Once upon a Time: the Power of Oral Storytelling as a Tool for Environmental Education

Abstract

This exploratory, qualitative study investigated how oral storytelling is being used as a tool for environmental education (EE) and professional environmental storytellers' perceptions of what makes stories effective for EE purposes. The researcher conducted interviews with seven professional environmental storytellers to gather the data. The seven storytellers came from the Eastern portion of the United States and had an average of 23 years of experience as professional storytellers. Results suggest that the seven storytellers use storytelling as a tool for EE in four ways: to connect and to inspire people, to motivate people to learn, and to teach science in a variety of ways. The storytellers tell stories to a variety of audiences that ranges from elementary schoolaged youth to conservation groups to families. The participants also tell many types of stories, such as natural and cultural history stories, Native American stories, traditional folktales, and original stories. Results also indicate that effective EE stories must create a connection between the listener and the story and must balance emotions soul and science. Finally, results indicate that environmental storytellers must go through a variety of processes before they are able to effectively share stories, including finding inspiration, negotiating barriers, and developing the skills needed to effectively tell stories. This study has implications for practitioners, both for EE educators who want to use or who already use stories in their work and for storytellers who focus on environmentally related stories and programs. This study also has implications for teachers of other subjects as the findings of this study regarding the use of oral storytelling as a tool for EE could be transferred to teaching across the disciplines. This study concludes that oral storytelling is indeed a powerful tool for EE.