Abstract:

Narratives have played an integral role in development of human communication. Knowledge dissemination is one of the reasons why humans communicate. It is also known that traditional societies before the renaissance relied heavily upon Narratives for cultural knowledge dissemination from one generation to another in the form of Mythologies. The rise of reasoning, logic, justification and the domain of Epistemology at large reduced the reliance (especially in the western world) upon use of mythological narratives as means of scientific knowledge dissemination. However, in recent years, use of stories for Educational purpose has gained impetus. General Science Education at Secondary School level has not been untouched from this movement. Arthur Stinner, Yannis Hadzigeorgiou and Stephen Klassen have shown how historical information can be used to create narratives as a supplement for science learning. The philosophical foundation supporting the use of historical information for science education was first proposed by Thomas Kuhn in his book 'The structure of scientific revolutions. Kuhn's argument was that a science textbook only publishes the final outcome or conclusion of a discovery or theory, however, the essence of scientific tradition exists in the series of events that lead to the formulation of a theory or invention. The series of events go beyond the work of an individual scientist; many people working on same problem are involved in it. Scientific tradition exists in the process by which a concept evolves over time.

We believe that the process of development of scientific concepts that lead to advancement of science is of a structured nature, a structure that resembles with that of a particular type of Narrative schema. Understanding the Epistemological  relationship between narrative structures and a scientific inquiry event can help in developing Narratives that capture the essence of science which exists in the process that lead to development of a concept. Based upon the understanding of this relationship and integrating certain aspects of Theory of Knowledge, Theory of Narrative and Theory of Learning, we develop the Epistemological Narrative Framework to assist in the design of Narratives for Secondary School Science textbooks. A series of textbook chapters were designed using the Epistemological Narrative Framework, used as part of control group experiments with secondary school students. The results showed significant difference in the recall of students who were delivered lesson in the story form versus those who were taught with their current textbook approach. The Final implication of this research is the possibility of restructuring the Secondary School Science curriculum centered on the Epistemological Narrative Framework.