Storytelling first, yes, but never to the exclusion of rationality
Read moreThis week, a reader comment showed me the need to clarify something I stated in a misleading manner. The observation came from a former client who has followed my work and writing for many years, and she certainly has a clear understanding of who I am and what I believe. Her remark concerned the title of the recent post “Sciences
Why stories form our native language
Read moreAt the end of the last blog entry, I promised to discuss some of the evidence I found that thinking in narrative form is a natural tendency of the human mind. Once again, my curiosity around this theme—narrative thinking versus scientific thinking—stemmed largely from my ongoing observations as a lecturer. As I leaned more and more in the direction of
Science vs. story: which approach is the most useful for learning?
Read moreIn the past weeks, I have written about my students’ capacity to recall, with high levels of precision and detail, many of the stories and lessons from the cases we studied. Moreover, over a period of some twenty-five years, I have been continuously surprised by the frequency and the insightful nature of the communication I have received from former students.
Business students and narrative recall
Read moreThe previous post provided some detail about a phenomenon that began to fascinate me more and more, at the time when real-world cases and anecdotes were taking center stage in my teaching. As I wrote previously, I had observed rather quickly that students were retaining information better and longer when we presented it in these narrative forms. Once I had clear evidence
Why stories slide into our memories without effort
Read moreWe ended last time with the assertion that moving to narrative-based learning provoked significant, and truly positive, changes in my business school classrooms. As we saw, among the most noticeable benefits of teaching this way was that students’ retention of course material increased dramatically. This was an outcome I had anticipated from the beginning, though this “memory effect” turned out
How stories make lessons come alive
Read moreAs we mentioned toward the end of the previous post, there were a number of reasons why my students at the graduate school of business came to enjoy case-based learning. Among these reasons were some that I had fully anticipated. Others were surprising even to me. To better understand my fast-growing faith in the value of story-based learning, we should