Teacher professional identity development through digital stories

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.104040Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The DS project enabled teachers to express their feelings and experiences.

  • Publishing DS enhanced teachers' creativity and helped develop their professional identities.

  • DS enabled teachers to interact with an audience in authentic ways.

  • A new framework enriches our methods for analyzing digital stories.

Abstract

Digital stories are powerful instructional tools that allow students to communicate complex concepts and emotions through both linguistic and nonlinguistic modes. A digital story is a 3–6 min multimodal video through which students can engage in critical reflection about their experiences, participate actively in the learning process, and give voice to their identities. This study analyzes two digital stories created by teacher education students in a graduate course; using a new framework that draws on Systemic Functional Linguistics, we demonstrate how these beginning teachers used digital storytelling to shape their professional identities. The results show how valuable digital stories can be in fostering reflection and teachers' development as professionals. The paper also introduces and illustrates an innovative systemic functional linguistic approach to analyzing digital stories as complex multimodal objects.

Introduction

Digital storytelling has been used for multiple purposes in schools and has received largely positive feedback from teachers and students (Kim & Jia, In press; Kim & Li, 2020; Lambert, 2002). The availability of technology and advanced, low-cost, user-friendly multimedia editing software make digital stories a powerful tool that can communicate concepts, emotions, and feelings through textual, visual, and auditory modes. A Digital Story (DS), a 3–6 min multimodal video, can engage students in critical reflection about their own experiences, facilitate their active participation in the learning process, and help them give voice to their identities (Robin, 2006). In this article, we describe how digital storytelling (DST) allowed early career educators to narrate their professional identity development.

Most studies of DST and teacher development have focused on how DST can facilitate teachers' reflective learning during the first few years of teaching. Digital storytelling has been shown to enhance reflection and creativity, which can help pre-service teachers explore and reconcile their professional identities (Marín & Challinor, 2018). Digital stories can also help prepare pre-service teachers to teach in various subject matters and can facilitate digital literacy (Kotluk & Kocakaya, 2016; Røkenes, 2016; Starčič, Cotic, Solomonides, & Volk, 2016). Digital stories can foster empathy and can break down demographic barriers between teachers and students (Reyes & Brinegar, 2016), and they can facilitate English language learners’ identity formation (Kim & Jia, In press; Kim & Li, 2020). Despite this previous research on the promise of DST, we do not know how digital storytelling can facilitate reflective learning and teacher professional identity development, especially as pre-service teachers start to transition from students to teachers (Steadman, Kayi-Aydar, & Vogel, 2018).

In addition, few have analyzed digital stories with a sufficiently systematic framework. In this study, we adopt the “grammar of visual design” developed by Kress and van Leeuwen to study multimedia semiotics. Kress and van Leeuwen describe three layers of meaning-making in images: representational/ideational, interactive/interpersonal, and compositional/textual. Building on this, Unsworth (2001) proposes a Systematic Functional Linguistic approach that we adapt to study how educators and students use digital stories to facilitate reflection and identity development. We complement this with Serafini, 2015a, Serafini, 2015b sociocultural approach, adding an ideological component to the analysis. This analytical framework allows us to capture how multimodal signs communicate content and feeling, allowing educators to reflect on their experiences and develop their professional identities.

The present study analyzes two digital stories created by teacher education students in a graduate course. Through a close analysis of the digital stories, we illuminate how pre-service and first-year teachers use digital storytelling to shape their professional identities. We address the following three research questions:

  • 1.

    How do students in a teacher preparation program engage with digital stories?

  • 2.

    How do teachers develop their teacher professional identities while creating their digital stories?

  • 3.

    How can the “visual grammar” described in systemic functional linguistics illuminate teachers' voices and reflection in multimodal digital stories?

Section snippets

Teachers’ professional identity and digital storytelling

Professional identity centrally includes “the attitudes, values, knowledge, beliefs, and skills that are shared with others within that profession” (Beddoe, 2013, p. 27). Professional identity is emergent and involves ongoing self-interpretation. For prospective teachers, the perception of themselves as professionals influences their behaviors, effectiveness, and well-being (Rus, Tomşa, Rebega, & Apostol, 2013). Self-reflection is a crucial skill for developing a professional identity (Marín,

Context

This research uses qualitative case study methods (Starman, 2013). The study took place in an elective teacher education course in a U.S. research university in spring 2018. The course helped participants master various emerging technologies, create technology-enhanced curriculum and lesson plans, and provide better learning experiences. There were 12 students, both undergraduate and graduate. Three were already teachers, and the rest were either pre-service teachers or exploring the

Findings

Both participants created well-crafted digital stories. Kara's story explored a “Bridge Unit” she designed and implemented. She communicated how this successful unit empowered her as a teacher. Mark's story explored the choice between working in theater and being a teacher. His story revealed overlaps and compatibility between the two roles. This section analyzes the teachers' experiences with digital stories and explores their use of multimodal stories to express their voices and develop

Discussion & implications

The goal of this study was to analyze two digital stories by attending to representational, interpersonal, textual, ideological dimensions, and to investigate pre-service and first-year teachers' professional identity development that can take place through the creation of digital stories. In order to accomplish the first goal, we applied a multimodal analytic framework that incorporates work from Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001), Unsworth (2003) and Serafini, 2011a, Serafini, 2011b. In order to

Conclusions

Digital storytelling can help beginning teachers develop their professional identities and gain positive feelings about their profession. The creation of digital stories moves from internal reflection to presentation and sharing. It is useful for pre-service teachers who may not yet have a clear sense of their professional identities, and beginning teachers who may experience identity conflicts, to have a reflection period prior to the actual creation of their projects. Using written reflection

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      “Multimodality” describes texts that include two or more semiotic systems or modes of communication, such as still images, moving images, writing, speech, sound, gestures, movement, layout, and spatial orientation (Kim, et al., 2020; Jewitt & Kress, 2003; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; The New London Group, 1996). The growing body of research on multimodality highlights its value in schooling, particularly its ability to bridge in- and out-of-school experiences, and the opportunities it provides for identity development Kim, et al. (2020). Videos can play a vital role in student learning and engagement, through formats such as video conferencing (Sidpra et al., 2020), teacher-created instructional videos (Gray, 2020), YouTube videos (Koto, 2020), and interactive videos (Leisner et al., 2020), as well as digital storytelling (Kim et al., 2020, 2020c).

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