Giuliana Dettori

ITD CNR, Genoa, Italy researcher of Italy’s National Research Council formative studies in mathematics initial research experience in several fields (computer graphics, GIS,

artificial intelligence) current research interests in Educational Technologies interest for narrative arising from attention to the role of

representations in education no practical applications of narrative so far, but bibliographical

research and analysis

This research is carried out with colleague Tania Giannetti

What did we find in the literature?

Narrative is used in many application fields and in many different ways

Many, more or less different, definitions

From the point of view of its nature, narrative may be seen

as a phenomenon (sequence of events involving actors)

as a cognitive process

as an organizing principle/method

as a representation

as a social expression  

Narrative as sequence of events

A unique sequence of events, mental states, happenings involving human beings as characters or actors. These are its constituents. But these constituents do not, as it were, have a life or meaning of their own. Their meaning is given by their place in the overall configuration of the sequence as a whole - its plot or fabula (Bruner, 1992).

 

Narrative as cognitive process

Narrative is a process of both discerning and imposing structured meanings which can be shared and articulated. The result of this process is also often referred to as a narrative i.e. the product of discerning and imposing structured meanings which can be shared and articulated (Plowman et al, 2001).

Narrative is a highly complex psychological process, depending for its operation upon the integration of numerous cognitive mechanism (e.g. cause-and-effect reasoning, theory of mind, language, spatial reasoning) (Scalise Sugiyama, 2001).

 

Narrative as organizing principle

The term “narrative” is used as the kind of organizational scheme expressed in story form. Narrative can refer to the process of making a story, to the cognitive scheme of the story, or to the result of the process - also called stories, tales, histories. Here it is used narrative and its cognates to refer to both the process and the results (Polkinghorne, 1988).

Narration is a basic non-associative organizing principle of the human mind (Pléh, 2003)

Narrative thinking - storying – is a successful method of organizing perception, thought, memory and action (McEvan, 1997)

Narratives are variously described as a method, as the result o a method, as a way of making sense of life, as a phenomenon (Kvernbekk, 2003)

Narrative as representation

Narrative is a representation of a series of events meaningfully connected in a temporal and causal way. A “text” may be in any medium, thus encompassing the spoken word, film and pictures as well as written material. (Turner S., Turner P., 2003)

Narrative is the representation of an event or a series of events. Without an event or an action you may have a description, an exposition, an argument, a lyric (Porter Abbott, 2002)

Discourse, or an example of it, designed to represent a connected succession of happenings (Lieblich et al., 1998)

 

Narrative as social expression

By narrative we mean a certain type of artistic and social expression, where a kind o imitation of real events is involved (Szilas, 1999)

 

From the point of view of its function, narrative is used

to organize information

to make meaning (in different ways)

to share knowledge, beliefs, values

 

Features which characterize narrative are considered

Event(s) (Human) Actor(s) Time(s) Casual relation Existence of an explicit narrator  No general agreement on which of these features are essential

Narrative does not coincide with “text in natural language”

Pictures may have a narrative, if they show the main features which characterize it  Texts in natural language can be of 5 different kinds, based on the role they play:

- argumentative- descriptive - expositive- narrative- instrumental

It is clear that narrative can play an important role in education, and in different ways

What role can narrative play in TELEs?

Two different situations: The student is required to generate a narrative

learning to produce a narrative (e.g., constructing a story) producing a narrative with some aim (e.g., organizing

information, sharing knowledge) developing cognitive abilities by using a narrative (e.g.

making inferences) The student is given a narrative to work with

the narrative is embedded in the TELE (e.g., connecting

representations in multimedia environments) a narrative is generated automatically (e.g. intelligent agents)

 

Narrative and representations

There is no overlapping

Two aspects may be studied:

Micro-narrative (within a representation)

Macro-narrative (among multiple representations in a same environment, possibly using different codes)

 Not much bibliographical material available