" model for education, the curriculum could become both more memorable and more engaging for students.

Egan believes that any subject can (and should) be taught with a storytelling model. The application of storytelling to history and social studies is obvious, but Egan believes math and science lend themselves equally well to a narrative format.

Favorite quotes:

"The key to...rehumanizing [math:] for children is to tie the computational tasks back to the human intentions, hopes, fears, etc. that generated them in the first place. If children can see a particular mathematical computation not simply as a dehumanized skill to be mastered but rather as a particular solution to a particular human hope, intention, fear, or whatever, then we can embed the skill in a context that is meaningful" (p. 77).

"Our science program will be about the human adventure that began in magic and myth and gradually, through individuals' courage, ingenuity, hopes, and so on, became science. It is a human activity concerned with what works, regardless of what people think, believe, or hope for. It begins, however, in people's hopes, beliefs, and fears, and makes sense when seen in terms of human intentions. Only very late in its development does it become disinterested inquiry" (p. 97).

[Wouter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kieran Egan's take is to teach according to elements from stories (mostly fairy tales), which means focus on an important topic, turn it into a binary issue, find what is most dramatic, present the contents that best articulates the problem, and resolve it. He juxtaposes his ideas to both Dewey and Piaget and shuns teaching simplified content.

However, I have some issues with his views. I think children will get a wrong impression on how the world works what taught in this way (it is not binary). Though it simplifies topics and perhaps engages pupils more, it gets into obvious issues. If you take good/bad or civilized/barbarism, what is good? What is civilized? Egan uses an example of the Vikings. Vikings were barbarians who eventually were converted into the Christian civilized world. This oversimplification is biased and a binary take will not present a good lesson.

I think what we can take from this is that children love to explore: to explore stories and to explore information to be turned into knowledge. We should not hold back in presenting them challenges and guide them on their journey. The goal for each lesson should be clear, the material engaging, and the ending fulfilling.

So, Egan's essay helped me a bit more to explore the structure of story as a mould for lessons, but Egan's take is somewhat problematic.

[Raphael A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting read for teacher who are looking of an alternative to an "assembly line" view of teaching, which frequently reduces the student to the cognitive dimension. Seeking to also appeal to the child's imagination and its affective side, the author proposes a "story-form model" of lesson planing and curriculum.

It will probably work much better in the humanities than in the hard sciences, despite the author's claim otherwise.

[Paul Groos · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t need any convincing that stories work well as educational tools. But this background in story form as a model for lesson planning and curriculum design offers some great new insights.
A little argumentative and polemic at times, Egan offers some great ideas for teachers and storytellers. Is there even a difference between them?

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The art of teaching is, in this view, tied to the ancient and powerful tradition of story-telling." (109)

Love, love, love und gute Basis für meine StexArbeit yey (:

[Sherry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A keeper on the education/possibilizing bookshelf and some wisdom from storytelling to keep alive in the classroom and in life!

[Mlien · Rating 3 out of 5]

Soms draaft de auteur een beetje door (zegt hij zelf ook in zijn slotwoord), soms ook wat veel herhaling, maar... in de basis een boek vol goede ideeën.

[Gnuehc Ecnerwal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chapter 1 and 2 are very strong. The remainder of the book fell into a common trap with books on the topic of teaching and curriculum. With books on teaching and learning that tackle paradigm shifts, giving examples of how to implement the change inevitably limits the scope of understand by focusing the readers to specifics, instead of the theory. It is a conundrum for this type of books, because without concrete examples, the author run the risk of not fully communicating the ideas behind the proposed concepts, but any example given is going to confine the readers' interpretation of the concept with the specifics of the examples.