From Paper to Podcasts: Reasoning Shifts in High School Students' Personal Conflict Narratives

• In Event: 2-086 - Moral and Civic Development in Adolescence: Approaches to Interpersonal Conflicts and Societal Issues

Integrative Statement

This study set out to explore shifts in 10th grade students’ moral and social reasoning about their own personal conflicts as they were prompted to transform pen-and-paper narratives into digital podcasts. Drawing on a social domain theory framework of moral development (Turiel, 1983), this analysis examines changes in domain reasoning between the paper and podcast stories, as well as changes in storytelling complexity. This study suggests journalistic storytelling and multimedia production can encourage narrators to refine their moral stances on important personal issues.
This study took place in two 10th grade classrooms (one control, one treatment, 28 students each) in British Columbia (Canada) from (November, 2017–March, 2018). The researcher collaborated with the English Language Arts teacher to design the intervention unit. All students wrote pen-and-paper narratives about a personal conflict. Both classes engaged in peer discourse about these narratives. Then, the treatment class began transforming their narratives into podcasts. They were encouraged to gather facts, interview people in their communities, and conduct Internet research. The researcher led GarageBand tutorials on class iPads. The control class did not immediately make podcasts, but instead, revised their pen-and-paper narratives, incorporating any new perspectives from the peer discourse activity. After they revised their narratives, they also created podcasts.
The researcher took field notes and wrote analytic memos noting key themes and challenges that arose with the project and with particular students. Other data included initial narratives (pen-and-paper), recordings of peer discourse, final podcasts, and initial and final interviews. Copies were made of the initial and final narratives in order to conduct a textual analysis of the themes that emerged. Students’ peer discourse was recorded and then transcribed. The researcher adapted existing coding schemes for this analysis (Berkowitz & Gibbs, 1983; Nucci, Turiel, & Roded, 2017; Wainryb, Brehl, & Matwin, 2005). Students’ narratives and podcasts were coded for type of conflict, domain of the conflict, perspective, type of resolution, domain coordination, emotions and psychological states. Podcasts were also coded for the number of people interviewed, what kind of opinions they represented, the music choices they made, and whether they included researched facts.
Preliminary findings show changes in perspective between students’ narratives and their podcasts. Fifteen pen-and-paper narratives were coded as presenting a victim perspective, however, eight of those students left out the victim perspective in their podcasts, instead choosing to tell their story from the perspective of a critic or investigator. Nineteen students’ pen-and-paper narratives ended with passive resolutions, such as “it got better with time.” However, 15 of those students ended their podcasts with active resolutions, such as coming to a novel realization or asserting personal values. Twelve students resolved their podcasts with a novel solution or perspective or a refined stance on an issue that was not in their original narrative.
Podcast creation, or similar multimodal creative processes, can both elicit, and demonstrate complicated moral reasoning about personal moral conflicts. This journalistic form of storytelling combined with being able to draw on music and media, facilitated new understandings of students’ social situations.

Author

• Robyn Ilten-Gee, University of California, Berkeley
  Presenting Author