Student Teachers Writing Science Stories: a Case Study

In the following, we will present a few case studies of stories for science education. These were prepared by student teachers at the end of an elective laboratory course (16 hours) that focused on stories and followed the mandatory Fundamental Physics and Laboratory course (50 hours) at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. Both courses are based upon structures of figurative thought used in everyday language that even young children make use of. The structures referred to are found in the Force Dynamic Gestalt of natural forces such as heat, water, wind, electricity, chemicals, or motion. Cognitive linguists have identified image schemas which can be projected metaphorically upon particular phenomena, which then generate abstract concepts. The same structures figure prominently in the formal science of physics, allowing us to apply the power of natural language and narrative forms of science to comprehending nature. In this paper, we will investigate the hypothesis that allowing student teachers to write science stories for primary school is analogous to physics students creating and executing experiments. Although the results of this study may be qualitative and limited to a few stories, they demonstrate that story writing is indeed a powerful tool for professional development. Moreover, they support the notion of the narrative character of science teaching and learning. They open new perspectives for science curricula for primary school and an interdisciplinary approach to learning science and language.