Using storybooks in science

eureka MOMENTS

MOMENTS Reading a storybook can make you a better scientist, says Sally Howard, even if the book has nothing to do with science whatsoever…

The use of storybooks in science is not new and builds on the idea that understanding and knowledge is not the transmission of information but a dynamic process of imagining and reasoning within a language-rich environment. Using language as a tool for learning is nothing new either, and certainly the pedagogical ideas found in many of today’s classrooms can be easily attributed to the likes of the Russian psychologist Vygotsky and his principles of sociocultural learning, along with Piagetian reasoning patterns.

Most teachers also recognise that successful science understanding occurs through physical, emotional and cognitive engagement over a sustained period of time. What is less clear, however, is exactly what is going on inside the brain of a child. Our understanding of how the brain works is growing rapidly and as a result of fMRI imaging we are now able to see evidence that children are not blank slates or empty vessels waiting to be filled. While educational cognitive neuroscience is still in its infancy, there is ample evidence to show the brain is plastic and does adapt and change according to how it is stimulated.

Alison Gopnik’s research on how babies think has demonstrated that children and babies have everyday theories of the world on which they unconsciously draw in order to make sense of their experiences and create new ideas and understanding. Very young brains are sensitive to statistical patterns – the learning of language in its earliest stages involves the statistical prediction of which sounds are most likely to follow one another, which is an unconscious exercise in probability theory.

We now know that the prefrontal lobe helps adults to block out distractions and focus on what’s important. However, young children’s prefrontal lobe is not yet fully developed and, as a result, they pay too much attention to everything, all of the time.

The ability to shut out distraction reaches a reasonable stage of maturity around the age of five, yet does not reach full maturity for another 10 to 15 years. What arouses young children and novice learners most is what is in front of their eyes and ears; the occipital cortex is highly active in young brains, which is why quality storybooks are so valuable beyond what is printed on the page.

How stories are used in science Storybooks in science broadly fit into three categories. First, there are stories with an overt science context, such as Shirley Hughes’ Out and About Through The Year, which is a collection of poems about the seasons.

The second group of books are those in which science is a possibility, providing a context for further scientific exploration and investigation. A popular example is The Rescue Party, by Nick Butterworth, which can be used to explore forces such as pulleys, levers and friction at anything from a basic to a highly complex level of scientific enquiry.

However, it is the third category that is the most intriguing, opening up new possibilities for use in the classroom and at home. They are books in which narrative seriation is achieved through words or pictures – or both – drawing on metaphors and similes as well as visual cues to stimulate the imagination and create new neural connections.

They do no necessarily need to be overtly ‘scientific’ to be of value. The relationship with ‘science’ is about the reader being intrigued and captivated in order to ‘solve’ the dramatic incident and understand the problem from an alternative perspective.

Even in books for very young children, good stories require the manipulation of multiple variables as character, plot, cause and consequence are juggled together. It requires the brain to engage in problem solving and hypothesising and, in this way, permanent physiological changes occur in the cortex of the brain. These are the same changes as those achieved for scientific and mathematical reasoning.

Virtual realities structure, such as ‘Once upon a time…’ or ‘Long, long ago…’ These story structures cross cultures and time and have been part of ‘teaching’ for centuries. Fairytales have been shared for generations and can inspire children to become readers and storytellers for life.

The principle of anticipation found in fairytales and fables also applies to more adult genres, such as thrillers, love stories and horror. It is the predictability of the structure that assists in the processing. These common elements stimulate certain complex neural connections in the brain and help the reader ‘experience’ perspectives that differ from their personal reality.

It is as if they were there and, as such, the experience becomes part of their knowing.

In his book I is an Other, James Geary states that: “Metaphor is a way of thought long before it is a way with words”. Metaphors shape the way the world is understood and play a crucial part in effective communication, shared understanding, discovery and invention. You only need to watch a young child at play to observe her use of metaphor through symbolic representation.

A box becomes a hat; a stick a gun or magic wand. You get a glimpse into her creative and inventive thinking capability. As children mature and gain more experience, so their metaphorical repertoire expands.

Geary draws on Lewis Carol’s Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, citing it as a wonderful example in which metaphors are used to explore and make sense of life’s complexities. He points out that the nonsensical world in which Alice finds herself is quickly reasoned once she relinquishes her preconceived ideas and explores the ‘nonsensical’ using logical reasoning. In this way it becomes clear that nonsense is in fact provisional!

By heightening the reader’s emotional response to the characters and content of a story, she is better able to identify with its perspective. This development of empathy involves the activation of the mirror neuron system, which in turn gives the reader the impression of having ‘lived’ the story – an experience that subsequently becomes an embedded part of her own knowledge and understanding.

Neuroscientists have also found that reading stories and telling jokes involve the same creation of cerebral interconnectivity and neural systems. As a result of this processing, the punchline is understood, or the characterisation is taken beyond the literal word and ‘new’ meaning and understanding is created. This ‘realisation’ of the joke is similar to that of a ‘eureka’ moment when a solution is seen in a scientific or mathematical problem. Drawing on the extensive research evidence from neuralimaging, John Geake, an educational neuroscientist, has discovered that very different cognitive abilities – language, logic, mathematics, memory – draw on the same neural systems. This is why it is likely that narrative seriation and logical reasoning can be enhanced by undertaking related but very different activities, such as reading story books.

The key point here is for teachers to intentionally put children in someone else’s shoes through the use of story. In this way, they can experience ideas and feelings as if in a real, socially-bound situation. It is then but a short jump to propose that, through using analogy, metaphor and other cueing devices, certain story types are able to stimulate a complex neural system in the brain and, in doing so, help develop higher order thinking capabilities such a causality, seriation and deductive reasoning.