While storytelling is timeless and universal, the forms, processes, and intentions of storytelling have varied over time, place, and culture. What are stories? What do we value in them? Why are they valued? The National Storytelling Network (NSN) defines storytelling as “an ancient art form and a valuable form of human expression. Because story is essential to so many art forms, however, the word ‘storytelling’ is often used in many ways.” To further clarify, the NSN adds that storytelling is interactive, uses words, uses actions in the form of vocalization, movement, and/or gesture, presents a story, and stimulates the listener’s imagination. From this broad yet defining conceptualization, this chapter introduces the historical and universal value of storytelling and how 21st-century storytelling departs from traditions.
Historical and Universal Value
The value and power of storytelling is universal across cultures (MacDonald, 1998), across disciplines (Brown & Duguid, 2000; Sanchez & Blayer, 2002), and over time; there is evidence that preliterate cultures relied on storytelling to educate their members and that these oral retellings were exceptionally accurate (Egan, 1989). Some of the earliest memories and experiences of those who grew up in the 20th century consist of stories told for entertainment, as a form of instruction, within our families, in our religious training, and as a part of our social community. Campbell and Moyers (1988) view stories as cultural mythologies that shape our view of what is real as a part of a collective consciousness as well as our individual experience—stories help to form us. Others see stories as forms of discourse that give meaning to our interactions (Barthes, 1993)—stories reveal something about us. These two perspectives are presented in this book through the examination of stories as social tools, and sources of inter- and intra-personal epistemologies.
Arguably, we share our own personal, social, and professional identity stories as we meet new people and represent ourselves to the world. Arendt (1958) claimed that the meaning of action (as depicted in a narrator’s story) is made real and enduring through the documentation and retelling of an original story. In this way, storytelling is a form of disseminating meaning across the lifespan. If our life is replayed through our stories, then it makes sense that stories used in learning experiences help us to integrate new meaning (Hopkins, 1994) into existing schemas. Yet research in this area is fragmented and situated in a variety of fields, and is therefore difficult to understand as an instructional method.
For adults, storytelling that supports learning is evident in informal learning experiences, traditional education, and workplace training. Most recently K–12 education has seen a resurgence of storytelling (Dogan, 2012; Jonassen & Hernandez-Serrano, 2002; Ohler, 2013; Yuksel, Robin, & McNeil, 2011) that supports case-based reasoning through narratives that relate to personal experience. In higher education, storytelling has been used to engage the learner (Brookfield, 1991; Burbules, 1993; Cooper, Orban, Henry, & Townsend, 1983; Creswell, 1997; Mezirow, 1991) and has become a strategy of reflection embodied through electronic portfolios (see Barrett, 2005; Lorenzo & Ittelson, 2005). From the foundations of learning through storytelling in formal education the transition to storytelling in the workplace makes sense, and we see evidence in many professions: archeology (Gibb, 2000), cognitive psychology (Tversky & Marsh, 2000), counseling (Sue & Sue, 2007), dentistry (Whipp, Ferguson, Wells, & Iacopino, 2000), general medicine (Churchill & Churchill, 1989), journalism (Hanson, 1997), marketing (Woodside, Sood, & Miller, 2008), military (Cianciolo, Prevou, Cianciolo, & Morris, 2007), and nursing (Schmidt Bunkers, 2000). Applications in the workplace are more thoroughly examined in Part III.
Cultures not only have traditions of storytelling but also different uses of oral narrative, which tend to vary by function, delivery style, and narrator (Bauman, 1986). Benedict (1934) argued that stories are but one part of a culture’s larger identity and therefore reveal norms, values, and beliefs of the culture in which the story is situated. Thus cultural traditions and expressions regarding societal status quo add relevance and meaning to the most straightforward story. In the 21st-century digital stories provide the capacity to learn about culture across the globe, as well for individuals or organizations to express cultural identity in an increasingly inter-cultural world. Culture is explored more thoroughly in Chapter 3.
Organizations shape their employees around an occupational if not organizational culture (Snowden, 2004). In some instances, such as the US military, culture is addressed through training as a strategy to lessen the impact of transitions into an unfamiliar culture. Carter-Black (2007) argues that storytelling can not only transmit culture but also assist the newly introduced member to consider her or his own culture. Storytelling is a common strategy within organizations to transmit knowledge and specifically best practices (see Brown, 2005; Brown & Duguid, 1998; Davenport & Prusak, 1998; Leonard-Barton 1990) and within informal learning contexts (Andrews, Hull, & DeMeester, 2010; Cedefop, 2009). There is evidence that storytelling is an indication of the vitality of an organization (McCarthy, 2008) and works as a knowledge transmission mechanism to inculcate organizational values.
However, as an instructional strategy, what works in a traditional educational environment does not necessarily operate in the same manner in a workplace, because of how learning occurs in formal education and how it occurs in workplace training. Training focuses on specific situations that are directly applicable to workplace job tasks (Smith & Ragan, 2005). Training is not fluid, flexible, extendable, adaptable, or transferable because it is an end in itself. Formal education with systemized instruction is designed to develop conceptual foundations for applied practice and as such is fluid, flexible, extendable, adaptable, and transferable. Therefore, story telling techniques developed for use with children or college-attending adults probably provide a foundation for the worker in similar work-based applications but cannot be utilized in the same forms for the same functions. Additionally, advances in technology-mediated opportunities for learning and access to information have resulted in a blurring of how and when learning occurs, challenging organizations to understand and capitalize on the skills and abilities of employees to direct their own learning and benefit from institutionalized instruction (Carmean, 2008).
Traditionally, stories have been told in meetings, in hallways, over drinks, at social gatherings, in written communications, or in formal presentations. They have been ephemeral in their immediacy and often retold depending in part on how memorable the first telling was or how high-stakes the message. The 21st century’s ubiquitous technologies, however, capture storytelling—intentionally or surreptitiously—in ways that have changed how people learn, and possibly what is learned, from stories.
