Collaborative storytelling as a pedagogical tool: Using key features of role-playing games to teach substantive and disciplinary knowledge
Written by: Stuart Richard Malpas
9 min read
STUART RICHARD MALPAS, YEAR 3 CLASS TEACHER, ST WERBURGH‘S PRIMARY SCHOOL, UK
Introduction
Last year, I noticed that my Year 3 students with SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) struggled in history, particularly with critical thinking, semantic themes and chronology. Inspired by Hywel Roberts’ ‘acetate imagineering’ (2023, p. 202), I undertook an action research project and introduced collaborative storytelling – the defining feature of role-playing games (RPGs) such as Dungeons & Dragons – to help them to engage as historians exploring Roman Britain. My approach understood narrative to be a familiar scaffold and I considered neuroscientific and phenomenological perspectives, defining imagination and memory as intertwined faculties that strengthen both one another and meaningful learning.
The project explored how collaborative storytelling aids students with SEND to retain history vocabulary through episodic narratives, character embodiment and seman
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