1. A research project conducted by Kelly Edward Garner March 2008
The Effects of the Use of Stories in High School World Geography Classrooms on Feelings of Restlessness and Levels of Student Interest in the Subject Matter
A research project conducted by Kelly Edward Garner
March 2008

2. Summary of the Study
This study was conducted to better understand the way that students feel about the use of stories in their world geography classroom.
I wanted to know if students find stories helpful and to determine if there is a connection between the use of stories and student interest in the subject.
Additionally, I wanted to find out if there is a connection between the use of stories and student feelings of restlessness during class.

3. How I Decided on this Topic
This study emerged from my frustration with the way that the current world geography curriculum is structured.
The material that we are required to teach seems to lack a connecting theme which provides 9th grade students with an adequate schema to interpret current events.

4. Topic (continued)
At first, I wanted to rearrange the sequence in which the world regions are taught, to begin with Europe and then to connect each world region to the theme of colonialism as we studied colonial expansion around the globe, then to compare their improvement with students taught the curriculum in the traditional way.

5. Topic (continued) I wanted to do this for two reasons.
-- It was my intuition, based on learning from my graduate studies, that students would retain more information if they had a narrative framework to connect their new learning to.
-- I perceived colonialist expansion as an adequate framework for interpreting current events.

6. Topic (continued) I abandoned this approach for two reasons.
Firstly, I discovered that I was not allowed to deviate from the proscribed sequence of the curriculum pacing guide due to standardized quarterly assessments.
Secondly, while colonialism provides a useful framework for understanding the cultural distribution of the modern world, the narratives associated with globalization provide one of critical import to the decisions and policies affecting all nations and international alliances, and should therefore be taught along side, if not in lieu of, the narrative of colonialism.
Which brings us to the current study.

7. Topic (continued)
The affective domain seemed more accessible due to the restrictions and limitations of the district mandated curriculum pacing.
The compromise was to design a study which would determine student and teacher perceptions of the frequency and efficacy of the use of narratives to teach world geography. While this study would not show me if using stories works, it was my hope was that it would show me if students and teachers perceive stories to be helpful and if there are any significant correlations with their use and levels of interest or restlessness.

8. Topic (conclusion)
It is my hope that this study will provide a basis for conducting further study into the usefulness of narrative frameworks for teaching world geography.

9. Procedures
After deciding on a topic, I reviewed the existing literature on the subject, stated my research questions, and consulted the school principal to determine the feasibility of the study. After obtaining the necessary approval, I designed a survey to administer to students and to teachers which would help me to obtain the needed data. I decided on mostly closed-ended questions with a few open-ended questions for the students. For the teachers, I created several open-ended questions. The information for these initial steps is found in chapters one, two, and three of my research paper.

10. Procedures
After sending out permission letters to parents, I administered 159 surveys to students divided into 7 world geography classes taught by 4 different geography teachers. The teachers were sent an with the open-ended questions.

11. Procedures
The data from the student surveys was entered in to the Statistical Package for the Social Studies (SPSS) program and then analyzed using a variety of tests which will be explained in more detail in the next section. This data was presented in chapter four of my research paper.

12. Procedures
The open ended questions were grouped and categorized according to the student responses and were taken into consideration while interpreting the results of the statistical analysis but were not entered into the SPSS program.

13. Procedures
I then analyzed the results of the tests performed as they related to my research questions, interpreted the significance of the tests that I performed, discussed how my study contributed to the base of knowledge, and reflected on changes that I would make for conducting further study. The results of these procedures can be found in chapter five of my research paper.

14. Tests Performed
Using the SPSS program I analyzed the data to determine relationships between variables.

15. Tests Performed
The test that I used most frequently was the test to determine bi-variate correlations. This allowed me to see how, if at all, two variables change in relation to one another. I found this test extremely useful because I could compare many variables with each other and the output was in table form which was ideal for comparing variables.

16. Tests Performed
The independent sample t- test helped me to determine if there was a statistically significant relationship between two variables. A particularly useful part of this analysis was that it would analyze the level of variance among responses. This is called Levene’s test of level of variance. If the variance was too great then the results would not be considered statistically significant. This helped me to compare the data between males and females and to understand that there was a wide range of responses within each group.

17. Tests Performed
I also utilized the graphing features to compare information in a visual format. I made bar graphs and in the preparation stage I also used line graphs. I did not find the output of these tests as useful as the output that was in table form because the tables would indicate if a statistically significant correlation existed.

18. Significant Results
Q11: Does a teacher’s usage of stories to teach correlate with student feelings of restlessness?
Yes. The data indicates a negative correlation between students’ feelings of restlessness in class and their claim that their teacher uses stories to teach the subject. The results indicate a Pearson correlation which is significant at the 0.05 level.
This means that as students perceive teachers to be using stories to teach there is a decrease in their feelings of restlessness.

19. Significant Results
Q8: Does a teacher’s usage of stories correlate with student interest in world geography?
Yes, significantly for average students, slightly less so for honors students.
Tests indicate that a positive Pearson correlation of .356, with significance at the 0.01 level, exists between teachers’ use of big stories to teach and average level students finding world geography interesting.
Tests indicate that a positive Pearson correlation of .345, with significance at the 0.01 level, exists between student perception that stories help them to learn and honors students finding world geography interesting
Finally, tests indicates that a positive Pearson correlation of .311, with significance at the 0.01 level, exists between student perception that stories help them to learn and students finding world geography interesting.

20. Significant Results
Q16: Does student ethnicity correlate with how helpful they find teachers’ use of stories to teach?
Yes, Black students (especially in the honors level classes) showed statistically significant correlations with a decrease in feelings of restlessness and an increase in interest when they perceived that their teacher used stories to teach the material.
White, Latino, and Asian students also showed some correlations but the results were most significant for Black students.

21. Significant Results Students perceive stories to be helpful.
Tests also indicate that a positive Pearson correlation of .464, with significance at the 0.01 level, exists between teachers’ use of big stories to teach and students’ perception that stories help them learn.

22. Significant Results
One last side note, this study’s results indicate that among the various preferred learning styles surveyed that students who prefer listening to explanations found stories least helpful and that students who preferred doing experiments found stories most helpful. This connection between story telling and interpretation, and active and passive learning, should be explored in more detail

23. How has this study added to the bank of knowledge in this field?
Many research studies have investigated the effects of background knowledge on student comprehension, reading, and writing but this study narrows the focus to examine how world geography students and teachers feel about one method that students use to develop a context for learning, namely stories.

24. How has this study added to the bank of knowledge in this field?
I was unable to find any research from Virginia about the use of stories in teaching the Virginia SOL curriculum framework or on student and teacher perceptions of the use of stories. This study may serve as a gateway to other teacher researchers seeking to improve their knowledge of this topic and as a reference to those who continue to investigate this topic.

25. Changes to expand the value of the study
In future versions of this study I would create several questions for the teachers and the students which probe the extent to which they practice connecting events in the news to the information that they are studying in class. This would help with analyzing the data and potentially work towards a rationale for including more emphasis on this practice in the classroom.

26. Changes to expand the value of the study
I would also create more questions about students’ preferred learning styles. I would expand it to include reading about a subject, writing about a subject, reading independently, and using computers. This is important to note because the use of narrative frameworks can be applied to a variety of learning modalities. .

27. Changes to expand the value of the study
I would also like to compare student responses with their actual performance in the class. I would have them identify their grade on their last report card, interim, and test to see how this compares with their stated preferences.

28. Changes to expand the value of the study
Finally, It might also be useful to have the students try to communicate their understanding of several narratives by relating current events to one of several different themes. This could be compared with the way that teachers are presenting the information and provide a way for us to see how they may use these stories in the future.

29. Future implications of this study
This study may serve as a basis for putting more thought into how stories are used to teach world geography. This study shows that black students show an increase in interest in the subject and a decrease in restlessness when their teacher uses stories to teach the material. Utilizing this interest in stories could help to decrease the achievement gap and improve the quality of world geography instruction for all students.

30. Future implications of this study
Additionally, since many Virginia students will not receive any higher level training in social studies, enhanced world geography instruction could be an important factor in increasing interest in civic responsibility and activity. If people are given adequate training to make sense of social issues then they will be less dependent on other to make informed decisions about the issues that affect them.

31. Future implications of this study
Lastly, the results of this study, and future studies on this topic, could be applied to other fields of study, such as science or mathematics. While these fields require that students learn specific kinds of non-narrative processes, stories could help to provide a context that students can relate to which would serve as an organizational schema for incorporating new information. Many students complain that they do not see how math and science are useful to them in their everyday life. Stories have the ability, known as mythopoeia, to construct worlds. If students can practice by finding their value within this constructed world then they may be able to find some connection to the way that these fields of study apply to the world as they perceive it.