Using story retelling to enhance social work students’ openness to diversity: a pilot RCT

ABSTRACT Based on the results from a story-retelling workshop for social work students in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), this paper suggests that narrative activities can make unique contributions in nurturing students’ openness to diversity, and such potential is under-researched. This research is a pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT). The workshop arranged students to read website materials and had real dialogues with the protagonist, and then randomly assigned for students to participate in the story-retelling group or the analytical writing group. Psychological changes and reading behaviour of the two groups were compared. The findings showed that the story-retelling group was more efficient than the analytical writing group in increasing critical openness and decreasing the need for cognitive closure. Such results open a discussion about the value of narrative approaches in social work education.