Storyline method
The storyline method is an action-oriented teaching approach , with a focus on elementary school and lower secondary level . The focus of the - mostly interdisciplinary - lessons is the practical and creative activity of the students. Students create in teaching their own meaningful reality in the form of pictures, models, texts, technical drawings, time sheets, work plans, etc. By addressing these representations they acquire active knowledge and skills.
Storyline lessons deal with a topic that is important to the students and to which they bring ideas and experiences from their everyday lives. The subject is divided into chapters like a story. The pupils mostly approach the topic by creating something: models in which they discover connections that were not known to them before. These models should not only be plausible and logical, but should also be aesthetically pleasing as possible. Therefore, the creative activities of the pupils - drawing, painting, making music, pantomime etc. - are often integrated into the lessons. At the same time, the most important cultural techniques are practiced and deepened in almost every work step. At the beginning of dealing with a topic there are the ideas, experiences, conceptions and assumptions of the students, not the instruction from the teacher or the media. The life world and experience of the students are taken seriously and form the starting point for independent learning. Mutual respect is the basic attitude of this pedagogical approach, lived by the teachers and demanded by the students alike.
Behind each teaching unit, which can extend over several weeks, there is a story, a story that is developed step by step over a longer period of time. The lessons follow a common thread, a line, hence the name story line. Every step along this line begins with what is known as a key question. These are not knowledge questions that have a simple right or wrong answer; Rather, key questions can only be answered by considering, trying out or discovering connections. For example, it is not asked where penguins live, but rather what the penguin organism must be like so that it can survive in an inhospitable region. By answering such questions against their current knowledge background, the students create their own picture of reality, which they then compare with the knowledge that can be retrieved from specialist books, lexicons, the Internet or the teacher. In this respect, lessons according to the storyline method correspond most closely to the systemic-constructivist understanding of learning (see constructivist didactics ).
The storyline approach was developed in the 1960s at Jordanhill College of Education, (now Strathclyde University ) in Glasgow and is now used in more than 30 countries. The pioneers were Steve Bell , Sallie Harkness and Fred Rendell, who developed and further developed this form of teaching and the understanding on which it is based in cooperation with numerous educational practitioners. The storyline approach is particularly widespread in the Scandinavian countries. It was further promoted by the European Association for Educational Design (EED). The first two international conferences on the storyline method organized by EED took place in Denmark in 2000 and 2003. The third international conference was held at the end of October 2006 in Glasgow, the fourth in 2009 in Oregon, USA. Since the storyline approach is now also used outside of Europe, EED was renamed "Storyline International" at this conference.
literature
- Steve Bell: Freedom needs structure. Or: the storyline as a planning tool in the topic. In: The primary school magazine. Volume 8, H. 80, 1994, pp. 9-13.
- Steve Bell, Sallie Harkness: Storyline - Promoting Language Across the Curriculum. UKLA, Royston 2006, ISBN 1-897638-35-3 .
- S. Bell, S. Harkness, G. White (Eds.): Storyline - Past, Present and Future. University of Strathclyde, Glasgow 2007, ISBN 978-0-947649-16-6 .
- Cecilie Falkenberg, Erik Haakonsson (Ed.): Storylinebogen. En handbog for untervisere. Vejle 2002, ISBN 87-7469-046-9 .
- Jos Letschert (Ed.): Beyond Storyline. SLO, Enschede 2006, ISBN 90-329-2238-6 .
- F. Rendell: Topic Study, How and Why? Jordanhill College of Education, Glasgow 1982, ISBN 1-85098-055-1 .
- Ulf Schwänke: The storyline method. An innovative teaching concept in practice. Donauwörth 2005, ISBN 3-403-04263-4 .
- Ulf Schwänke: Our zoo. A teaching unit for primary school. at the same time a short introduction to the storyline method. BoD, Norderstedt 2012, ISBN 978-3-8482-4202-3 .
- Erik Vos, Peter Dekkers: Behavioral Ontwerpen. een draaiboek. Groningen 1994, ISBN 90-01-20319-1 .