Rowcliffe Storytelling in science
Storytelling in science
Stephen Rowcliffe
Storytelling is an important part of science teaching, and should
not be overlooked by any practitioner
From the first day of ninth grade, I knew Mr
Gibbs was different. He perched behind a
wooden podium in his classroom. He told
outrageous stories that may or may not have
been true, but that got our attention and made a
good point. He’d stand there behind that
podium, yelling, ranting, rocking in his
speeches, making that podium creak and groan
until one day during class it broke. He was the
kind of man who was always acting, but put on
a damn good show. For that, I’ll never forget
him. (Meghan Pino, former student at Benicia
High School, California, USA)
Although many science teachers make use of
anecdotes and stories in their lessons, storytelling is
not a formally accepted teaching skill: for example,
it does not appear in the list of standards required for
the award of Qualified Teacher Status in England
(Department for Education and Skills Circular 4/98).
Beyond 2000 (Millar and Osborne, 1998) envisages a
curriculum consisting of a succession of narrative
(non-fiction) stories aimed at presenting science in a
more ‘coherent, memorable and meaningful’ format
in order to interest and engage pupils, as well as to
unify the curriculum and to preserve a sense of the
‘bigger picture’. The better science textbooks gener-
ally contain some historical information on topics
being studied, but this often appears to be included as
an afterthought and some teachers I have observed
neglect these sections, leaving the pupils to read them
if they choose. The aim of this article is to review
ABSTRACT
Many secondary science teachers face
difficulties inspiring their classes. The use of
stories can enliven teaching and improve pupils’
learning. This article reviews research in this
area and offers guidelines and advice as to how
teachers can use storytelling to optimum
advantage in science.
School Science Review, September 2004, 86(314)
current research into storytelling in science teaching,
exploring the idea that storytelling could make a real
contribution to pupils’ learning, and to make
recommendations as to how science teachers can best
use storytelling in their daily practice.
Support for storytelling in
science education
It is generally accepted that in order to teach
effectively, a wide range of stimuli should be
presented to pupils (Kyriacou, 1992). Storytelling can
be used as one such stimulus, helping to break up the
lesson and provide the pupils with an engaging,
exciting and emotionally involving experience from
which to learn.
Johnstone et al. (1997) provide convincing
evidence that the working memory of children
typically cannot cope easily with extended chains of
reasoning in science. However, Weber (1993) has
shown that stories are easily incorporated into the
memory as chains of events, and thus storytelling may
help children to link cause and effect; hence,
illustrating a scientific concept in the form of a story
improves pupils’ science learning.
Ideas committed to short-term memory in lessons
must be consolidated if they are to be remembered
long-term. Kalat (1995) states that the more
meaningful an event is to a person, the faster and more
strongly they consolidate the memory of it. One
remembers exciting experiences better than dull
experiences because exciting experiences increase the
secretion of adrenaline into the bloodstream.
Adrenaline boosts memory by raising the level of
glucose in the blood that is available to the brain.
Arousing events improve memory simply by
increasing the brain’s fuel supply. Although there is
no concrete evidence linking stories and adrenaline
levels, this evidence does support the idea that exciting
stories might improve learning for some pupils, even
121
 Storytelling in science
if all they remember is the story itself and none of the
science surrounding it.
Hodson (1998) has strong ideas about the
influence of emotions on children’s learning. He
discusses how ‘feelings such as wonder, delight,
amusement, interest ... and disgust will impact in
different ways on a learning task’. He does concede
that outcomes will not always be positive or even
curriculum-oriented, but he makes a powerful case
based on socio-constructivist ideas for the importance
of emotional involvement when it comes to the pupils’
personalisation and internalisation of scientific
understanding.
One study found that 50 per cent of A-level
students find physics boring, while 60 per cent find
biology fun or interesting (Harvard, 1996). Osborne,
Driver and Simon (1998) suggest such findings may
reflect the fact that non-specialists are teaching much
of the physics in schools. These non-specialists may
lack sufficient confidence in the subject matter to
embellish their teaching with stories and anecdotes
and hence fall back upon didactic teaching methods,
which the students find dull.
Tobias (1990) conducted a study on American
postgraduates who had not enjoyed science and had
‘dropped out’. She was interested in discovering what
it was about science teaching that had left the students
cold. Significantly, a high proportion of the
postgraduates felt that ‘absence of history or context’
had been one of the reasons that they had found
science insufferable (Simon, 2000). This idea has been
substantiated by trials at the University of Buffalo,
where attendance in science classes has been boosted
from 50–65 per cent to 95 per cent by the use of stories
and case studies in teaching (Goldbaum, 2000). The
same study concluded that, as a result of the story
approach, students who had appeared tired and
disinterested during lectures were suddenly animated
and involved.
Relevance of academic study to pupils’ lives is
often cited as an important motivational factor in
teaching (Kyriacou, 1992; Monk and Osborne, 2000).
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)
points out that listeners find a reflection of themselves
in stories. Goldbaum (2000) adds that stories get
pupils involved in science, not as spectators but as
participants. Campbell (1998) reached a similar
conclusion, suggesting that pupils can be encouraged
to view physics as relevant to their lives, rather than
as a mere collection of facts, by teaching with stories
culled from the media.
122 School Science Review, September 2004, 86(314)
Rowcliffe
Millar and Osborne (1998) state that one of the
aims of the science curriculum should be to sustain
and develop the curiosity of young people and to seek
to foster a sense of wonder, enthusiasm and interest
in science. It seems that stories could be a way of
achieving this sense of wonderment, enthusiasm and
interest in science, provided they are relevant, fun and
interesting.
Anthropomorphism
The personification of scientific concepts or ideas
characterises science storytelling in some books,
involving cartoon characters, and the like, taking the
place of principles under study. For example, the
Association for Science Education publishes The
adventures of Charlie the Coulomb to teach electricity
in secondary physics (Hodgson, 1998), and Banister
and Ryan (2001) advocate the use of a character
named William Water to teach the concept of the water
cycle in primary school. I have also observed this
approach being used to teach the reactivity series in
secondary school, with Mr Copper being betrothed
to Miss Sulfate and so forth. Such analogies can be
viewed as mini-stories featuring characters derived
from scientific concepts.
Banister and Ryan (2001) found that there were
measurable increases in primary children’s under-
standing of the water cycle as a result of the use of
anthropomorphisms in storytelling. Although no
statistical tests were performed on the data, there is
some empirical evidence to suggest that children were
able to distinguish the factual information under study
from the character of William Water, and that some
long-term learning had taken place as a direct result
of the storytelling activity. Tamir and Zohar (1991)
have shown that primary children can accept
anthropomorphic formulations, while remaining able
to distinguish the factual reasoning behind them.
Although there is some evidence that this
approach does lead to academic benefits in primary
school, and can help children to learn or to consolidate
their learning, I am personally opposed to secondary
teachers using too much anthropomorphism for three
reasons:
" It is unscientific and thus unhelpful to pupils who
should be striving to be good scientists. For
example, it would be a disaster if a pupil answered
a GCSE question paper along the lines of ‘Well,
Charlie the Coulomb was running around the
circuit...’ This sort of approach is insufficient for
 Rowcliffe
the depth and complexity of understanding
required at secondary level.
" It is patronising. Secondary school pupils these
days are much more streetwise than many adults
realise. I once tried introducing a class of 13/14
year-olds to Charlie the Coulomb and was met
with torrents of laughter and derision. This sort
of approach is divorced from what pupils perceive
as real science. The link between what pupils study
and real science is an important one to reinforce,
as it is known to increase their motivation and
belief in the importance of the work they do in
lessons (Monk and Osborne, 2000).
" It presents a model that may be open to
misinterpretation and does not include the detail
required at a higher level. For example, electrons
do not ‘die’ when the battery runs out of energy,
as the students in a study by Howe and Johnson
(1992) stated.
However, these activities can be a lot of fun for the
pupils, and this is a benefit that cannot be overlooked.
Emotional involvement
Banister and Ryan (2001) suggest that primary
children can learn effectively from anthropomorph-
isms in stories because they become emotionally
involved with the character or the story and this
emotional response is instrumental in achieving
learning.
Alsop (2001) found that 24 out of a group of 42
secondary pupils felt that emotions should not be a
part of their science education; they felt that they
would be a distraction and would hinder their work.
They believed that science is concerned with facts,
not opinions, and that emotions should not be a
consideration when contemplating a scientific
problem. On the other hand, 12 of the pupils felt that
emotions were important in science because they
make the content more interesting and exciting.
Should science teaching be emotion-free? Can this
image be challenged? Scientific issues presented in
the media, such as bio-terrorism and the destruction
of the rainforest, are anything but devoid of emotion.
By failing to introduce an element of emotion into
teaching, perhaps via storytelling, we may be failing
to demonstrate the link between ‘school science’ and
‘real science’. This could make science less meaning-
ful and relevant to pupils’ everyday lives, hence
devaluing science lessons in their eyes.
School Science Review, September 2004, 86(314)
Storytelling in science
Incorporating storytelling into
lessons
Simon (2000) points to the prescriptive nature of the
National Curriculum having constrained the creativity
and enthusiasm of teachers in England, and suggests
that this is a major cause of the erosion of pupils’
positive attitudes towards science. If a teacher set aside
three minutes of each lesson for storytelling, it might
enable him/her to be more ‘zany’ and enthusiastic
about the subject, and this erosion of positive attitudes
could perhaps be reduced.
Howe and Johnson (1992) suggest that storytelling
can be used in a variety of ways in the science
laboratory:
" to present a scientific problem in the form of a
story for pupils to solve;
" to provide an accessible explanation of a complex
process;
" to provide an element of human interest in a topic,
for example using role-play and incorporating
‘real-life’ scientific issues that people face in their
everyday lives.
I would personally add:
" to put what is being learned into a historical
context, i.e. what did humans think before we
knew what we know today?
" to provide entertainment and enjoyment for pupils
and teachers so that they become emotionally
involved and their imaginations are ‘fired up’ by
learning;
" to provide mental triggers that will bring the
concepts that have been taught to the forefront of
the pupils’ memories.
The importance of children telling stories themselves
has been highlighted by Mallan (1991). Howe and
Johnson (1992) present a case study of a year 8 class
(12/13 year-olds) who were instructed to prepare a
story for narration to primary children, where the
function of a circuit was explained in terms of a ‘big
bully battery’ and his ‘army of volts’ pushing the ‘baby
electrons’ around a wire. The pupils employed props
for the exercise and had to deliver the story and then
answer questions.
Parvin (1996) effectively implemented science in
a cross-curricular context in a primary school, where
pupils found the inspiration for their scientific
investigations from stories or poems. For example,
an investigation of the speed of an object due to gravity
123
 Storytelling in science Rowcliffe

was based on a motorcyclist character from a book
called Princess Smartypants.
This technique can be transferred to the secondary
school science laboratory to give the pupils some
involvement in the ideas they are studying. They may
become more motivated and interested in the subject
matter as a result. An introductory story could present
the pupils with an interesting challenge or problem
centred on an idea, for example the well-known
detective story involving the ink used in forged
banknotes. The subsequent activities could involve
the pupils placing themselves in the shoes of the
forensic scientist, using chromatography to identify
the suspect’s ink and hence replicating the process of
deduction that led to the forger’s apprehension.
Although this particular example is already in
common use, there are many other aspects of science
that could benefit from similar treatment.

Box 1 Sources of story material

A selection of potential sources for stimulating science stories is given here. There are of course many
others.
" Terry Deary and Barbara Allen have written The spark files (London: Faber and Faber) using fictional
characters and events to illustrate scientific concepts. Some of the characters are of the opinion that a
phenomenon (such as magnetism) is due to magic, and other characters explain them scientifically.
" Russell Stannard has written several successful fiction books starring Uncle Albert, an accessible
and fun mentor figure who introduces children to complex physics concepts. These books are award-
winning best-sellers, and (although potentially somewhat biased) research suggests that children not
only enjoy the story format but learn a great deal about physics into the bargain (Stannard, 2001).
" The science sections of newspapers can provide up-to-date and interesting scientific information to
add relevance to lessons.
" The Horrible Science series of books by Nick Arnold (London: Scholastic) provides many gruesome
details and compelling historical tales, pitched at the right level for young teenagers.
" The Faber book of science (ed. Carey, J., 1995, London: Faber and Faber) contains fascinating
historical accounts of scientific discoveries and may be suitable to enrich lessons, particularly for older
pupils.
" The last word: New Scientist (ed. O’Hare, M., 1998, Oxford University Press) contains a series of
commonly asked scientific questions such as ‘does hot water really freeze faster than cold water’ (it
does – try it!) that could form the basis for a class investigation.
" The Darwin awards (Northcutt, W., 2000, London: Orion Books) is a somewhat tasteless collection of
true stories of calamitous events that have befallen people, most of which have a humorous and
scientific element and have enlivened many a science lesson.
" The books Smelly science and Disgusting facts (Hamer, M., 2000, Bath: Parragon) contain many
amusing anecdotes and facts about science, with the former having an entire chapter dedicated to
flatulence. Both are good sources of witty repartee with which to amuse younger pupils.
" A suspiciously simple history of science invention (Farman, J., 1991, London: Pan Macmillan
Children’s Books) presents a chronological account of the development of invention and science since
prehistoric times. I have found it most useful in providing short historical stories or anecdotes.
" My name is Becquerel (Schwenk, E., 1994, Frankfurt: Hoechst Aktiengesellschaft) details the lives of
the great scientists whose names gave us our SI units, and such stories may help pupils to understand
more about the mysterious names and symbols that scientists use.
" The Reading into Science series, published by Nelson Thornes UK, contains historical stories linked
to the key stage 4 curriculum.
" Science Web, a series of books published by Nelson Thornes and edited by Joan Solomon, contains
a series of science stories linked to the key stage 3 curriculum aimed at boosting pupils’ interest in and
enjoyment of science.
" The software, People in science, published by Longman and using ‘Kar2ouche’, allows students to
construct storyboards to explain certain events in the history of scientific innovation.

124 School Science Review, September 2004, 86(314)

 Rowcliffe
In the same way, pupils could be presented with a
historical perception of a scientific problem, and
challenged to take the place of the scientist during
their experiment to discover the solution.
Box 1 lists a selection of possible sources of stories
to stimulate science. This is clearly not an exhaustive
list but it should provide some inspiration and at least
a starting point for any science teacher planning to
incorporate more stories into their teaching.
Delivery of stories
Storytelling is a skill that can be acquired and honed.
The NCTE suggests that teachers rehearse their stories
before telling them. The use of a cassette recorder is
advocated to ensure that timing, inflection and vocal
tonality are suitably entertaining. NCTE also suggests
that teachers listen to good storytellers and try to
absorb some observed qualities into their repertoire.
It is easy to find a story being told well on the radio
or television; it is simply a matter of concentrating
and then reflecting upon what made the story effective,
interesting or engaging.
I would personally advise finding the ‘bare bones’
of a good story, and embellishing it with your own
flourishes and style. In this way, you can adapt a story
to the class being taught and to the mood in the
laboratory, so as to exact the maximum excitement
and emotional involvement from the exercise. As the
saying goes, ‘It’s the way you tell them’.
The use of ICT in storytelling is an emerging field
and professional development for teachers is now
available in the USA; see www.digitalstorytelling.org.
Conclusion
Goodwin (2001) has pointed to the fact that many
science teachers complain, when met with demands
to include elements of ‘wonder’ into their lessons,
that ‘We don’t have time for that sort of thing now
we’ve got the National Curriculum’. The question
must be asked, should we, as teachers, pander to the
alleged short attention spans of our pupils, or would
it be better to impose a greater degree of discipline?
Perhaps in the days when science was optional it
would have been acceptable to expect pupils to work
without any ‘entertainment’. Now that the National
Curriculum has dictated that all children in English
School Science Review, September 2004, 86(314)
Storytelling in science
and Welsh schools must study science up to age 16,
do science teachers have more of a responsibility to
make their subject interesting for the pupils?
It is obvious that storytelling can never become a
main part of any science lesson. However, a good
teacher uses a range of techniques, and if storytelling
can be used as a motivational tool, then why not?
Three minutes per lesson is a small price to pay if a
teacher is rewarded with motivated pupils who are
eager to learn and who enjoy lessons, resulting in
enhanced learning outcomes.
Many teachers would benefit from the use of
stories, from non-subject specialists resorting to
didactic methods, newly qualified teachers struggling
to make their teaching more interesting, to the older
generation of teachers who may be demotivated
themselves and no longer motivating or interesting
their pupils.
There is clearly much in the research presented
here to suggest that storytelling can provide an
enriched learning experience and that pupils enjoy
(and are more willing to attend) lessons that have an
element of fun or historical perspective. There is also
physiological evidence that long-term memory of
ideas can be enhanced by the use of stories. Moreover,
there are suggestions that a failure to include some
element of storytelling in science teaching could be
harmful to secondary science education, as pupils fail
to be inspired to be inventive, or to see the relevance
of what they are studying. All this clearly points to
the fact that storytelling is an important part of science
teaching, and should not be overlooked by any
practitioner.
Finally, the function of science education goes
further than the provision of future scientists
and service to the institution of science. The
development of scientific literacy is essential to
a participatory democracy. The decline in the
study of science post-16, for all groups of
students, indicates that we are failing to
convince children that science is the most
significant achievement of Western civilisation.
The central question that teachers need to ask
of their practice is ‘How can we make science
more appealing?’ (Simon, 2000)
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 Storytelling in science
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Stephen Rowcliffe teaches biology at the Grange School, Santiago, Chile.
E-mail: stephenrowcliffe@hotmail.com
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