The pedagogical importance of stories and narrative knowledge

Robi Kroflič

Summary:  The principal aim of this article is to emphasise the unique role played by art in the process of learning, particularly through stories as channels for narrative knowledge. The author begins with an overview of studies on the importance of art in education and that deal specifically with the distinct importance of narrative knowledge, multiple intelligences and languages, the development of creativity, the concept of embodied knowledge, and subjectification. The central part of the article focuses on the ontological and pedagogical value of stories and narrative knowledge, highlighting their motivational and epistemological relevance, their role in identity formation and establishing existential meaning, openness and the ethical dimension of accepting otherness, the political dimension of education as a process of subjectification, and the importance of stories as a therapeutic way of dealing with personal and social traumas. The conclusion stresses the importance of stories in education both as an illustration of deductive knowledge and as a unique form of fostering inductive/experiential knowledge, the latter being sadly neglected in schools today.