Weaving Stories of Connection: A Design Study on Developing Science Teachers' Storytelling Competencies for Ecological Citizenship

This qualitative design study is aimed at the development of a research-based module enhancing science teachers' storytelling competencies. The module's core focus is storytelling as a pedagogical tool for supporting students' morality development in relation to the more-than-human world. Also, this study aims to develop more universal design principles for integrating storytelling into secondary science education to foster ecological morality.
Storytelling in science education has the potential to be a powerful pedagogical tool to support students to critically examine our disrupted relation with the more-than-human world, as well as to encourage them to reflect upon (alternative) hopeful forms of relations in it.
Activities during the different phases of this study are interviews with/ training by (professional) storytellers; development of sample stories/materials to inspire science teachers; design of a storytelling module; set-up a professional learning community (PLC): teacher training, exchange experiences, mutual feedback during (follow-up) meetings.
Data sources for this study include PLC teachers’ reflective diaries, kept during the implementation phase; interviews with both students and PLC teachers about their findings and experiences with storytelling.
During the ESERA 2025 interactive poster presentation, we expect to share insights from the orientation and design phases, including initial design principles for storytelling modules and feedback from PLC teachers. Also, the poster will include some visual representations of key concepts central to the module, as well as QR codes that link to additional resources and references. Likely, we will bring some tangible objects, to be used as starting points for conversations.