Story Proof : The Science Behind the Startling Power of Story

Like Stephen Krashen's important work in the Power of Reading, The Amazing Science Behind the Power of Story collects and analyzes the research which validates the importance of story, story reading and storytelling to the brain development and education of children and adults. Accomplished researcher and storyteller, Kendall Haven, posits the need for understanding the research findings in the area of neural psychology and brain development and the value of a common definition in order to fully grasp the importance and necessity of story to the development of the human mind and reviews the wealth of research from storytellers, teachers and others who have experienced first hand the power of story. The author has collected anecdotal experiences from over 100 performing storytellers and from 1,800 story practitioners (mostly teachers) who have made extensive use of stories. He has read more than 150 qualitative and quantitative research studies that discuss the effectiveness of stories and/or storytelling for one or more specific applications (education, organizational management, knowledge management, medical and narrative therapy, etc.). Forty of these studies were literature reviews and comparative studies including analysis of over 1,000 studies and descriptive articles. He has also gathered research evidence from his own story performances for total audiences of over 4 million and from conducting story writing workshops with 200,000 students and 40,000 teachers. The mind-boggling and extraordinary truth is that each and every one of these thousands of original sources agrees with the general premise that stories work and that they are effective. Not one out of these thousands of references claimed or even suggested that stories don't work!