Some thoughts on teaching History

I am in the middle of working on a major change programme at work. I am working on a 1 day training intervention or workshop for a series of senior and middle managers to help them lead their teams through this big change. One of the things I have been reminded of by this is the power of story telling in learning.

As humans we seem preconditioned to learn better through reference to stories because they:

• help us to make sense of the world and our place within it
• help create emotions and an emotional involvement
• reduce ambiguity
• provide continuity.

We remember stories much better than strings of plain old facts. In fact cognitive psychological research shows that it is difficult to remember strings of facts without linking them, typically we remember 7 (plus or minus 2). Interestingly, a US study (not sure of the details I am sorry to say) looked at the difference in test performance between history sturdents in high school. The study showed that students who learned by reviewing newspaper accounts of events were much more successful than those who learned from the text books.

Ultimately, stories help us to link what we hear and learn to our existing experience, memories and values. They help to define the relationships, sequence, cause and effect and priorities of facts.

One thing I need to develop and incorporate into my teaching is storytelling. I need to collect and develop stories to weave around the syllabus items I teach. This is something I try to do in my current work and the training courses I facilitate and deliver, I just need to link it with history.