The Power of Stories: Engaging your American Government Students
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Professor Scott Abernathy explains how American Government instructors can use storytelling to engage students.
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The Power of Stories: Engaging your American Government Students
- 1. The Power of Stories: Engaging your American Government Students Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne
- 2. Scott F. Abernathy, Ph.D. University of Minnesota Moderator: Amy Whitaker Marketing SAGE / CQ Press
- 3. Scott F. Abernathy, Ph.D. University of Minnesota
- 4. • Why use stories? • How do you choose the ”right” stories? • What are some practical tips that lead to student success? Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne
- 5. Poll Slide Think about a story that is particularly powerful to you. What about it makes it so memorable? a. Vivid characters? b. A compelling plot? c. Drama and uncertainty? d. All of the above? e. Other?
- 6. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne Michael C. Everett, “Fostering First-Year Students’ Engagement and Well-Being Through Visual Narratives,” Studies in Higher Education 42, no. 4 (2017): 623-635. Joanna Szurmak and Mindy Thuna, “Tell Me a Story: The Use of Narrative as a Tool for Instruction,” paper presented at ACRL 2013, April 10-13 (www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/conferences/confsandpreconfs/20 13/papers/SzurmakThuna_TellMe.pdf). Paul J. Zak, “How Stories Change the Brain,” Greater Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, December 17, 2013 (http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_stories_change_brain). STORIES help students remember concepts
- 8. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne Why use stories?
- 9. How do I choose the right stories?
- 10. Stories
- 11. POLL SLIDE Q: Have you experienced significant or increasing student diversity if your classroom? Yes No
- 12. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne How do I choose the right stories?
- 13. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne What are some practical tips that lead to student success with a storytelling approach? 1. Guiding conversations
- 14. 1. Guiding conversations 2. Telling Stories with Images What are some practical tips that lead to student success with a storytelling approach?
- 15. 1. Guiding conversations 2. Telling Stories with Images 3. Telling Stories with Data What are some practical tips that lead to student success with a storytelling approach?
- 18. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne Webinar recording, slides, and follow-up Q&A will be emailed to you, and will soon be available on connection.sagepub.com. Thank you! Scott F. Abernathy Be sure to check our website for updates on our webinar series!
Editor's Notes
- Welcome to today’s discussion, The Power of Stories: Engaging your American Government Students, the latest in our SAGE Talks series.
- Let me begin by introducing our speaker, Scott Abernathy. Scott is an Associate Professor of Political Science and a Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Minnesota. He is one of a select group who has received the Horace T. Morse – University of Minnesota Alumni Association Award for Outstanding contributions to undergraduate education. Prior to joining the academy, Scott worked as a public school teacher in Wisconsin, as a street-counselor with homeless youths in Boston and with the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Theresa. He received his Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 2002, an M.P.A. in Domestic Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University in 1997, a Masters of Curriculum and Instruction from University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1994, and a B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1988. Scott is also the author of a new text from CQ Press: American Government Stories of a Nation
- Scott: Hi everyone. Thank you all for joining the conversation today. This talk is designed and framed around using the power of stories in our teaching of American government and politics Many of you will have some interest in and questions about taking the narrative approach in our classes, and using stories to engage our students into meaningful conversations, to bring all of their diverse voices and perspectives into our explorations. Teaching is a form of storytelling. We all do it every day in the classroom. We use stories – examples from the news, from history, even from popular culture – to enhance our discussion of ideas. Because we use stories so often in our teaching, we may not always be conscious of the power of stories. And I do think there is something very powerful about using stories to teach the Intro to American Government course. Let me tell you why.
- Today, I will focus on three questions in turn: · Why use stories? · How does an instructor choose the ‘right’ stories? · What are some practical tips that lead to student success? · Why use stories? Before digging in to the power of narrative, perhaps we could do a quick poll, maybe coming back to this in more detail in the Q&A:
- A quick poll” Think about a story that is particularly powerful to you. What makes it so memorable? a) Vivid characters? b) A compelling plot? c) Drama and uncertainty? d) All of the above? e) Other? While I can see that many of you chose diffferent aspects of powerful stories, these aspects of narrative are gettng more and more attention in the study of how students successfully learn.
- There is a growing body of research that points to the power of stories in helping students remember and learn the core content of a discipline . Recent findings in neurobiology support what many of us instinctively know to be true: we are wired to be storytellers and story-hearers.
- We all use stories in our teaching to serve this purpose – we use stories to highlight an idea or illustrate a concept, facilitate a deeper understanding of the core content. But HOW we use the stories is important. On the one hand, you could lecture for 10 minutes about a key concept and then introducing a story as a quick illustration of the concept, OR you could introduce the idea through a story, using the narrative to hook the student in for genuine engagement with the material, get them really invested in the theories that try to explain political outcomes, and the enduring questions of American representative democracy. And, students can connect the dots between those elements and gain a deeper understanding of complex issues, without them seeming to be
- Here’s an example: Right now, Neil Gorsuch is undergoing the process of confirmation to the Supreme Court in a time of profound political polarization. It is key that our students understand the role of the federal judiciary, and, especially, the Supreme Court in American government, including an understanding of the Senate’s role of “advice and consent,” Hamilton’s Federalist 78 (not the musical version), and separation of powers in a constitutional republic. Understanding these concepts, however, especially in a time where the 9th Supreme Court Justice is undergoing the process of confirmation, in such a charged environment is more deeply understood through an exploration of the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor and the failed confirmation of Robert Bork. While her confirmation was successful, Justice Sotomayor’s critics pointed to comments that she had made prior suggesting that her experience as “a wise Latina” might help inform more just rulings. On the other hand, Robert Bork’s confirmation failed because his critics worried about a strict textual approach to judicial decision-making. Exploring these narratives helps students wrestle with the question of how political the Court is, or should be; how different the “least dangerous” branch of the federal government really is. Do nominees “run for office”? in our current era? Should they? What would Hamilton have to say (or sing) about the Court in the 21st Century?
- How do I choose the right stories? There are so many possibilities, that I’m not sure any one set is “right” and another “wrong.” What guides my choices, though, are two man objectives: 1. I try to choose stories that are truly inclusive of students’ diverse lived experiences. And 2. To help students gain the skills, confidence, and thoughtfulness to successfully reflect upon key issues with which they are already wrestling. To try to achieve the first goal, the stories I tell are those of a vastly diverse group of Americans. Narrative can help students understand that American government and politics is about real people: their strategies, the actions they took, the contingencies surrounding those actions and their outcomes, and the struggles they faced. That political outcomes are not predetermined but are instead the results of strategic choices made by political actors, usually undertaken in an uncertain environment, often amid unequal relationships of power.
- Stories have the power to bring all voices into these conversations in ways that other approaches may not. In this approach, diversity is not a list of boxes to be checked off. The richness of Americans’ experiences adds to a more robust understanding of the topics and concepts. Covering the struggle of African-Americans to achieve civil rights in a chapter on civil rights, for example, makes perfect sense. But it doesn’t make sense that that would be the only place we’d hear stories of other political actions taken by African-American people or others with similarly marginalized coverage in texts. The 2nd goal is very much connected to the first: To help students gain the skills, confidence, and thoughtfulness to successfully reflect upon key issues with which they are already wrestling. After all, we are not introducing political issues to students for the first time in the classroom—they’ve lived with the impact of so many political outcomes and actions—but through telling stories that highlight real people, you can provide a lens through which the students can recognize themselves in the political process.
- A second short poll: Have you experienced significant or increasing student diversity in your classrooms? a) Yes b) No Having taught for many years here at Minnesota, I have noticed a marked increase in my classrooms. For example, our state has, I believe the largest, number of immigrants and refugees from Somalia.
- When I cover public opinion, for example, I frame the analysis around the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri—as well as the protests that followed. This helps accomplish several objectives. First, it is an issue that students are confronting, and one where a balanced, thoughtful treatment can help them form their own opinions. Narrative allows for the inclusion of a broad vision of the diversity of Americans’ lived experiences, including the reality that any one American may have multiple conceptions of their own identities, and that those self-understandings shape their participation in the political process. Through the power of narrative and of stories, my goal is that all students—will find that they are also a part of the American experience, whether or not their voices have been heard. But the core content is there, too, when we explore questions of stability and change in American public opinion.
- Finally, participants are likely curious about sharing together in this conversation, practical tips and strategies in the service of the first two main objectives. I have a few, and would very much like to hear from you all ways in which you have found success, or, maybe, even things that have not worked as planned. We’ve all been there; I know I have. A lesson or activity that I just know will be spot on doesn’t quite resonate, while another—out of the blue—sparks a great discussion. Here at Minnesota, we tend to have very large introductory classes, at least 80 students per section. It can be intimidating for students to share their own thoughts, not because they are scared of me, but, perhaps, worried about sharing their own views with a large group of peers. To try to help break down those fears, we do a lot of small group work, with three or four students in each. The idea is to prompt them with one or two questions based on one of the stories, have them discuss these questions with each other, and then ask for volunteers from the small groups For example, I might ask them: “Reflecting back upon what you have read about women in the United States Senate, and the lack of descriptive representation of individuals with diverse lived experiences today, what does this mean for substantive representation? Can a senator or representative who does not reflect the experiences of many of his or her constituents truly represent them?” When volunteers from the groups share their thoughts with the whole class, we can then explore the complexity of the legislative process, seeing it—not only as a vote on the House or Senate floor—but in as a long and complex process, one that was designed to make things not happen as much as it was to make things happen. That’s where the ideas of descriptive and substantive representation really come into play. Perhaps a representative or senator who does not share the experiences of many of his or her constituents will necessarily attend to their concerns in a public and recorded vote on a bill. But what about the less visible stages of the legislative processes? Procedural votes, bill sponsorship, or being willing not to oppose a bill? That is where things get more complicated when we think about representation and where we may need to be more concerned with the make-up of Congress. In these small groups, the goal is not to have them debate a particular policy or party platform, but to think carefully about what this thing called “representative democracy” is, or is supposed to be.
- We all know that narratives are not only told through text. One tool I try to use is to intentionally is to present students with narratives constructed through and around images, to help foster image literacy. For example, when covering Public Opinion, I present students with two very different cover images and stories from the St. Louis Dispatch on the one-year anniversary of the shooting death of Mr. Brown. A photo of a peaceful protest was quickly replaced with one of another shooting by law enforcement officers that evening. I ask my students, if you were an editor of the paper, how might you go about deciding which images to choose to convey the protests?
- Just as important, in an increasingly data-driven world, is the ability to act as a critical interpreter of data—and perhaps most importantly—of the stories told based on the sometimes-competing interpretations of those data is a fundamental skill. Data, and their interpretation, constitute an exercise of power. By exploring how individuals and groups have used data to frame or put forth a particular point of view, I think my students can better understand that data-stories can be just as important in the political process as any other narrative and develop their own skills in data literacy. One example that I use is to present students with bar charts exploring the use of judicial review by judicial ideology in two separate Courts: The Warren Court and the Hughes Court. In addition to helping students become more capable readers of data, but also to understand that judicial activism has not only been in the liberal direction in our nation’s history. Again, to prompt students to think deeply about the role of Justices’ political ideologies in the “least dangerous” branch.
- Our students are already having conversations about important and challenging issues. I think that we tell and retell the difficult stories precisely because they are challenging, helping us to figure out our places in what Walt Whitman called, “the powerful play,” in which each of us, whether or not we know it, “may contribute a verse.” I think that a balanced narrative approach can help guide them through their own explorations. My students generally do not want me to pit them against each other in a political debate. I think they get plenty of that in the media and social media. They want tools, to help make their own voices stronger, more thoughtful, and effective. Narrative, in all its forms, I believe, can do just that.
- Amy: “How do you go about deciding what stories to tell before each lecture?” Scott: I used the same criteria for deciding what stories to put in his book, but the main question he needs to answer is how he comes up with the “right” stories before going into class—a method (or an approach) that others can use. Amy: “Once you’ve come up with an idea for a story that fits your criteria, what is your next step in figuring out how best to tell it—to get students to dig in and fully understand concepts in context?” Amy: “How do you decide when to tell a historical story in class versus one that is focused on current events?—how much do you try to balance out the two over the course of a semester?” Amy: Part of the decision to write a textbook is the realization that no one book fits all of your teaching needs. You’ve talked about wanting to give voice to Americans’ lived experiences as a motivation for your storytelling approach, but what else was missing from books on the market that you wanted to remedy?—What stories were not being told?
- Amy: I see we’re reaching the end of our time today. Scott, any last words? Scott: My course is very much a work in progress, as, I think, it should be. Thank you all for contributing your thoughts and voices to the conversation today Slide XX: Closing (Amy) Thank you everyone for joining us for today’s SAGE talk. Please be on the lookout for an email that includes a link to view this entire webinar on our website, as well as some answers to some of the questions we did not have time to get to today. Thanks for your attention, and we hope you will join us for another SAGE talk webinar again soon. You can visit sagepub.com SLASH sagetalks for more information. Have a great day!