Storytelling: Practice and process as non-textual pedagogy

Abstract

Storytelling, as a practice and process, is a longstanding tool and non-textual pedagogy in the field of library and information science. Storytelling is also the topic of a graduate course taught for the past eleven years by the author as a tool for all forms of professional communication. This article explores the non-textual (and selected textual) pedagogies involved in teaching storytelling as an interactive communication practice. This pedagogical approach defines storytelling as involving a dynamic triangle of telling, listening, and story, drawing on both folklore and storytelling performance scholarship. Three themes weave throughout the syllabus: ethics, applications, and technologies. Storytelling brings the teller and audience into a reciprocal process of listening and telling, from which a fresh story of professional meaning and purpose can emerge.

Teaching data storytelling as data literacy

“…Initial course design drew on both authors' expertise in storytelling (McDowell, 2018;McDowell, 2020) and open science data sharing and exploration (Turk et al, 2011). This workshop-model course entailed giving feedback and coaching students toward more accurate and effective data storytelling.…”

“…In this tradition, storytelling is a dynamic interaction with a long pedagogical history (McDowell, 2018). Imagine a typical story time, where story-based interactions – participation games, guessing what comes next – add up to positive literacy-building experiences in the library (MacDonald, 1993; Del Negro, 2017).…”

“…Initial course design drew on both authors’ expertise in storytelling (McDowell, 2018; McDowell, 2020) and open science data sharing and exploration (Turk et al. , 2011).…”

“…Among other elements, these assignments demonstrate that these IS courses are distinctive from similarly named courses in business and journalism. The preexisting (and continuously and concurrently taught) course storytelling, IS 410, which has three themes of ethics, applications and technologies (McDowell, 2018), was the initial basis for the storytelling elements of these courses.…”

“…This gap can be bridged with storytelling. Data storytelling combines information and emotion, and the audience is part of a dynamic interaction that cocreates meaning (McDowell, 2018). An intentional framing of data is necessary so that they can be interpreted in story form (McDowell, 2021).…”