This is a current project aimed at understanding how people can get better at interpreting stories about the real world, such as journalistic accounts and histories.

In general, people are not that good at combining what Jerome Bruner refers to as narrative thinking and logico-scientific thinking. My proposal is to encourage more rigorous narrative metacognition, and use of a tool for diagramming stories. I call the tool "Storygraph", and the representations of stories people make with it "storygrams". 

If you are interested, check out the Storygraph website at www.storygraph.org.

Development of this project:

• I presented a paper on this topic at the
  First International Society for Cultural and Activity Research Congress in 2005
• I refined my ideas for a paper and presentation at the
  International Conference of the Learning Sciences in 2006
• In October of 2006, the Spencer Foundation funded a one year small grant to support research and development on this project, entitled "The Mediated Critique and Construction of Empirical Narratives." The project will include:
  - a small user test of a paper prototype of the Storygraph tool
  - refinement of the theoretical and interpretive frameworks for narrative metacognition and storygrams, and incorporation of these into learning activities
  - production of a stable, free, web-based Storygraph tool allowing people to save and annotate their storygrams
  - a small user test of the web-based Storygraph tool
  - trying out and researching the tool and activities in a camp sponsored by the Catoctin Center for Regional Studies in Frederick, Maryland during summer 2007. In the camp, middle school aged children will learn to critique local history accounts, and produce their own digital photo stories about local history.

modified October, 2006