Abstract
Educators have increasingly adopted formalized approaches for teaching literacy skills in early childhood education. In line with an emergent critique of this approach, the present study investigated the design and effectiveness of a literacy intervention that blended Gagné’s nine events of instructional design with storytelling. Three classes in a public preschool in Indonesia participated in an experimental study involving 45 children, aged 5–6 years. Across 3 weeks, one experimental condition received storytelling activities and a second experimental condition received digital storytelling activities. The control condition received regular literacy classroom activities. Before, and after, the 3-week storytelling intervention, measures of literacy and digital literacy skills were administered to all groups. In the digital storytelling condition, children’s literacy skills increased significantly compared to children in the control condition. Other exploratory data analyses suggested that both types of storytelling activities enhanced digital literacy skills. The findings need to be replicated with an extended series of storytelling activities that involve larger groups of participants.
Highlights
Success in school is dependent, to a great extent, upon the development of skills in reading and writing gained during the early childhood years (NAEYC 1998)
The main aim of the present study is to describe a series of activities to support literacy and digital literacy skills in which storytelling is infused within an instructional design framework
These mean scores showed that the overall scores of the participants in all three conditions at pretest and posttest were below the mid-scale value of 2
Summary
Success in school is dependent, to a great extent, upon the development of skills in reading and writing gained during the early childhood years (NAEYC 1998). Many kindergartens have adopted formalized methods of instruction for teaching literacy. This approach has left little room for young children’s natural and playful way of learning (Bassok et al 2016). This has led to a call for a design approach that supports literacy development and greater child engagement in the learning processes. One response to this call is a focus on storytelling. Storytelling is a natural way of communicating with young children
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