Supporting learners' interaction by means of narrative activites

It is widely recognized that learners are empowered by interacting with peers on relevant, content-related matters, and are encouraged to feel involved in their own educational process. In order to really support learning, however, interactions need to be structured and organized by means of some suitable pedagogical approach. In this chapter, we argue that narrative (in the form of both fictional stories and narrations of experiences related to the object of study) can provide a pedagogical framework suitable to exploit the educational potential of interactions. Narrative is an expressive form which results natural and familiar to both children and adults and validly supports meaning-making as well as personal engagement. Moreover, it is an inherently social activity, which makes it particularly suitable to support collaborative learning. This chapter analyzes several examples of narrative tasks carried out in different collaborative contexts, in order to exemplify how they can be organized so as to efficaciously support learners' interaction.