Narrative and expository instruction produce no significant differences in recall or understanding of biological concepts¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q3
Currency · newest study 2025 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? No significant differences between narrative and expository conditions were found for recall (d = 0.01, BF = 1.04) or understanding (d = 0.00, BF = 0.97). → Samuel Tobler 2025

Evidence¶

Samuel Tobler 2025¶

Samuel Tobler, Tanmay Sinha, Katja Köhler, Manu Kapur. (2025). Teaching biology with narratives: examining the impact of affective and cognitive variables on undergraduate student learning. Instructional Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-025-09723-w

q3 · i? · causal · r2

The same two-way ANOVA (N = 90) found no significant learning-material differences for recall or understanding, with near-zero effect sizes ("d = 0.01" and "d = 0.00") and Bayes Factors near 1, indicating anecdotal evidence for the null.

"No differences in significance or effect size were found for performance in recall (F(1,86) = 0.01, p =.972, d = 0.01, BF = 1.04) and in understanding (F(1,86) = 0.000, p =.983, d = 0.00, BF = 0.97)"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Learning mechanisms are triggered to a greater extent for non-STEM-background students in the narrative condition and for STEM-background students in the expository condition
• Prior biology knowledge tentatively moderates material effectiveness: non-STEM students favor narratives, STEM students favor expository texts for recall and understanding — related
• Narrative instruction produces higher transfer performance than expository instruction in undergraduate biology learning — reports the opposite
• Narrative instruction leads to higher germane cognitive load and self-efficacy, and lower extraneous cognitive load, than expository instruction — related