Teaching and learning through story

Ein Comeniusforscher stellt die Frage, wieso die Erzählung „Das Labyrinth“ von Comenius seit langer Zeit so einen Erfolg in der Pädagogik hat. Daran schließt er eine grundsätzliche didaktische Diskussion über die Rolle von Erzählungen und Geschichten, die vor allem der selten gestellten Frage nach geht, warum solche Texte eigentlich für die Pädagogik zu wertvoll und effektiv sind. Dr. Jan Hábl ist Professor für Pädagogik an der tschechischen J. E. Purkyne Universität in Ústí nad Labem (Czech Republic). Er hat zahklreiche Büpcher über Comenius geschrieben zuletzt in derselben Reihe Lessons in Humanity: From the Life and Work of Jan Amos Comenius (Bonn 2011). Story has a peculiar power. It is said that truth clothed in a story will enter every door. This is evident also in the renown of Comenius’ work Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart. About a half century before Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Comenius wrote a narrative allegory about a pilgrim who wanders through a labyrinth-like world and seeks the way out, salvation. The story is simple, the allegory is lucid, and the plot is straightforward, but the didactic effect has been great. The fact is that Comenius wrote a number of good works, but none of them enjoyed such popularity and didactic power as the Labyrinth. The question is, what is the magic of a narrative form? In what lies its formative power? What makes a story (an allegorical story in this case) so functional from the educational perspective? This book attempts to present answers to these questions. It is not an exhaustive treatise about narrative as a literary phenomenon but rather an interdisciplinary case study which analyses a literary text (Comenius’ Labyrinth) from a didactic point of view. Pedagogy usually knows that stories “work” but seldom asks why. This study wants to connect these two questions. In other words, its goal is to contribute to the pedagogical discussion about the effectiveness of a story as didactic tool by means of literary observations. Dr. Jan Hábl is a happy husband and the father of two children. He is a professor of pedagogy at J. E. Purkyne University in Ústí nad Labem (Czech Republic) and a pastor in the Církev bratrská (Free Evangelical Brethren Church). He studied education at J. E. Purkyne University (M. Ed.), theology at EMF School of Biblical Studies in England, and philosophy at University of Wales (Ph. D.). He has taught systematic theology and apologetics at Evangelical Theological Seminary in Prague and is known as a gifted biblical preacher and a Christian apologist in the tradition of C. S. Lewis. He also taught philosophy of education, ethics education, and the history of pedagogy at University Hradec Králové. He has authored a number of books and studies in the area of philosophy of education, ethics, and pedagogy, e. g., Lessons in Humanity: From the Life and Work of Jan Amos Comenius (Bonn 2011); Ultimate Human Goals in Comenius and Modern Pedagogy (Hradec Králové 2011); “Character Formation: A Forgotten Theme of Comenius’s Didactics” (Journal of Education and Christian Belief, 2011); “Even if no one is watching,” Comenius’s anthropological assumptions related to moral political practice (Studia Comeniana et Historica 2013); and The Problem of Epistemological Foundationalism (Paideia, 2013).