Storytelling as a Strategy for Understanding Concepts of Electricity and Electromagnetism

Abstract

In our research, we investigated whether students will develop inquiry skills, such as hypothesis exploration and formulation and interpretation, and metacognitive skills, such as comprehension of new knowledge, as a result of a storytelling strategy employed during teaching. We also investigated whether students will utilize the skills and knowledge acquired in the learning process to explain everyday-life phenomena or applications of science. In order to achieve the above objectives, we carried out a bibliographical research, in which we established the certainty that modern thought is integrated in dialogical and narrative forms and that the conceptual approach, which places emphasis on the purely cognitive dimension of the process of knowledge and ignores inspiration or imagination, is ineffective. These conclusions necessitated our turning to other approaches for teaching and learning. We chose storytelling on account of its ability to cultivate the imagination and inspiration and to make science learning attractive to students. To confirm our findings, we conducted research on the effectiveness of storytelling in teaching science in five sixth-grade, primary-school classes. The findings of this research are described in our paper and seem to be encouraging.