Transitioning pedagogies: the role of developing the story during Higher Education psychology teaching

This theoretical paper will explore issues and benefits associated with adopting storytelling as a pedagogical approach within higher education. Adopting positions from Socio-cultural Theory and Self-determination Theory establishes potential theoretical underpinnings for this approach. Specifically, this paper will look at foundational underpinnings in storytelling, seeing both the teacher and student as producer of the story. The marketisation of the United Kingdom higher education landscape has resulted in multiple transition points for universities and students. These include an increased emphasis on recruiting students from under-represented groups, student retention and the role of higher education in preparing students for graduate level employment. These transitions have also resulted in key points for students. Students have been repositioned as consumers of higher education and are viewed as key evaluators of the quality of teaching and learning. Within this context, this paper affirms the case for storytelling in higher education and extends this to the Psychology classroom. Psychology students are tasked with exploring new theoretical positions and concepts presenting challenges to their imagination. As such, storytelling here represents an important tool for educators. Thus, indicating the importance of its use more widespread in areas such as Psychology. It is hoped that through this paper, storytelling will be viewed as an essential scaffolding technique to enable successful transition into, and within Higher Education. The paper sheds light on the importance of bridging the transitionary gap for students entering Higher Education in Psychology and highlights an important storytelling methodology to achieve this.