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At the core of every culture around the globe, there are stories. As humans, we have been fascinated by them for generations, using storytelling methods to accomplish different purposes universally. Storytelling is an especially effective teaching tool because it has proven fruitful over time. It is a way to deliver facts in a more pleasing, memorable way, and the field of storytelling technology is constantly evolving. There is always something new to discover when it comes to storytelling, both for the audience and the storyteller. Stories are such a part of our lives that they make their way easily into our classrooms – Janelle Cox, M.S. in education, says, “Teachers often use storytelling as a method without even realizing it.” But why are we so attracted to stories? What makes them effective in the classroom? Can storytelling as a teaching resource actually benefit students in terms of motivation, participation, creativity, cooperation, understanding, and attention (Which are all seen as benefits by RoboWunderkind classrooms)? History might have some answers.

 The oldest written story that we have found is the Epic of Gilgamesh, who was a hero of Mesopotamia during c. 2150-1400 BCE, 1500 years before Homer’s Illiad and Odessey. While the Epic is the world’s oldest written story, there is a lot of evidence that people have been telling stories for a lot longer than that. There are cave paintings in France at sites like Chauvet and Lascaux dating back even earlier that seem to show a culture of oral storytelling. National Geographic said, “Storytelling is as old as culture,” and Janelle Cox expands, “Oral storytelling has been used to entertain as well as educate and has been passed down as a cultural tradition” (2021). Why is storytelling so seemingly engrained into our nature? Apparently, it has to do with our brains.

Oxytocin is a hormone that the brain produces to tell the body “it is safe to approach others,” as well as control the levels of empathy and cooperation you experience. Paul J. Zak and his researchers found the hormone twenty years ago and have been researching it since. Through their research, they found that “character-driven stories do consistently cause oxytocin synthesis” (Zak, 2014). They discovered that the more moving the story, the more hormonally moved the audience. Zak says, “When you want to motivate, persuade, or be remembered, start with a story of human struggle and eventual triumph. It will capture people’s hearts – by first attracting their brains” (2014).

Storytelling is also powerful beyond the way our brains are wired for it. For young students, oral storytelling engages the student’s mental imagery and imagination, as well as helping the students understand human behavior. Through listening to a story, their vocabulary and language skills are improved, and they learn more about human relationships (Choo, Y. B. et al., 2020). Robowunderkind classrooms found that when students are “Presented with a storyline, children perceive the learning process more easily and effortlessly. In this way, the acquisition of new knowledge and skills is veiled in a game, making it attractive to children who don’t even realize they’re learning.” Students can also understand and remember facts more easily through story. Zak found that “character-driven stories with emotional content results in a better understanding of the key points a speaker wishes to make and enables better recall of these points weeks later” (2014). Stories seem far more engaging than PowerPoint!

As we see in history, storytelling methods evolve with changes to culture, and modern times are no exception. There are many different kinds of storytelling, oral, visual, and written, and most recently, we have walked into the digital age, and storytelling has walked right with us. The BBC found that we are still as story-oriented as ever, “Today, we may not gather around the campfire, but the average adult is still thought to spend at least 6% of the waking day engrossed in fictional stories on our various screens” (2018). So how does traditional storytelling, that of historical times, combine with the twenty-first century to reap all of those educational benefits? Digital storytelling is a mediated story told through technological enhancements, but is still just a story that our oxytocin-producing brains love. “Digital storytelling is the combination of both the art of storytelling and digital story.”-(Choo, Y. B. et al., 2020). There are a lot of benefits to a story being told through technology instead of only written or oral. For someone who finds it harder to create mental images, they can become a passive listener when interacting with an oral story. They have photos and videos when interacting with digital stories, and they can understand the story vividly, keeping them engaged. “Digital storytelling is also effective for student learning as it caters to multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1983). Students who prefer visuals could see the images, musical learners could hear the music, and linguistic learners could learn the words or vocabulary. It also appeals to students’ interpersonal when they give opinions through interaction and their intrapersonal in understanding themselves after learning the story” (Choo, Y. B. et al., 2020). Digital information can also be stored, uploaded, or transferred, making the story far more replayable.

In incorporating storytelling into the curriculum, teachers might benefit from multiple aspects by using a story to introduce a new topic, which can then attract unmotivated learners, illustrate a concept, increase engagement, improve memorability or generally enhance any subject (Cox, 2021). The ways of including stories in the classroom are limitless, and scientifically, the students are wired to be interested. The things that students can learn from stories are profound and are more likely to be remembered. What stories will you tell?

Works Cited

Choo, Y. B., Abdullah, T., & Nawi, A. M. (2020). Digital Storytelling vs. oral storytelling: An analysis of the art of telling stories now and then. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 8(5A), 46–50. https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2020.081907

Cox, J. (2021, August 26). Storytelling in the classroom as a teaching strategy. TeachHUB. https://www.teachhub.com/classroom-activities/2015/08/storytelling-in-the-classroom-as-a-teaching-strategy/

RoboWunderKind. (n.d.). Storytelling as a teaching tool: Why teach story-based lessons?. Storytelling as a Teaching Tool: Why Teach Story-based Lessons? https://www.robowunderkind.com/blog/storytelling-as-a-teaching-technique-why-teach-story-based-lessons#:~:text=The%20storytelling%20technique%20is%20known,an%20increase%20in%20attention%20span.

Robson, D. (2018, May 3). Our fiction addiction: Why humans need stories. BBC News.https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180503-our-fiction-addiction-why-humans-need-stories

Schuch, A. (2020). Digital Storytelling as a Teaching Tool for Primary,  Secondary and Higher Education . AAA: Arbeiten Aus Anglistik Und Amerikanistik, 45(2), 173–196. https://doi.org/https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26974203

Zak, P. J. (2014, October 28). Why your brain loves good storytelling. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2014/10/why-your-brain-loves-good-storytelling