International Journal of Interactive Storytelling

Vol. 1, No. 1 (2017), pp. 7-12

http://dx.doi.org/10.21742/ijis.2017.1.1.02

Critical Analysis of Mathematics Textbooks based on Storytelling

-Focusing on the Application of Storytelling with Mathematics
Textbooks in Elementary School

Hyeon-Suk Kang1and Yun-Bok Lee 21

1
Department of Education, Teachers College, Kyungpook National University,
Daegu 702-701, Korea
2
Dongmyung Elementary School, Daejeon, Korea
hakang84@knu.ac.kr, beat55@hanmail.net

Abstract
This study is to search the 2009 Revised Korean National Curriculum’s problems and
analysis of math textbook in elementary school. The purpose is to increase the effectiveness of
storytelling classes and effective storytelling textbook statements for learner’s abilities,
understanding main goals, learning motivation improvement and interesting induction in new
curriculum. Overall, the results of this study implied that mathematical activities based on
storytelling have positive effects on elementary school student’s education. But math textbook
also have many problems with storytelling version. In the future, many researches about
storytelling-based textbook should be activated through new version of narrative.

Keywords: Storytelling, Mathematics Textbook, Narrative, National Curriculum, Math

Teacher.

1. Introduction
The mathematics grades of our students are high on Trend in International Mathematics
and Science Study (TIMSS). But there is a lack of interest and attention among students about
mathematics. In spite of mathematics is important in school education, many students solve
the mathematics problem mechanically and focus on training. Due to the absence of
instruction for improve deep thinking and creativity, it failed to make students have interest in
the subject. In this respect, for mathematical education to foster creativity and thinking The
Ministry of Education introduced a storytelling textbook. Ministry of Education, Science and
Technology of Korea (2011) focuses on positive attitude and cognitive development towards
education curiosity, confidence, interests as the objective for mathematics education. The
institution announced the „Advancement Plan for Mathematics Education‟ in 2012, this yield
low interest from students, however, the storytelling method which would trigger more fun
and interest for students. The plan mainly emphasized problem-solving ability,
communication ability, and creativeness. Mathematics textbooks based on storytelling in
elementary schools started to apply a new method of teaching math to 1st and 2nd grade
students. It improves the negative aspects caused by learning simple formal memorization and
problem solving. But misunderstanding and application of mathematics textbooks are
becoming a problem with school education. Mathematics education using storytelling is

Article history:
Received (December 12, 2016), Review Result (February 21, 2017), Accepted (March 29, 2017)

Print ISSN: 2207-8436, eISSN: 2207-8444 IJIS

Copyright ⓒ 2017 GV School Publication
Critical Analysis of Mathematics Textbooks based on Storytelling -Focusing on the Application of
Storytelling with Mathematics Textbooks in Elementary School

recognized only as picture books and stories. We will explore the misapplication and lack of
understanding of storytelling. First, the characteristics of storytelling contents and
presentation in mathematics textbooks are examined. Second, we explore the problems of
storytelling statements and reflect critically. In conclusion, we will suggest a storytelling
method suitable for mathematics textbooks.

2. The meaning and concept of storytelling

The universal meaning of storytelling is a combination of story and telling. In short, it is a
talking. Storytelling is that human being related to time and spaces, it has the function of
conveying meaning rather than conveying a simple fact about the object (Bruner, 2002).
Stories are the most efficient structures that make content meaningful, it constitutes the
concept of time flow, logical relation, causality in story. Storytelling is a powerful and
meaningful delivery method, the form of learning situation, content and meaning. And it is a
way of understanding the meaning.
The above storytelling has the following features (Lee, 2013). First, the content
characteristics of storytelling are narrative, reconstruction, experience, imagination, and
understanding of meaning. Narrative includes acts that occur through stories. Narrative goes
beyond the formal and structural meaning of a simple story, and it contains implications of
content and was a meaning to convey. Reconstruction is the renewal of existing formats, it
requires creative ability. Reconstructing a story is not just a superficial story, and it is a
complex structure that is based on creative and empirical thinking. Stories that students
understand through their own experience in learning and share their own experiences with
others are an important part of schooling. Experience and imagination through storytelling
provide a direct and indirect experience for learners at the same time. Experience and
imagination give positive value to students‟ various experiential activities, and it forms
various meanings for the students. Meaning is formed through the understanding of learners‟
storytelling through various interactions among students enables interpretation and various
meanings. So textual statements should provide meaningful interpretation through the
interaction of various story-telling, and it makes sure that learners have positive and self-
directed learning.
Second, the formal characteristics of storytelling are use of artwork, use of operational
tools, use of story type and media usage knowledge. Use of artwork make it easy to
understand the meaning explicitly, it provides a variety of visual experience, and this makes
the student‟s interested and curious. Use of operational tools provide a direct experience
beyond a mere story, it clarifies practical knowledge by manipulating hands and tools. The
use of story type improves student‟s learning ability and encourages cooperative thinking
activities. The media usage knowledge helps to escape the teacher-centered education, and it
enables active student participation education.
Third, the functional characteristics of storytelling are interesting, concept formation,
situation suggestion and a understanding of a goal. Storytelling is an interesting theory, a
learning tool, and a learning process. Storytelling makes learning and concentrating naturally,
it enables inquiry and knowledge construction. Storytelling helps concept formation and
expresses the degree of understanding of the student. In a storytelling context, the learner
must go through stages of story comprehension, abstraction of attributes, and generalization
through clear recognition of story data. In the story, various situations are presented that
stimulate the interest and curiosity of learners. In storytelling, presenting situation should

8 Hyeon-Suk Kang and Yun-Bok Lee

 International Journal of Interactive Storytelling
Vol. 1, No. 1 (2017) pp. 7-12

raise questions of learners, provide clues to resolution, gives an active guidance. It is

necessary to clarify the meaning of the progress of learning through understanding of a goal.
By this time, we looked at the characteristics of storytelling. From now on, we will look at
the storytelling as learning theory. The education made up by people and culture is not a
delivery of segmental knowledge but a course of sharing and organizing of meanings (Jeon &
Kang, 2009). Regarding a storytelling, it‟s the most basic means for people to express and
deliver their thinking. And a story form is used to induce students‟ intellectual curiosity and
to use their imagination and creativeness. It will enable the student to have motivation to
sympathize and to want to learn through the stories which reflect students‟ emotion, hope,
intention (Jeon, 2009). So the storytelling instruction targets to deviate from the view of
mechanical and passive attitude of teachers toward learners and to bring up the learners that
are able to communicate forming and constructing their own knowledge actively.

3. Factor analysis of elementary 1st, 2nd grade mathematics textbook

based on storytelling
This chapter, we will analysis 1st, 2nd grade mathematics textbook. The 1st, 2nd grade
storytelling-based mathematics textbook according to the 2009 revised curriculum was
introduced in 2013. So we will find a storytelling element in textbook (Ministry of
Education, 2017).
First, the content elements of the mathematics textbook are analyzed as follows.
Mathematics textbooks have the highest content of characters, events, and backgrounds in the
narrative. This reflects mathematical situations involving characters, events, and backgrounds
for problem solving. Among the items of restructuring, the percentage of story
embellishment and meaning of fact is lowest. 2nd grade textbooks have many storytelling
elements more than 1st grade.
Second, the format elements of the mathematics textbook are analyzed as follows. The
storytelling percentage is the highest with artwork, this is because students lack the ability to
decipher text. Use of operational tools and media usage knowledge is higher in the 2nd grade
than 1st grade. Use of story type does not show up in the 1th grade, and it appears in the 2nd
grade. 2nd graders have the ability to read and interpret the story.
Third, the functional elements of the mathematics textbook are analyzed as follows.
Storytelling elements are in order of introducing the unit, understanding the problem,
presenting the problem and presenting a solution. The learning situation guide is the
summarizing of learning objectives and explanation of basic concept, there are more
storytelling elements in the 2nd grade than the 1st grade.

4. Problem analysis of mathematics textbooks

The ultimate goal of education is to achieve the student‟s understanding of concepts by
means of self-internalization through the use of a fun and enjoyable environment as a transfer
of knowledge. For these educational goals teacher and student are doing their best. Through
history, students thought learning was merely memorizing existing knowledge. Today,
education focuses on self-constructed meaning and processing cognitive information.
According to this aspect, the textbook is an important tool of enhancing learning, and
textbooks are the most important teaching material. These days, the concept of a textbook is a
student‟s concept formation and learning important means through interesting material rather
than just the basic recognition of learning aids. As storytelling mathematics textbooks are in

Copyright ⓒ 2017 GV School Publication 9

Critical Analysis of Mathematics Textbooks based on Storytelling -Focusing on the Application of
Storytelling with Mathematics Textbooks in Elementary School

an early stage of introduction, insufficient point and disadvantage of textbooks is found (Lee
& Kang, 2013).
First, storytelling elements utilize simple interest-inducing activities. If we look at the text
of the current textbook, there are many aspects of activity that are simply interesting during
class. From another point of view, what do storytelling elements need? How does it relate to
the class objectives? Why should we do this activity? Many questions arise. In other words,
storytelling mathematics textbooks are far from the central goal of class and there is a lot of
content to try to attract attention and interest. So the storytelling element includes learning
contents, it should induce various thinking activities.
Second, storytelling is only for the transfer of knowledge. This problem is related to the
content side (concept forming) and format side (factual knowledge). The direction of school
education focuses on the formation of concepts, but to this day, the transfer of knowledge is
an important part of the school. How to convey the knowledge of the subject knowledge to
the learner is an important concern for the teacher. But excessive knowledge transfer is not
very effective. Currently, in elementary school the 1st and 2nd grade mathematics textbook
focus on the transfer of factual knowledge. Simple knowledge transfer interferes with desired
learning outcomes and achievement of goals and objectives, and it is far from student‟s
inquiry activity and learning motivation. The present textbook contents interfere with learning
contents by enumerating knowledge and presenting superficial learning contents, it has
negative aspects that cause abstract understanding. Even in a classroom, teachers and
textbooks should respect the diversity of thinking for each student, it is important to
understand the meaning of knowledge and understand the students‟ psychology. Also,
storytelling textbooks should explain various situations and help understand concept‟s
forming.
Third, storytelling is separate from learning objective understanding. The success of the
class is to understand and conceptualize the learning objective. It is not enough to use
storytelling to understand learning goals and it is not enough to organize the learning
objectives and clarify them. The obvious guide of learning objectives has a positive effect on
student learning, it is an important factors. Also, it leads to interest of the class.
Fourth, storytelling is lack of guidance on the meaning formation process of learners. The
learner composes various meanings in class time, and they try to form a subject‟s concept.
But the current textbook is a lack of specific meaning formation process. Important features
of storytelling are the making of meaning through concept formation. However, the
present textbook lacks concrete presentation of meaning. Unfortunately, current
textbooks are large in number with one-way stories, there is little meaning formation
and comprehension. Current textbooks present a one-way story, and it is divided in the
expression of the meaning understood by the learner. Therefore it should help the learner to
form meaning directly. So it is necessary to use a variety advantage of storytelling elements -
writing about learning activities, writing related to identified concepts, expressing by picture.
Fifth, storytelling does not consider the learner level. It lacks research on the
developmental characteristics of learners Learning attitudes and learning motives are
related, the learning attitude of students with high learning motivation is active, but the
learning attitudes of students with low learning motivation is passive. To overcome this
problem, elements of storytelling (interesting for a variety of motivation enhancement,
Use of pictures to understand learning) are utilized. But there is no interaction of each
element. Elementary school 1st, 2nd grade students are interested in drawing, 5th, 6th
grade student is interested in realistic and direct stories. There a re grades that can be
used to solve problems through stories, there are grades in which the willingness to

10 Hyeon-Suk Kang and Yun-Bok Lee

 International Journal of Interactive Storytelling
Vol. 1, No. 1 (2017) pp. 7-12

learn decreases through the story. In other words, there is a storytelling element
according to the learner‟s development stage, and the input of storytelling elements
should be different for each grade level for effective learning.

5. Conclusion
In this paper, we analyzed the elementary school 1st, 2nd mathematics textbook‟s problem
and discovered the problem of the textbook. The style of textbook content has changed and
been reformed again many times. Traditional textbooks have evolved and are now focused,
based and written on the educational philosophy of constructivism. Mathematics textbooks
written through the principle and method of storytelling are classified as the learner‟s thought
and experience. They consider context-oriented statements, storytelling teaching methods, the
learner‟s stage of development and literacy. Storytelling is the new way to solve the problems
of textbooks. Storytelling provides a way of learning that is configured to provide higher
quality, interest and be easily absorbed.
In Korea, many students have a negative cognition and low expectation in regards to
studying math. Storytelling will change math lessons as follows. First, teaching math with
storytelling is helpful in creating interest and fun attitude towards studying math. If students
have a storytelling lesson, they gradually have interest and motivation on math and use the
knowledge by providing a meaningful and authentic situation in the stories.
Second, in the process of the teaching math through storytelling, the student formed the
conceptual knowledge of math. Using the process of solving problems through stories,
students recognize the necessary the acquisition of conceptual knowledge of math.
Third, students have confidence in applying knowledge of math through studying math
with storytelling. Because of this problem, students have achievements of problem solving
through the process in which they discussed together with their team members.
We believe that all of the teachers in Korea will agree that the storytelling method is a
attractive strategy in teaching math.

References
[1] Y.H. Lee and H.S. Kang, “Searching method of textbook‟s statement as a storytelling”, Journal of Education
& Culture, Vol. 19, No. 1, (2013).
[2] H.Y. Jeon and H.S. Kang, “In search of alternative development of primary school curriculum: based on
Egan‟s story form model”, The Journal of Elementary Education, Vol. 22, No. 1, (2009).
[3] Y.H. Lee, “A study on the method of textbook‟s statement through a storytelling”, Kyungpook National
Universtiy Graduate School, (2013).
[4] H.J. Jeon, “The development and application of school curriculum based on Egan‟s story form model”,
(2009).
[5] C. Lauritizen and M. Jager, “Integrating learning through story: the narrative curriculum”, Albany: Delmar,
(1997).
[6] J.S. Bruner, “Making Stories”, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, Massachusetts, (2002).
[7] Ministry of Education, 2009 Revised Korean National Curriculum Mathematics textbook 1th grade, (2009).
[8] Ministry of Education, 2009 Revised Korean National Curriculum Mathematics textbook 2th grade.

Copyright ⓒ 2017 GV School Publication 11

Critical Analysis of Mathematics Textbooks based on Storytelling -Focusing on the Application of
Storytelling with Mathematics Textbooks in Elementary School

Author
*Corresponding author: Hyeon-Suk Kang, Ph. D.
Department of Education, Teachers‟ College, Kyungpook National University,
80 Daehakro, Bukgu, Daegu, 702-701, Korea
E-mail: hakang84@knu.ac.kr

12 Hyeon-Suk Kang and Yun-Bok Lee