Shaping a Global Perspective: Digital Storytelling and Intercultural Teaching and Learning

• In Event: Critical and Narrative Perspectives on Intercultural Teaching

Abstract

Objectives: This presentation discusses approaches to intercultural teaching and learning, examining changes in both pre-service and in-service teachers' global competence and perspective consciousness that result from writing and reflecting on experience, and the cognitive impact of transforming cultural stories into digital artifacts using narrative-based digital storytelling.
Theoretical Framework: This study builds on Dewey’s work on reflection (1933) and its subsequent interpretation by Schön (1983) and others (Hatton & Smith, 1995). This study is also framed by notions of work on digital storytelling that displays how it provides a structure and process through which authors construct meaning from cultural experiences (Vygotsky, 1978).
Methods and Data Sources: The authors examine changes in pre-service and in-service teachers' global competence and consciousness perception that result from writing and reflecting on the intercultural experience using a digital storytelling process.
Results: Our inquiry highlights how most pre-service and in-service teachers are generally familiar with the word reflection, but they often think of reflection in terms of recall rather than as a process occurring over time. Our study shows that writing and reflecting on experience through the process of digital storytelling increases teachers' global competence and perspective consciousness. Results also indicate that Cultural Plunge Projects widen the range of modes available to students, thus creating additional forms of access to school-valued literacy practices.
Scholarly Significance: As educators, our goal must be to prepare students for living in a new world of global interconnectedness defined by technology and social justice. We display in our presentation how digital storytelling provides a structure and process through which authors construct meaning from cultural experiences.

Authors

• Martha Robison Green, Texas A&M University

• Lynne Masel Walters, Texas A&M University

• Timothy Walters, Texas A&M University