iResilience of science pre-service teachers through digital storytelling

Abstract

We live in a multimodal world where communication enabled by digital media supports the expression of ideas, opinions, instructions and experiences in a variety of formats that empower the individual to convey thoughts and emotions persuasively. In education, digital storytelling as a pedagogical strategy can be embedded in student-generated videos of narratives of personal learning experiences or in teacher-constructed stories that inform or instruct. The aim of this qualitative research was to investigate how a group of science pre-service teachers created digital stories to elicit resiliency (risk and protective factors) during their teaching practicum and how their peers responded to the digital stories, uploaded and shared on VoiceThread. The results showed that the digital stories were able to convey thinking and emotions successfully at a deeper level. A range of issues (risk factors) and strategies (protective factors) to overcome them could be identified in the digital stories. As reducing the risk of attrition in teachers’ early professional careers is important for maintaining teacher numbers and quality in teaching, this research is significant in understanding how pre-service teachers view resiliency in their education. Digital stories are able to provide teacher educators and researchers with richer data for this purpose.