Educational narrative inquiry through design-based research: designing digital storytelling to make alternative knowledge visible and actionable

Abstract

This paper describes the conceptualisation and appropriation of narrative in the design of digital storytelling technology (DST), to augment reflective practice among Irish pre-service teachers. Reflective practice remains a predominant professional formation component of programmes of teacher education. In this key developmental activity, teacher education traditionally privileges written reflections, e.g. pro forma post-lesson evaluations and essays. Our aim in this research was to supplement, not supplant, these important written reflective modalities, and by doing so, open up a wider set of possibilities for using narrative and technology to support creative, potentially transformative reflection on practice. We have been inspired significantly in this DST work by Bruner’s ([2002]. Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) functional view of narrative inquiry – that storytelling serves as the principal, foundational means by which we form our identities, relate to others and make sense of our place in the world. We thus sought to explore how innovative storytelling designs, combined with, and augmented by digital technology, might afford new narrative inquiry possibilities for pre-service students to conceptualise, create and collaborate in their early-career, reflective practices. This paper presents R-NEST, the educational design we developed in a principled and participatory fashion over 3 years, collaboratively with 323 student teachers. We trace the narrative of the development and refinement of the bespoke R-NEST design, illustrated with analysis of an exemplar, student-designed digital story. The paper concludes with insights regarding the creative, reflective use of DST, suggesting potentially wide scope for this mode of narrative technology in education.

Keywords:

• Reflection
• functional narrative inquiry
• design
• technology-enhanced learning
• initial teacher education

Notes on contributors

Dr Bonnie Thompson Long is an Education Technologist at the Centre for Adult Learning, NUI, Galway. Bonnie’s PhD research examined the use of Digital Storytelling as a technology-enhanced learning process for pre-service teachers, and investigated how creative ICTs and innovative pedagogies could be combined to enhance reflection, creativity and engagement in practice learning.

Dr Tony Hall is a Senior Lecturer in Educational Technology, Deputy Head of School and a design-based researcher at the School of Education, NUI Galway. His research foci include: educational technology, design-based research and subject teaching innovation, particularly in the subjects he previously taught at second-level: English, physical education, ICT and mathematics. He is joint director of the BA Mathematics and Education and Master of Education (Design, Learning & Technology), NUIG, and a Fellow and Committee Member of the International Society for Design and Development in Education (ISDDE). He will jointly chair the 14th Annual ISDDE Conference at NUIG in 2018. He is collaboratively involved in a number of educational technology research and development projects, national and international. These include the EU H2020 Q-tales Project to design e-books for children, and the Research Expertise Exchange (REX) Project to design an online system to support collaborative educational research in Ireland, funded by the Teaching Council, NCCA and CES.

ORCID

Bonnie Thompson Long http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2921-1966

Tony Hall http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6576-9687

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Horizon 2020 Framework Programme; NUI Galway Doctoral Research Scholarship Scheme.