Stories and narratives : using digital stories to learn science

When we think of the first story ever told we imagine primitive humans in caves, drawing their stories on the walls. When we think of the possibility of using storytelling to learn science, we hesitate - some of us respond by rejecting storytelling. Perhaps we respond like this because combining the words 'science' and 'stories' together is risky, anti-rigour and maybe even anti-science (McWilliam, Poronnik, & Taylor, 2008). After all, the definition of a story is an account of events, which can be true but may equally be fictitious and false, that is, 'it is only a story' (Negrete & Lartigue, 2010, p. 98) - the creative imaginings of a storyteller may not necessarily represent reality. Science, in contrast, is commonly about facts and theories explained using logical and formal discourse and evidenced through experimental testing.