Teachers’ practices to support student work in digital storytelling: A study on Finnish and Chinese school teachers’ experiences

This study aims to discuss and analyze Finnish and Chinese primary school teachers’ practices when digital storytelling is the teaching method, aiming for student-generated stories in video format. To meet this end, teachers introduce digital storytelling in their practices and guide and support students into building and sharing digital stories in video format with peers in the classroom and online. In addition, they introduce the use of web-based environments and digital technologies, adapt their teaching plan accordingly, and enrich existing instructional material. As a result, teacher’s practices of organizing and facilitating student work and development change. In order to investigate how teaching practices change, this study draws from Chinese and Finnish teachers’ interviews and observation data and uses inductive analysis and constant comparison for more abstract themes and categories. The findings show that the teachers use formal and informal, natural and technological environments to organize student work and aim for freer learning in digital storytelling activities. Also, different aspects of collaborative work are used to facilitate and, mainly, structure student work and development.