Using storytelling in distance learning: some teachers’ beliefs, online tools and experiences within the context of school lockdown

Abstract

Storytelling is claimed to be an engaging educational tool for young learners. There is abundant literature, which highlights the importance of storytelling as a memorable vehicle in language learning (Cameron, 2001; Kim, 2010) that promotes meaningful language use (Magid, 2013). Teachers’ beliefs also play a very important role in education because they determine the methods that lie behind the delivery of lessons. Storytelling is no exception and the extent of its implementation is based on the conviction that it is a powerful learning instrument (Utami, 2016). The COVID pandemic has accelerated the implementation of distance learning in primary education and has tested the effectiveness of telling stories online. The aim of the present study is to explore the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and their implementation of digitaltools for English as a foreign language teaching and particularly for storytelling in the framework of a school lockdown. The instrument for data collection is an online structured questionnaire that was partially answered by 54 Catalan Primary School teachers and fully completed by 32 educators. The findings seem to indicate that despite lack of training and a number of challenges, both technical and pedagogical, online tools have been extensively used to promote language learning and to read stories to children.

La narración de historias es una poderosa arma educativa para alumnos de infantily primaria. Existe abundante literatura en donde se enfatiza la importancia de la narrativa como instrumento significativo tanto en el aprendizaje de lenguas (Cameron, 2001; Kim, 2010) como en su uso (Magid, 2013). La pandemia COVID ha acelerado la implementación de métodos de aprendizaje a distancia en la escuela y ha supuesto asimismo una prueba para comprobar su efectividad en entornos virtuales. El objetivo de este estudio es explorar la relación existente entre las creencias del profesorado y la aplicación de instrumentos digitales en la enseñanza de inglés como lengua extranjera dentro del contexto del cierre de las escuelas. Como instrumento de investigación se ha utilizado un cuestionario online que ha sido contestado parcialmente por 54 educadores y totalmente por 32. Los resultados parecen indicar que, a pesar de la falta de formación y las dificultades pedagógicas y técnicas inherentes a la enseñanza virtual, se ha generalizado el uso de herramientas online para seguir leyendo historias en la clase de inglés como lengua extranjera.