Using the Narrative Policy Framework in the Teaching of Introduction to Politics

Abstract

In today’s world characterized by political tribalism, narrative is an increasingly important concept for understanding politics. The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) seeks to describe, explain, and predict the role of narrative in politics and policy. We wanted to explore whether the assumptions and postulates of the NPF could help students in Introduction to Politics: Critical Thinking and Analysis to understand how narrative relates to politics. We present the results of an introductory politics course taught at a public four-year university that used narrative as a central concept. We focused our course on cognitive processes such as confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance, political theory and political ideology, young people and politics, political tolerance, motivated reasoning, political identity, selective perception, the use of evidence, and fake news. We used the NPF to explore how narrative plays into each of these topics. Our findings suggest that students were surprised by the large role narrative plays in politics, and at the end of the course they better understood the role of narrative in the current state of United States politics. Some students, however, accepted narratives as being more reflective of political reality even when evidence presented in the course disputed the narrative. Of course, this may show the power of narrative, motivated reasoning, and political identity even among students who were primed to use critical reasoning when encountering narrative. We conclude that helping students understand the power of narrative, via the NPF, is one way to keep political science relevant to young people.