Storytelling in Education

Storytelling in education — the use of narrative as a pedagogical tool to engage learners, convey meaning, and support knowledge construction, creativity, and emotional connection. Storytelling is a natural and motivating way for learners to make sense of the world, and it is increasingly combined with technology — including AI and social robots — to create interactive, adaptive narrative experiences. Digital and robot-mediated storytelling can add interactivity, personalization, and embodiment that conventional (paper-based or slide-based) storytelling lacks.

Questions to Consider

• Think of a lesson or concept you remember vividly because it came as a story. What did the narrative add that a plain explanation didn't, and can that power survive being outsourced to an AI or a robot?
• The page describes robot- and LLM-mediated storytelling that responds to the learner and supports co-creation. What do you imagine is gained — and potentially lost — when a story is co-built with a machine instead of told by a person?
• If storytelling builds engagement, creativity, and emotional connection, where might its use in education be more than entertainment — and where might it risk substituting feeling for understanding?
• A robot storyteller increased behavioral and cognitive engagement over paper and PowerPoint in the research cited. Do you trust that engagement translates into learning, or could the novelty of the robot be doing the work?
• How could you tell whether a learner is genuinely making meaning from an AI-co-created story versus just enjoying the interactive experience?

Introduction

Storytelling is grounded in Motivation, Student Engagement, and Constructivism theories of learning. It supports Language Learning, Creativity, Social-Emotional Learning, and comprehension. In the AI era, LLM-powered and robot-mediated storytelling enables co-creation, where learners and AI agents build stories together, and interactive narrative that responds to the learner.

How storytelling appears in the knowledge base's research

• Robot-mediated storytelling: MotiBo uses a human-like interactive digital storytelling robot, finding significant gains in behavioral and cognitive engagement over paper and PowerPoint methods; RoboBuddy lets teachers create LLM-powered scenario-based storytelling activities from curriculum content.
• Co-creative narrative HRI: The iCub narrative study explores human-robot co-creation of stories, integrating generative models for contextually appropriate interaction.
• Narrative and creativity: Storytelling supports Creativity and language development, and is used to enhance motivation and engagement in K-12 settings.
• Digital storytelling as a counterweight to AI: As generative AI ascends, digital storytelling is reframed as a vehicle for the emotional, cultural, and narrative capacities that AI lacks. In a project-based learning model for art and design education, students translated local cultural heritage into Multimodal AI narratives across 92 digital storytelling works, demonstrating how storytelling sustains human creativity in the AI era.

Storytelling connects to Student Engagement, Motivation, Creativity, Robots in Education, Language Learning, Social-Emotional Learning, and Robots in Education.

Connected Concepts

• Student Engagement
• Motivation
• Creativity
• Robots in Education
• Language Learning
• Social-Emotional Learning

Connected Articles

• MotiBo: The Impact of Interactive Digital Storytelling Robots on Student Motivation Through Self-Determination Theory — MotiBo
• RoboBuddy in the Classroom: Exploring LLM-Powered Social Robots for Storytelling in Learning and Integration Activities — RoboBuddy
• Would You Let a Humanoid Play Storytelling With Your Child? A Usability Study on LLM-Powered Narrative Human-Robot Interaction — iCub Narrative HRI
• Play-Testing REMind: Evaluating an Educational Robot-Mediated Role-Play Game — REMind
• Robotics and Artificial Intelligence in Education: Transformations, Challenges, and Future Directions — Robotics and AI in Education
• In the AI era: A project-based digital storytelling framework for art and design education — Project-based digital storytelling framework for art/design education in the AI era
• AI-Assisted Social Story Intervention for Special Education: The Design of AdaptED Stories — AI-Assisted Social Story Intervention for Special Education: The Design of AdaptED Stories