Meaningful engagement of preschoolers through storytelling pedagogy

Abstract

Engaging students in their learning depends on the teachers’ pedagogical practices. The first author is a STEAM scholar and preschool educator who realized engagement is necessary for meaningful learning. For this, teachers and students must have exposure to innovative and arts-integrated pedagogy (e.g., storytelling). However, the teachers in the first author’s school practiced a conventional teaching approach, such as lecture and monotonous activity-based instruction, that compelled a disengaged learning culture. Similarly, storytelling was limited to reading aloud from storybooks. Thus, this paper investigated integrating storytelling pedagogy to engage preschoolers in learning by centralizing on the research question: How do teachers integrate storytelling pedagogy to enhance meaningful learning? This study used an action research method to intervene in the current pedagogical practice with storytelling as an innovative pedagogy. The teachers and students of Upper Kindergarten were involved in practicing storytelling approaches to conceptualize content knowledge and learn meaningfully. The findings of this study revealed that storytelling as an innovative pedagogy enhances the students’ engagement in their learning process. Similarly, it also helps to enrich students’ imaginative and creative skills, which are crucial soft skills in the 21<sup>st </sup>century. Moreover, storytelling enhances a deeper understanding of the content knowledge if the stories are developed based on the content knowledge of the curriculum. Therefore, storytelling is an innovative and arts-integrated pedagogy to foster preschoolers’ knowledge and skills through engagement and motivation. This research is applicable for educators and schoolteachers to improve and innovate their teaching-learning practices for students’ meaningful learning experiences.