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2025-05-05
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Nothing is more central to the human experience, to how all people learn and live, than story. My project argues story should be the basis of our teaching in first-year composition classrooms because the two pillars of how we experience story, narrative imagining and narrative reasoning, are intrinsic. I synthesize my theory about narrative persuasion and rhetorical storytelling into one word: rhestory. The three components of rhestory, or in this context story-based teaching, are story-based pedagogy, storied instructional design, and story-based curriculum. I cite research from experts across fields of study to make one point: story-based teaching is a return to biologically innate forms of reasoning and knowledge acquisition. To help instructors know if they should share a story in the classroom, I offer my Story Pedagogical Readiness Index (SPRI) based on relevance, relatability, and reduced ambiguity. I also examine how story shapes the instructional design of first-year composition courses and how story-based curriculum differs from current mindsets and practices in the field of rhetoric and composition. This project culminates in an original tool designed for composition students: the Five Islands. The Five Islands is a physical product I designed after examining card decks created for novice storytellers. It combines industry-leading 3D software with scholarship on learning, game-based teaching, and persuasive communication for social change into a tangible tool that walks users through the process of writing a narrative argument.
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English