Christine Counsell OBE is director of Opening Worlds Ltd. She has held roles as local authority adviser, leader of the University of Cambridge history PGCE and MAT Director of Education. Consultant for national and international projects, she currently chairs Northern Ireland’s Curriculum Taskforce.
Harnessing the Powers of Story: Using Narrative to Transform Attention and Retention
Narrative accounts are generally comprehended and remembered better than expository ones. Our brains ‘expect’ narrative patterns. The merest hint that a narrative may have started places a student in a state of heightened attention – a state that is essential for a memory to begin to form. What does this mean for those subjects where narrative is already the natural form of accounting (literature, humanities, many aspects of the arts) and what does it mean in general for all pedagogy?
