The Role Of Historical Storytelling (Narrative) In The Development Of Imagination Skills
Keywords:
Historical storytelling, narrative pedagogy, imaginationAbstract
This article examines how historical storytelling functions as a pedagogical mechanism for cultivating students’ imagination skills in history education. Drawing on cognitive, hermeneutic, and disciplinary perspectives, the paper argues that narrative does more than embellish factual content; it organizes temporal understanding, enriches perspective-taking, and enables plausible reconstruction of the past under evidential constraints. The study synthesizes theoretical contributions by Vygotsky, Bruner, and Ricoeur with history-education research on sourcing, contextualization, and corroboration. It proposes that imagination in history should be conceptualized as disciplined and evidentially guided rather than as free fantasy, and that narrative tasks—oral, written, and digital—create the conditions for recombining prior knowledge with new sources to compose coherent, ethically aware accounts. The results highlight the interplay between narrative form and historical thinking: as learners experiment with focalization, chronology, and voice, they internalize habits of inquiry that connect micro-level human intentions to macro-structural change. Implications include designing assessments that evaluate coherence, evidence use, and empathy-with-distance, and integrating digital storytelling tools to expand representational possibilities while maintaining rigorous citation practices.
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