Kim Clist's Literature Review

I commented on Laverne Marri-Perez's review and Marti Kramer Suddarth's review on 10/01/16.

Learning through Narrative: Literature Review

Kimberly Clist

Ball State University

Introduction

"My Very Energetic Mother Jumps Skateboards Under Nana's Patio" is a mnemonic used to teach the names of the planets in the 1980’s. The first letter of each word matches the first letter of each planet, from the sun outward. It is not just the fact that the letters match that makes this an effective learning tool. It is that the sentence tells a story that is fun and easy to remember. According to Merriam, Caffarella and Baumgartner, stories are how people make sense of the world around them (2007, p. 208). As such, narrative learning is a powerful tool to encourage understanding and cognitive development. Through narrative, learners develop context for their learning, test and apply existing or new cultural and societal norms, and re-story personal understanding for transformational learning.

Themes and Implications

Psychological theories of adult development and identity take many forms. One approach gaining in popularity recently is that of the narrative process as a way to understand identity. Tennant argues that narrative theories are popular with therapists and educators and can be utilized as a “lens through which the world is seen or as a kind of internal model which is a guide to identity and action” (2006, p. 54). Thus, the internal narrative someone creates is the context or lens through which all inputs are processed, evaluated, and given meaning. Introducing external stories through experience or as provided by others then allows the learner to consider similarities, differences, make judgements and adjust or change their current lens. In fact, Merriam, Caffarella, and Baumgartner argue that stories offer opportunities for cognitive growth and development in that they are a “substitute for direct experience” (2007, p. 210). At the process level - hearing, telling, and recognizing stories – learning happens at more than just a cognitive level. For example, journaling is an opportunity to reflect on an experience or new information and to put that in context with what was known. “The nature of experience is always prelinguistic; it is “languaged” after the fact, and the process of narrating it is how learners give meaning to experience. Narrative learning is constructivist in character, but the construction of the narrative is necessary to make the experience accessible (that is, to language it), and how it is constructed determines what meaning it has for the person” (Clark & Rossiter, 2008, p. 64).  

Narrative as a vehicle for providing context to information or experience can be equally effective in various mediums. Storying can be done orally, written, and visually. According to Clark & Rossiter, journaling experience as stories provides the space to create coherence which makes “sense out of chaos by establishing connections between and among these experiences” (2008, p. 62). There is increasing popularity in the use of zines, visual forms of storytelling. Grushka discusses using zines as a tool for students pursuing a career in teaching, saying that they “imprint past and present learning experiences visibly and authentically on a range of visual narrative forms that represent their storied lives” (2013, p. 69). These visual creation exercises provide points of self-reflection on who the student is as a learner and give context to their practices as an educator.

Narrative learning goes beyond an individual based concept of cognitive development and incorporates social and cultural constructs. Clark & Rossiter explain that “construction of a narrative is not purely a personal process; it is also social in nature. We live in what Sarbin (1993) calls “a story-shaped world” (p. 63), surrounded by narratives of all kinds that embody our cultural values—popular movies and television shows, myths and folklore, religious histories and traditions, social scripts and mores, to note only a few—and that all of these provide “libraries of plots . . . [that] help us interpret our own and other people’s experience” (p. 59). Linde (1993) makes this point in another way, noting that we construct our narratives by drawing on a cultural supply of normal events, reasonable causes, and plausible explanations and that these cultural elements confer legitimacy on our narratives (2008, p. 63). In today’s multicultural classrooms we cannot assume the rest of the world sees things the way we do. Merriam, Caffarella, and Baumgartner’s argument that stories are a substitute for experience and provide an opportunity for learning is quite applicable to multicultural understandings. There is a significant difference in understanding from knowing a cultural norm and knowing that norm through a story of experience from someone else.  “Storytelling is an ideal teaching and learning tool, for it takes seriously the need for students to make sense of experience, using their own culturally generated sense-making processes” (Alterio, 2002, p. 2).

Narrative learning theory can be a part of other learning theories, such as transformational learning. When integrated into the transformational learning process, narrative becomes the sense-making vehicle for the life changing event. In fact, not only is the event storied, but in the process of transformation, an individual’s internal story must be adapted to accommodate the new view of self. “We seek restorying when our current life story no longer coheres within itself, when it becomes incoherent, when the many are at war with the one. We seek it when our central self-story has either too little conflict so fails to go anywhere or too much and so threatens to fly apart… We might seek restorying, for example, when a particular episode fails to fit with the dominant story we tell ourselves about who we are, where we have come from and where we are going” (Merriam, 2007, p. 214). Narrative can also be found in the in-between of transformation. Deep change and growth is not instantaneous. Our identities evolve sometimes quickly and sometimes over long periods of time. Narrating moments gives context for all the pieces to fit together. Grushka explains that utilizing zines in the curriculum for pre-service teachers gives them a tool to process their practicum experiences and put in context with who they are becoming. Visual storytelling pedagogy incorporates experiences, emotions, and the creation of meaning from many events in in practiced life (2013, p. 69). Transformational learning theory is dominated by Mezirow who introduces the idea of restorying one’s life. He argues that “it is the question as to how I can compose a story big enough, with the horizon broad enough, to account for as much as possible of my actual life andrender it available to me as coherent, re-remembered whole” (Merriam, Caffarella & Baumgartner, 2007, p. 215).

Reflection

Narrative learning as a tool is effective because of our natural inclination to story our lives, to create context for events and information based on the stories we already know. Rather than looking at adult learning as a linear progression, narrative learning allows for fluid growth and development, for changing paradigms, and reconstruction of what was previously understood. Context is created not just from cognitive understanding of concepts but is also informed by societal and cultural norms, both internally known and as learned stories from others. In interacting with others and learning their stories, our stories become bigger and more multifaceted. It is in the storying and restorying of our personal experiences that transformational learning becomes possible through reflection of profound experiences. Narrative learning is a unique learning tool that engages at all levels of learning, all subject matters, and crosses cultural and societal chasms.

Table of Themes

Theme	Application
Narrative Learning: meaning making and personal reflection	Through hearing, telling, and recognizing – learning happens at more than just a cognitive level. Journaling is an opportunity to reflect on an experience or new information and to put that in context with what was known.
Storytelling Culture & Society	Learning through story telling can reinforce known culture and societal norms or it can be an introduction to new cultures and norms. Autobiographical writing, meant for reflection, allows the writer to analyze their own story through a particular lens. For example, what is your life story as a learning? Evaluating personal storied experiences as applied to different theories makes the learning of those theories more than cognitive. In addition, sharing these stories in a group allows others an opportunity to see and understand the theories through someone else’s storied cultural and societal lens.
Re-storying and transformational learning	Powerful, life changing events that spur development must be processed in the form of story – one’s life story. And often, the original story must be re-storied or transformed to allow for the truths learned in the experience.

References

Alterio, M. (2002). Using storytelling to enhance student learning. The Higher Education Academy.

Clark, M. C., & Rossiter, M. (2008). Narrative learning in adulthood. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 2008(119), 61-70. doi:10.1002/ace.306

Grushka, K. (2013). Perzines: A visual and narrative learning space. Australian Art Education, 35(1/2), 68-80.

Merriam, S. B., Caffarella, R. S., & Baumgartner, L. (2007). Learning in adulthood: A comprehensive guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Tennant, M. (2006). Psychology and adult learning. London: Routledge.