by M. Carolyn Miller

How to trigger learning at a deep level.
Our lives always have revolved around stories. Throughout time, we have sat around campfires and kitchen tables listening to stories that made us laugh and cry and make sense of our lives. In the old days, the tales we heard were magical—about a prince rescuing a princess, about a hero slaying a dragon, about a maiden slipping into the Underworld and returning years later.

Regardless of the language used or the images evoked, these tales offer timeless themes about the human condition and our resiliency in the face of often-overwhelming odds. Often unbeknownst to the audience, embedded in these tales are lessons or morals. In the "big" stories of a society or a culture, these morals carry rules about how to live, what to believe, and how to belong. The "smaller" stories, passed down through our families, places of worship, and classrooms, do the same but at smaller levels.

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Researchers have two theories for the beneficial effects of visuals on learning. Dual encoding states that when information is provided in both text and visual formats, two memory traces are formed. A double representation increases the probability of encoding new knowledge into long-term memory.

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