The Relation of Story Structure to a Model of Conceptual Change in Science Learning

Although various reasons have been proposed to explain the potential effectiveness of science stories to promote learning, no explicit relationship of stories to learning theory in science has been propounded. In this paper, two structurally analogous models are developed and compared: a structural model of stories and a temporal conceptual change model of learning. On the basis of the similarity of the models, as elaborated, it is proposed that the structure of science stories may promote a re-enactment of the learning process, and, thereby, such stories serve to encourage active learning through the generation of hypotheses and explanations. The practical implications of this theoretical analogy can be applied to the classroom in that the utilization of stories provides the opportunity for a type of re-enactment of the learning process that may encourage both engagement with the material and the development of long-term memory structures.