Digital Storytelling: Developing 21st Century Skills in Science Education

Gülden Gürsoy

doi:10.12973/eu-jer.10.1.97

Abstract

<p style="text-align: justify;">The present study aimed to provide a digital story development experience for pre-service science teachers in the “instructional technologies and material development” course and to determine the impact of these experiences on their views on digital storytelling. Simultaneous parallel design, one of the mixed methods in which both quantitative and qualitative data were collected, was used in the study. Quantitative and qualitative findings are presented in different sections and both were interpreted in the discussion section. The quantitative study data were collected from 50 pre-service teachers, while the qualitative data were collected from 16 pre-service teachers. Quantitative data were collected by a survey and the qualitative data were collected in interviews. Descriptive/inferential statistics were employed in the analysis of the survey data. The steps of the analysis, coding, and categorization were adopted in the study for qualitative data. The positive effect of digital storytelling on the 21st-century skills of pre-service teachers was revealed by both quantitative and qualitative data. Furthermore, it was determined that pre-service teachers considered digital storytelling as advantageous since it provided meaningful and permanent learning, was fun and motivational; however, it also had disadvantages since it was time-consuming and required technological knowledge. It was revealed that they experienced certain difficulties in scriptwriting, finding the related images/videos and photographs, and finalizing the recording, and they considered that most, if not all, topics in the science course were suitable for digital storytelling. For pre-service teachers to acquire 21st-century skills, digital storytelling should be employed in several courses including the teaching practice course, and pre-service teachers should gain experience in preparing the students for digital storytelling.</p>

Highlights

Storytelling is the art of narration of the experiences, traditions, or the culture of ancestors using language, vocalization, and gestures to simulate the scenes of an event (Chung, 2006)
Since it was considered that the determination of the impact of digital storytelling on 21 st-century skills of pre-service teachers only based on their responses to the questionnaire would not be sufficient for the validity and reliability of the study, interview data were utilized to deepen the findings on the impact of digital storytelling on the21st century skills of the pre-service teachers
Pre-service teacher T6 stated the following reasons for using Toondoo: “It was a cartoon software we learned in the course and we all used it." The pre-service teachers employed other Web 2.0 applications presented in Table 8 besides the software they learned in the course

Summary

Introduction

Storytelling is the art of narration of the experiences, traditions, or the culture of ancestors using language, vocalization, and gestures to simulate the scenes of an event (Chung, 2006). The educational nature of storytelling allows the distribution of knowledge and understanding among individuals of different cultures (Wang & Zhan, 2010). Storytelling was introduced as an instructional methodology and learning tool in early childhood education, it is effective in all fields of higher education (Heo, 2009; Wang & Zhan, 2010). It has been used in the instruction of geometric shapes in the preschool period, and various educational topics such as dental clinic applications in higher education

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion