The application of storytelling as a persuasive form of communication in teaching is an interesting but insufficiently researched topic in Croatia. In Encyclopaedia Britannica stands that persuasion is the process by which a person’s attitudes or behaviour are, without duress, influenced by communications from other people. One’s attitudes and behaviour are also affected by other factors (for example, verbal threats, physical coercion, one’s physiological states) (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2015). In the world of economics and management, especially in the teaching of managers, leaders and entrepreneurs, storytelling has been increasingly used as a form of communication that leaves a strong effect on listeners, achieved through the persuasive component. This form of communication can also be applied in the classroom, especially when it comes to actualizing some of the educational achievements in various subjects. From the communication perspective, sender, receiver, message, channel and context are in the process of communication (Plenkovic 1993, Bakic-Tomic 2003, Rouse and Rouse 2005), which is largely in line with the educational process: teachers send a message - or content (information), there is a channel of communication (teaching methods) and the attitude towards the student (teacher communication style). The story thereby also appears in the teaching process as a students’ "virtual experience" because it is well known that children like to listen to stories, and that they understand them and easily immerse themselves in the roles of the characters in the story. Namely, stories in education have the task of replacing students' experience in certain teaching contents. Multiple benefits were expected from the introduction of the story into the teaching process. The dissertation is based on two theoretical approaches. The first is the theoretical approach of Uri Hasson, a neuroscientist at Princeton University who has, together with his team, been researching the neurological basis of human communication and storytelling, and learned that when recounting the story the brain activity of storytellers and their listeners are synced and that that neural mechanism allows the transmission of brain patterns, sharing of memories and knowledge. The stronger the neural connection between the listener’s brain and the speaker’s brain, the better the communication and understanding. Thus, storytelling encourages communication, motivates people and improves their engagement and memory (Stephens, Silbert and Hasson 2010). The second is the theoretical approach of Nguyen et al. (2016a) who conducted a study on childhood storytelling experiences of American, German, Chinese, and Vietnamese prospective teachers, linking these students’ experiences to their storytelling capacity, and the use of storytelling in their future employment in teaching. The primary goal of the study in this doctoral thesis was to examine the capacity for storytelling of primary education teachers in the Republic of Croatia, to compare the results with international results on the capacity for storytelling obtained on the population of prospective teachers. Examine students' understanding of the story and its message as a persuasive form of communication in teaching and examine whether there is a connection between the student's motivation and quality of knowledge, and the introduction of an experimental factor which is storytelling. Three studies were conducted in the school year 2016-2017. The aim of the first study was to determine the capacity for storytelling in primary school teachers in the Republic of Croatia and to compare those results with the results obtained on the population of American, German, Chinese, and Vietnamese prospective teachers. The study was conducted on a sample of 470 primary school teachers from all over the Republic of Croatia. The instrument used in this study is a questionnaire The Adults Perceptions about Childhood Experiences with Storytelling (Nguyen et al. 2015). The findings show that primary school teachers in the Republic of Croatia have developed a high capacity for storytelling (the percentages of variables important for determining the capacity for storytelling are over 70.00%). The findings also suggest that there are no statistically significant differences in capacity for storytelling between Croatian primary school teachers and American, German, Chinese, and Vietnamese prospective teachers except in the part regarding the intensity of participants’ childhood storytelling experiences where a statistically significant difference was found between Croatian teachers and students of teacher training colleges in China (t=10,124; p=0,000; p<0.01) and Vietnam (t=4.290; p=0.00; p<0.01), and no statistically significant difference was found between Croatian teachers and students of teacher training colleges in America (t= -0.788; p=0.431; p>0.05) and Germany (t=1.573; p =0.116; p>0.05), which indicates that Croatian teachers are closer to German and American students regarding the intensity of participants’ childhood experiences of storytelling (belonging to the so-called Western cultural tradition) than Vietnamese and Chinese students (belonging to the Eastern cultural tradition). The purpose of the second study was to determine the way in which a teacher telling a story at the beginning of class affects students’ motivation to learn, the quality of students' knowledge at the end of the specific lesson, and to examine whether students understand the message of the story (persuasive influence). The second study was conducted on a sample of 154 students from seven third and fourth grade classes at Malesnica Elementary School in Zagreb. Given that each class was divided into an experimental and a control group of students, there were 7 experimental (N=77 students) and 7 control (N=77 students) groups. Teachers taught Croatian Language, Mathematics and Science and Social Studies classes in both the experimental and control groups of students from the same teaching materials , with the proviso of telling a story to students in the experimental group at the beginning of each lesson, before processing the teaching content. Before the study started and after the end of the study, all students filled in the Motivation questionnaire which was taken from the motivation section in Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) (Pintrich et al. 1991). The study found that there were differences between the experimental and control group of students. In the experimental group of students, affected by storytelling, increased intrinsic goal orientation (t= -2.03; p=0.046; p<0.05) and students’ self-efficacy for learning and performance (t= -2.419; p=0.018; p<0.05). At the end of each lesson, all students were tested on the quality of their knowledge of the content covered in that lesson. The findings showed that exposed to storytelling, the students in the experimental group showed a higher quality of knowledge compared to the students in the control group (F=5.628; df=3/150; p=0.001). The better the student understood the story told in class, the better his knowledge of the processed lesson content was, when tested at the end of the lesson. The students in the experimental group had to answer additional questions regarding the stories told at the beginning of the lessons in order to examine their understanding of the story and its message, i.e. its persuasive effect. The findings showed that the students in the experimental group understood the stories and their messages very well (persuasive component): Croatian Language (M=6.22), Mathematics (M=4.99), Science and Social Studies (M=4.42). The third study was aimed at obtaining teachers’ personal experiences in practice of the application of storytelling teaching method and to find out what are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of that method. The third study was conducted on a sample of seven teachers who previously told stories at the beginning of Croatian Language, Science and Social Studies and Mathematics classes to the experimental group of students. A semi- structured questionnaire compiled by the researcher was applied and an interview was conducted during which the teachers shared their experiences with storytelling in the teaching process. The findings showed that out of seven teachers who participated in the experiment , during Croatian Language and Science and Social studies classes storytelling felt completely natural to 71.43%, and to other 28.57% mostly natural, while during Mathematics class to 57.14% of the teachers storytelling felt completely natural and to 42.86% mostly natural. Only one teacher (14.29%) reported using storytelling in all subjects when working with students. Storytelling is used the most in Croatian Language classes (100%), and the least in Art classes, Music classes and Physical Education classes (14.29%). Teachers described their students' reactions to storytelling and stated that the experimental group students listened carefully to the stories in all classes, were enthusiastic about storytelling and showed more interest in the lesson than the control group students who did not listen to storytelling. Teachers emphasized that storytelling as a teaching method can positively affect the students’ knowledge quality, concentration, engagement and motivation. Analyzing the process and implementation of the storytelling method in the teaching process in primary education, the teachers highlighted the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of that method shown in the SWOT analysis. The findings suggest that storytelling is a form of communication in teaching which persuasively influences students showing them the meaning behind the teaching content, connecting them to real life by creating a "virtual experience" and affecting their emotional intelligence, all of which together indirectly affect the motivation, understanding of the content and knowledge quality among students. The findings of these studies suggest there is a need to include storytelling as often as possible in the teaching process as a persuasive form of communication due to its overall positive educational impact on students as individuals and on the class as a whole, therefore facilitating a better connection and understanding between teachers and students. The findings also outline the need to improve the capacity for storytelling in teachers in order to use storytelling as often as possible in primary education, not only in teaching of the Croatian Language but also in teaching of other subjects. The scientific contribution of this doctoral thesis to information and communication sciences is in the field of communicology of education, where the storytelling method contributes to the realization of persuasive communication in teaching by encouraging the conceptualization of teachers' strategic communication. This achieves a profound integrity of all educational factors in teaching, which affects the creation of their own philosophy of life and the world in students. The practical contribution of the present doctoral thesis is the popularization and implementation of the storytelling method among teachers as a persuasive form of communication in teaching. Stories encourage students to be compassionate and critical, to be aware of their own commitment to problem solving, to be resilient to life's adversities, and to develop self-confidence.