The value of using storytelling in learning

From the earliest beginnings of humanity, storytelling has been an integral tool in promoting learning. Designed to transfer knowledge from one party to another in an engaging way, you can feel the direct connection between using cave drawings to warn of predators to a modern financial manager spinning a rich story about the amazing team win that put their profits over target. This CPD article will explore the importance of storytelling, why storytelling is so effective in learning and development and how you can use it in education and business.

What is the importance of storytelling?

Telling stories is one of the most powerful means that you have at your disposal to influence, teach, and inspire no matter the target audience. Good storytelling engages the audience by involving them in the story and developing a connection with them. Humans learn by both hearing and telling stories and practicing through stories. In fact, studies by some psychologists have even suggested that facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered if they are part of a story. Let’s explore why storytelling is so effective in learning and development.

Why storytelling is so effective in learning and development?

Stories enduring use as a teaching tool are testament to their effectiveness. The best teachers have always based their lessons, knowingly or unknowingly, on storytelling. Utilize the right story for your type of content and learning for the maximum amount of impact and knowledge transfer. 

Storytelling can simplify or contextualise complicated concepts, explain the relevance to the learner of the things they are being taught and will also gain and keep the attention more than just repetition of facts and figures. Good learning and development isn't about getting everyone to complete and pass the course, seminar, training etc. only for them to forget them later. The purpose is to effectively get people to embed the appropriate behaviours and knowledge so that they instinctively know how to act in any scenario and can take these skills into the world.

Like many other art forms, you can learn to become an impactful storyteller and use this skill for professional development and progress. While oral storytelling has been the oldest way to communicate, there are also other forms such as digital, visual, and written. This gives learners a variety of different types and several avenues from which to have their interest captures and information conveyed to them. Video storytelling, as an example, can make your brand more memorable as our brains find it much easier to recall the key points of a story than a list of features. An effective teacher or course leader, however, will make the most of all three in learning and development.

How can storytelling be used in education?

By the age of three or so, most of us can speak our native language. We’ve learned its basic structure, with a lot of the vocabulary. Along with telling and listening to the basic narrative, traditional storytelling often has repetition and rhythm, audience participation such as “call and response,” audience involvement through making predictions or suggestions during the telling, and often some opportunity for role play.

Storytelling teaches vocabulary, functions, such as making requests or asking questions and grammar, known as the four main skills in language learning. Children love stories, and as such sharing stories is an essential part of their development and not just for the launch pad it offers into reading and writing. Storytelling captures children’s attention like few other learning methods. It also gives children the opportunity to both tell and hear stories, which encourages development of active speaking and listening skills. Storytelling fuels their imagination and allows children to develop their own mental images of the story, which further develops the memory.

Benefits of storytelling in business

Storytelling is an ancient practice that remains an important mode of communication in modern societies and businesses across the world. Stories about professional mistakes and what lessons leaders learned from them are an increasingly persuasive reason for their use in a business environment.

Connecting with your customers in a meaningful way through storytelling fosters brand loyalty and makes your business more memorable, relatable and inviting. In a fast moving world where we’re bombarded by constant messaging and information, a great story helps cut through the noise and grab the attention of customers and is a tool widely used in branding and communication.

Storytelling and the framing of these things within a narrative is therefore a skill everyone within the business community should possess. A strong story can convince people to buy your company’s products or services, employees and colleagues to go along with a new strategic plan or reorganization, investors to buy (or not to sell) your stock, and partners to sign the next deal. When implemented effectively, storytelling can help a business in a number of ways, such as improving customer loyalty, creating a strong marketing strategy and increasing profit, for example.

How to become an accredited CPD training provider

We hope this article on the value of using storytelling in learning was helpful. The CPD Certification Service is the world’s leading and largest CPD accreditation organisation working across all industry sectors. If you provide courses, workshops, eLearning, virtual events and are considering becoming a CPD training provider, please contact our team to discuss in more detail. If you want to record your Continuing Professional Development, please go to the myCPD Portal where you can manage, track and log your learning in one simple place.