Bad Girls and Star Wars: the power of stories in learning

Dominic Mason, Business Development Consultant, argues that educators must tap into the primal power of narrative to engage their audience.

Relatively few people will recognise the name of an ancient Welsh book of folktales: The Mabinogion (Mab-ee-nog-yon). However, many people know the stories of King Arthur and Robin Hood that borrow heavily from it. More people still will be able to recognise the epic (small ‘e’) myth structure behind all three sets of tales. Even more people experience daily immersion and excitement through forms of popular entertainment that take strands of these ancient stories and weave them into cinema, TV, videogames and theatre as Star Wars, Bad Girls, Tomb Raider and Othello.

“Wait a minute!” you may well exclaim. “Bad Girls? What can learning take from this tongue-in-cheek, prison laundry-sink drama/comedy?” The answer, which is common to all four examples above, is ‘characters’. Characters and human interaction have entertained, enthralled and engaged since stories began. These tales appeal to humankind’s basic characteristics that enable us to innately learn from each other. These involve, amongst other traits, being investigative, imaginative, and occasionally even slightly voyeuristic.

Learning should aspire to appeal to these traits through the use of characters in case studies, business stories and challenges. Clearly, the desire to entertain needs tempering with content, but data alone can not be relied upon to carry compulsion. There is surely no better way than a strong narrative thread to introduce a topic, the data-filled challenges following can then borrow from and extend that thread.

If you want to take people down tried and tested educational routes and disseminate pre-defined information, you don’t necessarily want them to be aware of the underlying path. In this case, an interesting scenario helps them bond as a group and also helps them rise ‘above’ their day-to-day, and experience life in someone else’s shoes for a while.

Without wishing to build an ‘all roads lead to Rome’-style scenario, if you want to discuss challenges and strategies around, for example, team leadership, handover, delegation, and onboarding (and you don’t want to use work-based case studies, or can’t dream up materials from your own imagination) then Bad Girls is a very rich portfolio to borrow from... but here’s my top five favourite learning/entertainment crossovers:

The (Dark) Power of Delegation – Darth Vader and Boba Fett in Star Wars

Managing Mavericks – Auf Weidersehen Pet

Rapid on-boarding – Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen

The Perils of Virtual Leadership – Sauron in Lord of the Rings

Negotiation skills – Big Brother

Don’t even get me started on value-driven creative solutions in an enterprise business and Prisoner Cell Block H...

Dominic Mason