Journal of Biological Education

ISSN: 0021-9266 (Print) 2157-6009 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjbe20

The Case for ‘Story-driven’ Biology Education

Peter Schattner

To cite this article: Peter Schattner (2015) The Case for ‘Story-driven’ Biology Education,
Journal of Biological Education, 49:3, 334-337, DOI: 10.1080/00219266.2015.1058844

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Published online: 17 Jul 2015.

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 Journal of Biological Education, 2015
Vol. 49, No. 3, 334–337, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00219266.2015.1058844

COMMENTARY
The Case for ‘Story-driven’ Biology
Education
Peter Schattner*
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Department of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

Introduction
Can learning molecular biology and genetics be enjoyable? Of course it can. Biologists
know their field is exciting and fascinating and that learning how cells and molecules
shape the living world is extraordinarily interesting. But can students who are not already
inclined towards science also be convinced that learning molecular biology is worth-
while? For example, students taking biology simply to satisfy an academic distribution
requirement, or ones with previous negative school experiences that made them believe
that science is boring and irrelevant? Is it possible to persuade such students that learning
molecular biology and genetics can be fun?
Of course, one might assert that the role of science educators is not to make learning
fun, but to simply introduce concepts in a clear and coherent manner. However, I would
claim that without motivating students, the amount of comprehension and retention will
be limited. And there is evidence that introductory biology and genetics courses for non-
majors are far from ideal. For example, a 2008 study using a ‘genetic literacy test’ found
that scores among non-science majors increased only 6% points, from 43 to 49%, after
taking an introductory biology and genetics course (Bowling et al. 2008).
Realising that increasing student motivation might improve student understanding and
test scores, educators have begun to include content intended to better motivate students.
Nevertheless, I believe that the steps taken to date have been limited and that alternate
approaches, with greater emphasis on motivating and even entertaining students, would
improve both student motivation and test performance.

Traditional Curriculum Models

Traditional genetics and molecular biology curricula typically use either a ‘history-driven’
or a ‘principles-driven’ approach. In the history-driven curriculum, the student is led
through the history of the field, typically starting with Mendel’s peas, moving on to

*Email: schattner@soe.ucsc.edu

© 2015 Society of Biology

 Commentary 335

Morgan and Muller’s fruit flies, on to Watson and Crick’s discovery of the structure of
DNA and eventually–if there is enough time–maybe even to the sequencing of the human
genome. Although the historical approach can shed light on how scientific progress is
made, it may be less desirable for an introductory course. Scientific history is filled with
blind alleys and the clearest way of looking at a scientific phenomenon often only
emerges after misleading false starts.
Because of the limitations of the history-driven approach, many biology texts and cur-
ricula are instead organised in a principles-driven manner, in which scientific principles
are organised in the most logical manner, irrespective of when concepts were first discov-
ered. So, for example, DNA transcription and RNA translation are presented in one or
two chapters describing how polymerases transcribe DNA into messenger RNA and how
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ribosomes then translate RNA into protein. In addition, there might be discussions of
transcriptional regulation and RNA splicing.
Although the principles-driven approach for presenting biological concepts has advan-
tages, it also has drawbacks. It can lead to the inclusion of too much detail and too little
motivation. Consequently, popular introductory biology texts, such as Reece et al. (2014)
and Starr, Evers, and Starr (2014)–earlier editions of which were the most widely used
biology texts for non-majors (Hott et al. 2002)–now often include modules, sidebars,
introductory essays and the like to persuade non-science students that the concepts in
their biology course are relevant to them. This is a step in the right direction. Yet, I
believe it is too small a step: A simple scan of the tables of contents of these leading
biology books shows that rarely is more than 10% of the text devoted to motivating
topics (Reece et al. 2014; Starr, Evers, and Starr 2014). Moreover, these topics are often
presented as side issues illustrating biological principles, rather than as central themes
with potentially greater interest to non-majors than biology itself.

Story-Driven Learning
In contrast to principles-driven approaches, in story-driven learning, concepts are
presented using a variety of human issues, with stories that illustrate those concepts.
Story-driven learning is not new. Over the last 20 years, it has been used in teaching
environments ranging from elementary school education (Jetton 1994) to military leader-
ship programs (Gordon 2009).
Story-driven techniques have also been proposed for teaching biology, for example by
Wilson (2002) and Strube (1994), but concrete examples are few. A small study that also
attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of story-driven teaching is the thesis by Reuer
(2012). The Salters-Nuffield Advanced Biology (SNAB) course is a much larger project
that also espouses the spirit of story-driven learning (Hall et al. 2003). However, there
are differences between SNAB and the present approach. Although SNAB is described as
being ‘taught through real-life biological contexts’ (Reiss 2005), examination of the text
(University of York Science Education Group 2008) shows that the motivating contexts
again occupy less than approximately 10% of the text. Moreover, the contexts are gener-
ally limited to human diseases and natural resource conservation.
 336 Commentary

A more clear-cut example of the approach described here is the recent book, Sex, Love
and DNA: What Molecular Biology Teaches Us About Being Human (Schattner 2014). In
Sex, Love and DNA, each chapter is devoted to a human concern that superficially may
not even be about biology–for example ‘What is Love?’ ‘What is Sex?’ ‘What is
Language?’ or ‘What is Happiness?’ These topics are illustrated by stories that present
puzzling or unexpected situations, such as a man without a Y chromosome, rodents
whose ‘love life’ is determined by the presence or absence of a single gene, or a family
half of whose members are unable to talk. Only after the student has been ‘hooked’ by
the story and been persuaded that the general topic is of interest, are the biological
concepts needed to understand the story presented.
As an illustration of the differences between the principles-driven and story-driven
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approach, let us return to the example of DNA transcription and RNA translation. In con-
trast to the principles-driven presentation of these concepts described above, in the story-
driven approach used in (Schattner 2014), transcription and translation are introduced via
a general topic–immunity to a dread disease–and through the story of Steve Crohn, a
man who had such immunity (specifically, immunity to HIV because of mutations in his
CCR5 T-cell receptor genes). In order to understand Crohn’s HIV immunity, students
need to learn about proteins, receptors and ligands, how DNA specifies protein shape and
how protein shape affects protein functioning. In contrast, neither gene regulation, mes-
senger RNA, nor RNA splicing is necessary for understanding HIV immunity, and conse-
quently, they are not introduced until later chapters when they are needed to understand
stories of intellectual disability, or the inheritance of human language ability, respectively.
Of course, the ultimate goal is still to teach the fundamental concepts of molecular
biology and genetics. But the teaching strategy is different; it is to persuade students that
they want to learn these concepts. Or in the words of one book reviewer: the objective is
to create a learning environment that ‘raises a feeling similar to watching one of those
fascinating National Geographic specials–the one where you are so entertained, you do
not realize you are learning’ (Schaefer 2014).
To be sure, the arguments in this commentary are largely speculative. To my
knowledge, with the exception of a single study of 18 students (Reuer 2012), the evi-
dence supporting story-driven biology teaching is so far anecdotal (e.g. reader reviews of
a story-driven biology book: www.amazon.com/Sex-Love-DNA-Molecular-Biology/dp/
0991422511). The next step is the introduction of story-driven teaching methods into
environments where quantitative learning measures, such as genetic literacy tests, are
available for assessment of educational effectiveness. That will be the true test of the effi-
cacy of story-based teaching of biology. I look forward to seeing the results of such
investigations with optimism and anticipation.

References
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Gordon, A. 2009. “Story-based Learning Environments.” In The PSI Handbook of Virtual Environments
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 Commentary 337

Hall, A., M. J. Reiss, C. Rowell, and A. Scott. 2003. “Designing and Implementing a New Advanced
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