Teachers’ Pedagogical Role as Mediators in Leading and Guiding Students’ Learning in Digital Storytelling (DST)

Jenny Niu,Hannele Niemi

doi:10.7577/seminar.2908

Abstract

 The aim of this study is to find out how the teachers lead and guide students’ learning in digital storytelling (DST). The main research question is: What is teachers’ pedagogical role in leading and guiding the students’ learning in DST? The research framework is based on Vygotsky’s mediation theory. The research project was carried out in the 2016-2017 school year. Four classes from China and two classes from Finland at the Grade 4 and Grade 5 levels participated in the study. We mainly focus on qualitative data from semi structured interviews of teachers, researchers’ classroom observations, group discussions, and teachers’ course-planning documents. The main findings are that in DST, the main activities in teachers’ pedagogical role as mediators are facilitating, coaching, and scaffolding with the pedagogical decision-making. This study illustrates what teachers did in a DST project and how they have led and guided students’ learning when using the DST pedagogical method.

Highlights

In the twenty-first century, there have been enormous changes in technology and society
We focused on what teachers did before the digital storytelling (DST) project, in the beginning of the project, during the project, and at the end of the project; we used that data to identify the teachers’ pedagogical role in leading and guiding the students’ learning in DST
What is your overall experience with the DST method? How does DST change teachers’ pedagogy? How does DST support students’ learning? What did you do and how did you support the students’ learning in this DST project? What are your roles as a teacher in using DST method? Do you plan to use DST method in your future teaching?

Summary

Introduction

In the twenty-first century, there have been enormous changes in technology and society. Throughout the world, countries are setting twenty-first-century competences as the aims of schools Lee and Tan (2018) describes that a twenty-first-century teacher is interactive with the students, who are interactive among students themselves. They propose (McWilliam, 2009; Lee and Tan, 2018) that because of the contextual change of learning, the teacher’s role has gradually changed from “Sage-on-the-Stage” to “Guide-on-the-Side” and “Meddler-in-the Middle.”. We applied digital storytelling (DST) as a pedagogical method that supports both students’ collaboration and their active knowledge creation with digital competences. The major task of our study is to investigate how teachers see their role in this student-centered learning approach

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Conclusion