Part I

T: Hi Stephan.
S: Hi Tim. Good to talk to you.
T: Our project is about Integrating Language, Literacy And Subject Teaching In Plurilingual And Pluricultural Education Contexts. Why did you decide to start your contribution with a chapter on storytelling?
S: There are a number of reasons. First and foremost, telling stories is a universal human feature from the dawn of civilization. Something that bridges all language communities and cultures. Just as Jonathan Gottschall points out, homo sapiens can easily be dubbed homo fictus or homo narrans. 
T: Was that a lesson you took from Gottschall?
S: He argues the case for homo narrans very lucidly, but I had gained that insight before while traveling. Please take a look at this picture. 

T: Are these hula dancers?
S: They are indeed, but not the kind of hula dancers accompanied by Ukulele music that tourists in Hawaii watch at their holiday resorts while sipping Mai Tais. This is kahiko hula.
T: What is that?
S: It is the way ancient Hawaiians used to tell their history. The history of navigating and populating large stretches of the Pacific. From New Zealand up to the Easter Island. It used to be danced by men only. Every gesture is of semantic significance. Taking a wrong step was equivalent to forging history and could be severely punished. Take a look at the second picture.

T: The one with the stature?
S: Yes. It was erected in downtown Honolulu to honor the role of women in Hawaiian culture who acted as storytellers. So, a culture based on oral tradition used dance and talk to pass down knowledge. One might say that Hawaiians were the inventors of multimodality. Take a look at the next picture.
T: I have seen this picture before.

S: Paintings in the cave of Lascaux in France dating back to the paleolithic age. Telling stories about hunting. 
T: And this picture?

S: It was taken in Twyfelfontein in Namibia. These are neolithic petroglyphs. They are believed to be stories about hunting and fishing and simultaneously served to train hunters. Almost graphic novels. So, you see storytelling and learning have always been with us, and, above all, have always been interconnected. 
T: Why have we severed this connection in education?
S: I guess the advent of writing made it easier to distinguish between fact and fiction, plus it led to the emergence of all the other text types and genres that we know today. Nevertheless, our species is still hard-wired for storytelling and I think we would forfeit a key to successful and inclusive learning if we didn’t make use of what we might call our “narrative aptitude”. 
T: Is this what you wish to express by your concept of Fiction and Content Unified Learning?
S: Yes. FACUL tries to transfer this insight into the practice of teaching content. The idea first came to me when teaching CLIL classes in Politics.
T: Can you briefly explain what CLIL is?
S. It basically means to teach a content subject such as history, biology, geography or physics in a foreign language. The idea behind it is that students will use the target language as a tool. Unlike in the acquisition of a foreign language, learners don’t focus on the target language itself but simply use it to acquire content. CLIL students are in a position similar to learners of a second language. You arrive in a new country and need the language to find your way about. To organize your daily life. A way more natural way to learn a language than in a foreign language classroom with all its artificial textbook settings. 
T: And why should we use fiction when teaching subjects that aim at conveying facts?
S: There are countless fictional texts, such as plays, novels, short stories, graphic novels and films that present facts by embedding them in a fictional context. In other words, in a storytelling context. Why not use these texts as a supplement to conventional textbooks? My claim is that you can make the teaching of content more attractive to those who are, say, less inclined to learning science, for instance. And you can make learning processes more sustainable.
T: You have to tell us more about that. But first, what kinds of fictional texts should a content teacher chose. Are there any criteria for selection?
S: You might like to pick texts with a strong extraliterary reference. Those exist both for the Humanities and the Sciences. Think of Shakespeare’s history plays in which fiction and reality intermingle. Think of political or spy novels and films on the Cold War. Great stuff for History teachers. Or think of the movie Oppenheimer. That recent blockbuster provides great source material to engage students in entertaining learning processes on physics. Indeed, since the early 1990s, a new brand of science novel has emerged that is not to be confused with science fiction. These novels represent what the chemist, novelist and inventor of oral contraceptives, Carl Djerassi, termed “science in fiction” (Djerassi 1998). Jennifer Rohn proposes the term “LabLit” to capture “[T]his new fictional discourse on science” (Gaines et al. 7). Describing novels that “focus on the intricacies of scientific work and scientists as people” (Rohn 2006). Among the best-selling examples of this new genre are – to name but two – Richard Powers‘ Generosity and Marie Benedict‘s The Other  Einstein. It’s about Einstein’s first wife who actually did much of the research that Einstein claimed to be his own. Or take Anna Ziegler’s drama Photograph 51 on Rosalind Franklin, the “dark lady of DNA”, whose key photograph only allowed Watson and Crick to come up with the idea that DNA has a helical structure.
T: And why do you think learning via texts like these is so beneficial.
S. There are reasons lying in the source material itself and there are also neuroscientific reasons. Let me start with the latter.
T: Fire away!
S: First of all, I have to admit that I am not a neuroscientist. To me neuroscience is an auxiliary science whose insights are a catalyst toward positive change in teaching and learning. Let me just make some cursory remarks. They are based on my reading of neuroscientists like Gerhard Roth. 
S: Neuroscience teaches us that gaining knowledge is not so much a process of acquisition but involves active construction. Beck points out that learning needs to be designed as an active process in different contexts and with different people (Beck 2003, 5). LabLit or other genres with a strong extraliterary reference to academic content manages to do exactly that as it embeds knowledge in a narrative, dramatic or filmic context and personalizes it by linking it up with characters. Another reason might sound hackneyed and banal but is of utmost importance. Manfred Spitzer says that learning has to be fun (Spitzer 2003, 1). Sounds banal but the effects of following that hint or of paying no heed to it are profound.
T: Why is that?
S: Can you recall your worst learning experience at school?
T: Chemistry was a horror to me.
S: What happened to your brain in your Chemistry class is this. Your bad learning experience was stored in the amygdala. It is a small structure in the limbic system of your brain. Shaped like an almond, the amygdala is responsible for detecting danger. It coordinates reactions like fleeing and fighting, yet also hubs emotions, motivation and learning. Bad experiences are inscribed in the amygdala as it were, while creativity is stored in the hippocampus. Spitzer thus makes it clear that fear and creativity are incompatible (Spitzer 2003, 1). The limbic system is key to successful learning. It constantly assesses whether something happening is beneficial or painful to you, and following from that, whether something should be repeated or avoided in the future (Roth 2004, 499 f.). 
T: Now I now why   I wanted to escape from that Science classroom.
S: See what I mean. Your limbic system told you to avoid Chemistry. In very desperate school situations, your amygdala will tell you to flee. Interesting explanation of truancy, eh? Now we know why some of our students dodge classes citing abdominal pain. In many cases they truly feel like fleeing and their guts tell them to do so.
T: How can FACUL help here?
S: Generations of students have been brought up with compartmentalized curricula, with highly subject-specific teaching methods and materials. In other words, with identical subject-specific contexts. To use an analogy from agriculture. Students plow fields of monoculture. That can be a motivational overkill if you are not fully mesmerized by a certain subject in the first place. This is why Gerhard Roth demands knowledge to be presented in many different contexts. This will increase its connectivity to other existing pre-knowledge (Roth 2010). And this insight is what FACUL tries to put into classroom practice.
T: What about the reasons lying in LabLiT.
S: Well, quite obviously, LabLit is meant to entertain, which is a benefit by itself. But it also transfers the audience into, for instance, science labs and familiarizes the reading or viewing audience with scientific methods while creating awareness of the potential societal consequences and moral issues of research and innovation. It portrays science and its driving forces through the lens of fictional characters embedded in often thrilling narrative contexts. So, knowledge is linked up with events, characters, and settings. Multi-contextualized as it were. In addition, content teaching aims at the acquisition of CALP, that is Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency. And if you pick the right source, you will see CALP in action, that is embedded in the narrative or drama. 
T: So, I take it from what you have told us so far that storytelling at the heart of FACUL is based on the reception of fiction, is that correct?
S: Thank you for mentioning this aspect, Tim! No, FACUL combines receptive and productive approaches towards storytelling. For sure, part of the receptive benefit emerges from the above-mentioned thrill and interest stirred by a well told story. But that is just taking it halfway. Tasks formulated under a FACUL approach have to fulfill two criteria. They must be as multimodal as possible, in order to allow them to respond to the memories of different learners. In addition to that or rather as an integral part of that, they should be production-centered, by staging content or by creative writing. And the very nature of fiction turns literature and film into ideal springboards for creative tasks.
T: What do you mean by the specific nature of fiction?
S: I mean the indeterminate nature of fiction. The literary theorists Roman Ingarden and Wolfgang Iser pointed to the fact that objects, for instance, portrayed in literature are never as complete as real-life objects. The same applies to movies where certain perspectives or time sequences are omitted. Fiction of all genres always contains empty spots or spots of indeterminacy to be filled by the reader.
T: Can you give an example. 
S: Let me cite an example used by Ingarden. If a chair is mentioned in a text, that chair will never be as fully described as in real life. Even if is described as being made of wood, of brown color and with four legs, there are still details that will have to be supplemented by the reader’s imagination. Empty spots filled by the recipient’s creativity so to say. 
T: Well, this idea is the theoretical springboard for creative writing, right?
S: Correct. But there is a certain difference in the theoretical tenets of both theorists. If you’re a disciple of Iser’s, you will take it for granted that the spectrum of potential interpretations of a text is infinite. I doubt that. If that really applied, you might also interpret Nineteen Eighty-Four as an apology of totalitarian regimes. And that is what George Orwell did not have in mind. I myself find Ingarden’s approach to indeterminacy way more common sensical.
T: What was his notion of empty spots? 
S: Well, Ingarden believed that there are cases of indeterminacy which, when reading a piece of fiction, are filled by the reader with the overall intention of the text in mind. A creative task formulated along that premise might be the following one: You are X. Write a diary entry in which you explain how your relationship/attitude towards Y, Z, N has changed. Everybody has done something like that, like a creative analysis of a certain constellation of characters. Or you might decide to invite your students to distort the original by deviating from the text’s intention. 
T: Can you give an example?
S. Sure! Take for instance the following assignment: Imagine if X had (not) met / fallen in love with / antagonized / fallen out with Y. Rewrite the ensuing events of the plot. Here you purposely distort the original for creative purposes or to underline the significance of a certain parameter for the original work. You can go a step further and disclaim the original by, for instance, asking learners to write an alternative ending to a plot. Apart from that, you can phrase creative tasks that are not genuinely creative but more cognitive-analytical just using a creative format.
T: To do what?
S: To encourage students to reproduce the source, to analyze it or to evaluate something. You can basically tailor tasks based on various cognitive discourse functions (defining, describing, explaining, evaluating, hypothesizing and classifying) The interesting thing about LabLit and related genres is that you have empty spots on both the intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions that can be used to phrase tasks that encourage multi-modal activity. By the way, here is a table that shows you the different ways of how to fill empty spots. It might help you to formulate creative writing tasks in FACUL classes (Appendix A).
T: Great! Thanks a lot! Can you briefly explain “intrinsic” and extrinsic”? 
S: Take a look at this table (Appendix B). This is what I use as a template for my students to keep their reading logs. It was designed for studying narrative prose, but the basic structure applies to drama and film as well. Only the discourse-related aspects differ.
T: Okay.
S: The intrinsic level of fiction encompasses aspects like plot, characters, constellations of characters and settings. Both historical, geographical, social and political settings. Then you have discourse-related aspects such as the point-of-view, stage directions or camera techniques used and then the extrinsic aspects. You might regard the intrinsic aspects as the content and the discourse-related aspects as the techniques used to convey the content. It is like the WHAT and the HOW of a text. The extrinsic aspects comprise everything that might have influenced the writing of the work itself, such as the historical background, the biography of the artist and, as in the case of LabLit and related genres, the contemporary scientific discourse. In the case of political novels, spy movies or historical dramas, it is the socio-political discourse. 
T: And how do you utilize this distinction in FACUL?
S: FACUL takes advantage of the fact that spots of indeterminacy can be found in all three dimensions of a piece of fiction. And the spots at the extrinsic level are of particular interest.
T: Can you give an example? 
S: Let’s start with a simple one. Say, for instance, the novel mentions photosynthesis, but does not provide a full fletched description of what it is. Then students might be asked to write a text from the point of view of the researcher supplementing the missing information on photosynthesis. In a presentation following our podcast, I will introduce you to a novel on genetics that frequently mentions genetic screening and lab experiments.  f you want to make things a little more demanding for your students, asks them to write a test record of the experiment mentioned. Then you combine CALP with an introduction to a crucial aspect of scientific practice, that is writing test records. But you can use multiple modes of communication besides the textual. Use a visual mode and have your students make a video or explainity on photosynthesis to fill an indeterminate spot in the extraliterary dimension. 
T: What about students who are more prone to physical activity.
S: Give them tasks that engage them in kinaesthetic or tactile activities. Building models is a thing typically done by physicists, chemists and biologists. The options are endless. A fun example of distorting the original could be to ask students to purposely build wrong models, let’s say of DNA and let the other students spot the errors and correct them. That actually happened to Watson and Crick. When Rosalind Franklin saw their first cardboard model of DNA, she told them it was ugly. And nature did not create ugly things she claimed. Good point, eh? To capture it in constructivist terms, disclaiming part of the extraliterary dimension will cause perturbation in the students’ minds which, in return, leads to negotiation of meaning.
T: How would you put the benefits of FACUL in a nutshell?
S: First and foremost, it makes content teaching more inclusive. In our partly artificial world of subject canons pursuing knowledge is compartmentalized into disciplines. You excel in some, you are usually less good at others. And sometimes, a subject leaves you clueless or even intimidated. Remember what your amygdala did to you in Chemistry, Tim? Knowledge acquired by storytelling lowers the threshold for those that are less prone to learning a content subject the conventional way. It is knowledge linked up with characters and events, not an abstract acquisition of facts. And like mathematics, storytelling is a universal cultural experience, if you will.
T: Thank you!
S: T’was a pleasure!