Designing a creative storytelling workshop to build self-confidence and trust among adolescents

Abstract

In a constantly changing world facing important challenges, educational activities need to be aimed at empowering the young generation to take an active part in shaping both their lives and society. The empowerment process builds on the development of self-confidence and trust. Specifically, self-confidence as generalised self-efficacy, confidence in speaking, confidence in one’s ability to learn and the resulting persistence seem crucial in today’s society. Relevant components of trust, in turn, concern the ability to rely on others in group settings and to cooperate in challenging situations. Adolescence itself is a phase of uncertainty and rapid changes, which makes it sensitive to drops in self-confidence and trust. It is recommendable to go beyond a problem oriented focus and to address protective factors through positive interventions.This paper presents the design of a creative storytelling workshop building on psychological mechanisms promoting self-confidence and trust. In three consecutive half-day sessions, adolescent participants are given the opportunity to invent stories based on their self-reflection and self-expression, to audio-record them and to create a finalized podcast. By presenting the relevant elements of the intervention design, this paper provides guidance to practitioners for creating and implementing life skill enhancing workshops, particularly those aiming to develop self-confidence and trust. Besides creativity and storytelling, relevant elements of the workshop were a framework of positive psychology, the cooperative experience of small successes towards a shared goal, experiential learning, a balance between task types including mouvement, the creation of a safe and immersive space and an encouraging posture of the facilitators.A pilot study was carried out with twelve teenagers in order to gain first evidence on the effects of the intervention on the above mentioned components of self-confidence and trust. Results from self-report data indicate several components of self-confidence and trust can be positively impacted by the experience provided through the workshop.