History or Hogwarts? Learning from Fiction to Transform Factual Reading

Students are frequently assigned factual readings to learn disciplinary knowledge, yet such readings are often experienced as effortful, externally imposed, and assessment-driven. By contrast, fiction read for pleasure can absorb readers so deeply that they voluntarily learn characters, histories, places, rules, and lore from imaginary worlds. This contrast is not simply a matter of facts versus fiction. It reflects several overlapping dimensions, including narrative versus expository structure, assigned versus self-chosen reading, assessment pressure versus voluntary engagement, and isolated information versus richly connected worlds. In this Perspective paper, I provide: (1) an examination of why fictional worlds and fiction more generally can be so engaging, (2) an overview of mechanisms that support engagement, comprehension, and memory, and (3) design principles for making assigned factual readings more engaging. This is a conceptual synthesis rather than a systematic review or report of new empirical data. I distinguish less-mutable differences between pleasure reading and assigned reading from mutable design levers that educators and authors can use. My goal is not to suggest that educational readings should become fiction, nor that pleasure is a substitute for rigour, but rather to identify how factual readings can be made more engaging by leveraging narrative schema, mental imagery, prior knowledge, self-relevance, topic interest, and social reading, alongside assessments that reward meaningful understanding.