OutoftheBox - The potential of OutoftheBox to positively impact on education and wellbeing in the UK school context: Storytellers’ perceptions from a pilot evaluation View Digital Media

Workshop Presentation
Kathryn Lord,  Claire Dalpra  

This paper reflects on the challenge of attempting to measure the impact of a new approach to storytelling called OutoftheBox in a UK school context. It summarises the similarities and differences to its background approaches: Godly Play and Deep Talk, and raises at the outset the lack of universal agreement over what is meant by educational impact and wellbeing which leads to difficulties in deciding which definitional frameworks for research are appropriate. It acknowledges further tensions in managing researcher bias and in the limitations of gathering data from participants who were asked to interpret how it was experienced on behalf of those receiving the story. Pilot research conducted from June 2021 to March 2022 is outlined and findings from the quantitative analysis are summarised. Acknowledged as a modest piece of informal research, it is at least a starting point. Further work is needed to develop this research methodology beyond pilot stage to effectively evidence the breadth and depth of educational impact and wellbeing for more UK schools to adopt this approach to storytelling. Yet one characteristic of this evolving movement is that it is more ‘caught not taught’. In the highly pressured school environment, there are advantages to staff themselves experiencing the approach first-hand to understand its potential at the same time as being presented with documented evidence of its impact.