Getting round to blogging more about the NILE conference. Paul Hazel from Swansea asked ‘are we justified in using narrative as a pedagogical tool?’ Paul seemed to be getting at the heart of what the conference was all about. He was one of the few people to define narrative and to consider what that definition meant.

‘Narrative is the primary means of comprehension and expression for our experience of events changing over time. Narrative time is subjective, not objective; elastic not metronomic.’

Polkinghorne (1988) defines narrative as ‘the fundamental scheme for linking individual human actions and events into interrelated aspects of an understandable composite.’

Narrative is a fundamental mode of thought. It is one of our most important means of encoding long-term memory. The organisation entailed in narratives reduces cognitive load. The additional processing necessary may generate new meaning. Narratives allow more efficient retrieval of memories. Narrative is crucial in the establishment and maintenance of personal identity. We use narratives to describe who we are, to describe the past and to predicta nd plan the future.

facts only have meaning in relation to others. They must be contextualised. So all learning relies on narratives.