Engaging preservice primary and preprimary school teachers in digital storytelling for the teaching and learning of mathematics

A significant criticism made of preservice teacher education is that it fails to prepare teachers in such a way that they would feel confident in the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in teaching, despite the assumed digital literacy of student-teachers and the children they will eventually teach. New technologies have enabled multimodal design and digital storytelling in meaning-making and communication and are now often instrumental and influential in shaping students’ social practices and identities. The purpose of this study was to explore an integrative approach in applying ICT in learning with specific reference to the formation of mathematics teaching capability in preservice teachers. It takes into consideration student-teachers’ lived experiences when introducing ICT supported learning into their classrooms as well as their exposure to related university courses such as educational technology, special didactics of mathematics and mathematics. This paper describes the instructional design framework and assessment criteria for mathematical problem solving and digital storytelling introduced to an ICT course for student-teachers. Based on the analysis of preand posttesting of the subjects’ capabilities and reports of their perceptions, it is suggested that preservice teachers can efficiently develop their content knowledge in mathematics problem solving and that an integrative approach such as that described here may facilitate both mathematical problem-solving competences and pedagogical competences for applying digital storytelling in solving mathematical problems. The cohort of preservice teachers had no prior experiences of digital storytelling or multimodal design and perceived them as new practices. Their conceptions changed during the course from the passive recipients to active producers of media content. They demonstrated reflection relative to learning-by-design and representation modelling. They perceived digital storytelling as a strategy and means for empowering the “studentvoice” and the active construction of knowledge. The findings of the study contribute to British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 47 No 1 2016 29–50 doi:10.1111/bjet.12253 © 2015 British Educational Research Association preservice teacher education indicating that an integrated approach of instruction that deploys digital storytelling and multimodal design can help facilitate preservice teachers’ pedagogical competencies and mathematical content knowledge. Introduction The paper discusses preservice teacher education and presents an integrated approach to preparing preservice teachers for lesson planning, design and delivery in mathematics teaching. The intervention involved a contextualised approach in which an educational technology course was associated with, and applied material from, courses in the special didactics of mathematics, mathematics, integrated through an in-school practicum for preservice teachers. The instructional design framework and evaluation criteria are presented, along with the empirical testing and results. In developing the learning activities, the authors chose to promote a digital storytelling approach in engaging preservice teachers with multimodal design and digital literacy. Practitioner Notes What is already known about this topic • A significant criticism made of preservice teacher education is that it fails to prepare teachers in such a way that they would feel confident in the creative use of ICT in teaching, despite the assumed digital literacy of student-teachers and the children they will eventually teach. Preservice teacher education provides a critical opportunity for developing technical as well as pedagogic ICT competencies in teaching and learning. • Opportunities are afforded through ICT and specifically multimodal design and digital storytelling for visualisation in support of different representations for learning. • In preservice teacher education, storytelling is applied as a pedagogical strategy and as a research method facilitating preservice teacher engagement in transformative pedagogical work. What this paper adds • How the integration of ICT together with multimodal design in digital storytelling into the learning design of an intervention aimed at preservice teacher education may: ∘ develop student-teachers’ competences for multimodal design in digital storytelling and support the inclusion of multiple representations in the design of teaching and learning materials, and ∘ identify the perceptions held by preservice teachers relative to ICT and specifically multimodal design in digital storytelling, especially as applied to mathematical problem solving. Implications for practice and/or policy • Curricula that include ICT components in preservice teacher education should include pedagogies involving context-based, authentic tasks in order to maximise their impact and effectiveness. • Including digital storytelling in teaching and learning practices can afford opportunities for concept and digital literacy development of both preservice teachers and the children they teach. 30 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 47 No 1 2016 © 2015 British Educational Research Association The issues under consideration illustrate how information and communication technology (ICT) in learning activities may support pedagogical competency as an intended learning outcome for these students. A significant criticism to preservice education is that it fails to prepare teachers in such a way that they would feel confident in the use of ICT in their teaching (Hermans, Tondeur, van Braak & Valcke, 2008; Huang, Lubin & Ge, 2011; Sang, Valcke, van Braak & Tondeur, 2010) and that this phenomenon remains despite the presumed digital literacy and abilities of the “next-generation” of university students (Funkhouser & Mouza, 2013; Lei, 2009; Mouza, Karchmer-Klein, Nandakumar, Ozden & Hu, 2014). The approaches to integrating ICT in preservice teacher education needs to take into consideration the lived experiences and identities of these students and promote ICT in the creation of learning activities for them. In doing so, ICT-supported learning may facilitate learning that is situated in social practices through the sharing and co-construction in the process of meaning-making and through a range of modes (Kress, 2003; Kress & Jewitt, 2003; Kress & Selander, 2012). Thus, digital storytelling has been applied as a pedagogical strategy in engaging students in a transformative learning experience (Coulter, Michael & Poynor, 2007) and is thus applied in the study reported here. The integration of ICT provides opportunities in teaching and learning that may impact positively on learning outcomes; ICT has often been described as enabling a paradigm shift in teaching and learning (Hammond, 2014) and has been associated with innovative pedagogical approaches facilitating student-centred approaches to education (Ranguelov, Horvath, Dalferth, Noorani, 2011). However, it is argued that a gap exists between the rhetoric and reality of technology as enabler of the transition to constructivist teaching (Hammond, 2014). A report on mathematical education in Europe argues that there is no conclusive evidence about the benefits of ICT in mathematics teaching and, moreover, only a minority of teaching has ICT embedded within it (Parveva, Noorani, Ranguelov, Motiejunaite, Kerpanova, 2011, p. 60). Applying a constructivist paradigm to science and mathematics learning and teaching assumes that the transitions between enactive, iconic and symbolic representations (Bruner, 1966), supported by exploration, investigation, visualisation and modelling will lead to an enhanced conceptual understanding (Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, 2000). Computerbased learning application design affords the use of digital media formats such as text, graphics, audio and video so that the symbolic, static and dynamic representations of problems and other learning activities might presented in a variety of ways (Bodemer, Ploetzner, Feuerlein & Spada, 2004). The exploration of various combinations of different media for effective learning has been the focus of several studies (Mayer, 1997). The work by Kress and others (eg, Kress & Jewitt, 2003; O’Halloran & Lim, 2011) highlights how multimodal literacy has at least two dimensions—media and semiotics, each with multiple literacies—hence, the representation and communication of meanings is multimodal (Kress, 2003); computer-based digital technologies provide efficient and effective access to multiple modes of representation and as such influence thinking (Kress, 2003); and multimodal design that incorporates different representational resources for meaningmaking (Kress & van Leeuven, 2001) has become integrated across curricula within various subjects (Kress & Jewitt, 2003; Miller & McVee, 2012). Integrating ICT into the preparation of preservice teachers across various courses therefore requires attention to multimodal design. Multimodal design as a situated social practice in learning and communication (Kress & Selander, 2012) may facilitate the transfer of ICT skills of students across the boundaries of in and out of school activities (Jewitt, 2008). Multimodal design in learning incorporates design as an interactive process that facilitates meaningful engagement between the learner and the teacher. In this situation, the teacher is considered a professional designer of learning activities with students as the end users (Kress & Selander, 2012). In summary, as an applied practise, multimodal design in teaching responds to new literacy requirements; provides space for mediation in learning and teaching; facilitates embodied teaching and learning; takes into consideration the identity and Multimodal design and digital storytelling 31 © 2015 British Educational Research Association the real-life world of the student; and provides instruction through multimodal design that can support multiple representations in learning (Miller & McVee, 2012). The implementation of ICT in education has tended to focus on technological advancement and capabilities rather than pedagogy (Rushby & Seabrook, 2008). Preservice teacher education for ICT integration has also been technology oriented (Tondeur, van Keer, van Braak & Valcke, 2008) rather than application focused. The literature suggests that preservice teachers are not sufficiently prepared for integrating ICT into their classrooms (Funkhouser & Mouza, 2013). Teacher ICT capability must include pedagogical and technical competencies (National ICT Competency Standard for Teachers, 2000). Although technical competency has been proven to be higher in recent generations of student-teachers entering university, there is little evidence of proficiency in the pedagogy of advanced technologies in these students (Lei, 2009; Ng, 2012). Developing pedagogical competency is critical during preservice education (Chai, Ling Koh, Tsai & Lee Wee Tan, 2011) and is intimately connected with preservice teachers’ beliefs and conceptions about teaching and learning (Funkhouser & Mouza, 2013). It has been found that preservice teacher education courses can help student teachers move from often teacher-centric views, towards more constructivist and student-centred conceptions, and that such student-centred beliefs, “. . . were strongly correlated with educational technology integration” (ibid., p. 272). Incorporating ICT capacity building into the curricula and pedagogies for preservice education is typically facilitated through stand-alone courses, integration in various courses or through practicing technology in the field (Kay, 2006). Effectiveness and impact of ICT education for preservice teachers is limited when technology skills are taught in isolation, at a distance from the broader curriculum, and decontextualised (Huang et al, 2011; Kay, 2006; Moursund & Bielefeldt, 1999; Pellegrino, Goldman, Bertenthal & Lawless, 2007; Pope, Hare & Howard, 2002). Teaching ICT in context has repeatedly been found to be most effective (Kay, 2006). Digital storytelling as the instructional design framework Storytelling can be a useful tool in making sense of the world and one’s experiences of problem solving, individual perspectives and insights (Egan, 1988; Rambe & Mlambo, 2014; Wyatt-Smith & Kimber, 2009). Storytelling has been included in curricula associated with literacy (Campbell, 2012; Yang, 2012), mathematics (Albano & Pierri, 2014; Casey, Kersh & Young, 2004), history and earth science. In preservice teacher education, storytelling is applied as a pedagogical strategy and as a research method facilitating preservice teachers in engagement with transformative pedagogical work (Coulter et al, 2007). Storytelling is described in the literature on constructivist learning as facilitating student-centred learning through student engagement and reflection for deep learning (Barrett, 2006; Psomos & Kordaki, 2012). In solving mathematical problems, situational storytelling provides a semantic structure for the principles that are to be practised in solving the problem (Jonassen, 2003). Problems are not limited to one discipline; as Gardner (2011) pointed out, nature does not stand sharp boundaries and division into subjects. Cross-curricular connections in problem solving provide contextualisation and facilitate integration of knowledge across subjects. Storytelling includes problems anchored or played out in sagas (Casey et al, 2004), world problems, authentic real-life situations and professional contexts (Jonassen, 2003). Storytelling has the potential to engage learners in critical thinking and problem solving (Gaeta et al, 2014), providing situational context and structural relationships (Jonassen, 2003), and structure and sequencing for narrative topics (Gaeta et al, 2014; Psomos & Kordaki, 2012). Mathematical problem-solving teaching strategies that include storytelling (Casey et al, 2004) and provide a meaningful context connecting mathematics and literature (Casey et al, 2004; Wilburne & Napoli, 2008) may support the conceptual understanding of mathematical problems, structures and problem-solving skills (Jonassen, 2003) and increase mathematical literacy for the interpretation of mathematics in 32 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 47 No 1 2016 © 2015 British Educational Research Association various contexts (Albano & Pierri, 2014). Nevertheless, students sometimes have issues with text comprehension in mathematical story problems (Walkington, Sherman & Petrosino, 2012), or with comprehension at the level of abstraction required when undertaking routine mathematical operations (Cotic, 1999). Multiple representations of mathematical problems in stories may support comprehension in mathematical problem solving, understanding of textual information and visualisation of data (Jonassen, 2003). Using technologies increasingly available to preservice teachers and school children that immerse learners in multimodal digital design to create personal representations of concepts can provide a powerful cognitive and social teaching space (Hoban, Loughran & Nielsen, 2011). Hence, digital storytelling has the potential to facilitate narrative through the creation of multiple modes of representation and the sharing and consumption of interactive content (Spaniol, Klamma, Sharda & Jarke, 2006). However, the application of digital storytelling and associated theoretical frameworks for teachers and students in mathematics is somewhat rare (Albano & Pierri, 2014; Robin, 2008), even though digital storytelling has been recognised in teaching mathematical literacy and in improving students’ capabilities for active, context-based, mathematical problem solving (Albano & Pierri, 2014). Elsewhere, there is some evidence of digital storytelling being used for investigating mathematical manipulatives where preservice teachers explore teaching concepts by creating a digital story (Browning & Willis, 2012). Following these observations, the authors identified an opportunity to provide explicit instruction in multimodal digital storytelling for preservice teachers and to investigate the impact of such an intervention on the students’ own mathematical capabilities and their ability to create similar learning activities for children. Digital storytelling authoring tools incorporating a variety of narrative approaches have been variously applied in learning and teaching (Gaeta et al, 2014; Hoban et al, 2011). Social media, eg, supports storytelling experiences and facilitates peer-to-peer collaboration (Liu, Liu, Chen, Lin & Chen, 2011). Basic desktop office software has been applied for multimodal design in storytelling (Yang, 2012) showing how the integration of digital tools already familiar to teachers might be combined with familiar digital and non-digital tools to good effect and thus avoiding the problem of less familiar, perhaps more advanced tools being accepted and trialled by teachers (Nussbaum & Diaz, 2013). With this in mind, the study reported here integrated digital tools most widely preferred, used and adopted by students, namely, Microsoft PowerPoint and Movie Maker. These tools are relatively easy to use and master and help redress the lack of confidence in the use of technology expressed by preservice teachers (Kobayashi, 2012). Digital stories were produced using these tools, combined with conventional resources such as drawing or physical models. The mathematical arithmetic problem story types were defined based on the work of Valenti (1987), Tenuta (1992) and Cotic (1999). The framework in Figure 1 represents the various components incorporated in the multimodal digital design associated with this study. The framework has at its core the types of problems focused on when developing preservice teachers’ competencies in mathematical literacy and problem solving and for teaching mathematical problems. Mathematical problem solving is conceptualised here as incorporating critical thinking, creativity and active engagement when searching patterns for solutions, whereas the teaching of mathematical problem solving is seen as facilitating the capability development of students for analysing data, selecting a strategy and reflecting on the whole activity. This approach is deemed necessary given the diverse nature of problems and contexts and the need for preservice teachers to be prepared for teaching various types of mathematical problems and designing learning activities that promote active knowledge construction in which students take into account: the nature and mode of data within the given context; distinguishing significant data from non-significant data; the analysis of relations between data; and discerning if the information available is sufficient to solve the problem. When Multimodal design and digital storytelling 33 © 2015 British Educational Research Association taught through digital storytelling, students apply the three processes of (1) the formulation of a scenario that incorporates a mathematical problem in a story; (2) application of mathematical concepts, procedures, reasoning; and (3) interpretation by applying the mathematical problemsolving strategies in a context of the story (Albano & Pierri, 2014). Rotating around the core in Figure 1 are the semantic, contextual and modal components; we hope to engage learners with in solving these problems. This includes the contextualisation of a problem in situations and topics or themes that are meaningful for a student (OECD, 2003); connecting subjects through cross-curricular connections; and exploration and solving a problem by transitions between different representations (ibid.). In engaging students in this manner and with these problems we aimed to develop and evaluate a particular set of competences described in the next section. Competencies and their evaluation criteria To evaluate the competencies of students exposed to the intervention and the impact of the initiative, a set of intended learning outcomes was identified connecting mathematics, special didactics of mathematics and educational technology. In mathematics, eg, the intended outcome involves solving different types of mathematical arithmetic problems. In special didactics of mathematics, the intended learning outcomes include: a capability to facilitate students’ strategies for problem solving appropriate to their developmental level; being able to provide problem Figure 1: Design components 34 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 47 No 1 2016 © 2015 British Educational Research Association content and contexts that are meaningful to students and foster meaningful learning and engaging and pleasant experiences that help build confidence; integration of computer supported learning through the application of digital storytelling in a way that combines various representational resources and that encourages active engagement, inquiry learning, imagination and creativity; and applying storytelling in which mathematical symbolism is contextualised and which facilitates the process of reasoning and searching for solutions to mathematical problems. The technological outcomes included: the production of online content (animations, images, moving images, photographs, video, sound and voice-over); editing and adding self-produced digital and non-digital material (drawings, other artefacts and concrete material, animations, images, moving images, photographs, video, sound and voice-over); managing basic editing and interactive tools; and using software and hardware to organise, manage and store computer files. The specific criteria applied to the outcomes above are represented in Figure 2, which describes various modes of representation and criteria associated with them (The New London Group, 2000). Several design modes are defined as linguistic, visual, audio, spatial and multimodal. A sixth mode, gestural, was excluded as not relevant for this study and was substituted by “dynamics,” which according to Bodemer et al (2004) is one of the key characteristics of multimedia. The modes of representation are based on two evaluation elements described by Wyatt-Smith and Kimber (2009) as transmodal operations and cohesion. Transmodal operations refer to meaningmaking by shifting different modes and navigation between sequences in a way that facilitates meaning-making in learning. Students achieving high comprehension not only progress between concrete, visual and abstract levels of representation but also variously shift between them. Cohesion refers to combining modality elements to achieve unity and is, according to Kimber and Wyatt Smith (2010), defined as a technical proficiency for multimodal design facilitating meaning-making and the cohesion of ideas within the text. In the case of our study, this is demonstrated at three levels, the narrative type, conceptions of and ability to solve mathematical problems, and an ability to make cross-curricular connections between the learning objectives of multiple subjects. The perceptions of, and competencies in, ICT were manifest in multimodal design in digital storytelling. For the purposes of this study, each of the criteria described was assessed using a 4-point grading scale where 1 = low and 4 = high. Having established a set of criteria for multimodal design and digital storytelling, a null hypothesis and two alternative hypotheses were developed: Hypothesis 0: Engaging in multimodal design for digital storytelling in mathematics has no impact on the competencies of preservice teachers in multimodal literacy and composition, mathematical problem solving and their ability to teach mathematics. Hypothesis 1: As a consequence of engaging in multimodal design in digital storytelling for solving mathematical problems, preservice teachers will show progress in their development of competences in solving mathematical problems. Hypothesis 2: Preservice teachers who have higher grades in multimodal design for mathematical problems in digital storytelling will, compared with those that have lower grades, achieve higher marks in a mathematics test. The above hypotheses were tested using quantitative data and augmented with qualitative data drawn from individual student reflections that focused on the perceptions held by the preservice teachers regarding multimodal design in digital storytelling and its contribution within their broader competency development.