Achieving Reflective Learning Using Storytelling Pathways

This paper describes how storytelling can be used for reflective learning purposes. Drawing on our teaching and research experience we explore the context in which storytelling occurs and identify the characteristics that shape the process: setting, number of listeners and type of story. We then demonstrate how storytellers can mix these characteristics, which we have translated into eight storytelling pathways, and we explain how these pathways affect outcomes. Tomaximize opportunities for practitioners to achieve reflective learning outcomes through storytelling, we have developed two formalized processes which we share in the final section of the paper. The first process has four stages, incorporates oral, written and dialectic reflection and involves individual and joint reflective phases. The second process also has four stages but is group focused and involves a facilitator who encourages collaborative reflection.