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168 | Digital Media and Storytelling in Higher Education
the analysis of the data corpus by presenting individual life situations, for
which the sharing of digital stories and social videos on a Web 2.0 platform
serves as a fitting transmedia complement.
The integration of DST into media and communication theory courses
also serves to develop students’ visual skills, as they can practice a meaningful
and reflective way of verbal and visual narration by creating storyboards and
editing images, sounds and videos.
CHAPTER 3.
SOCIAL STUDIES
3.1 Teacher Training
To achieve teacher effectiveness, the main aim of teacher education is to
develop students’ attitudes and commitment, which requires that pre-service
teachers are actively engaged in the learning process. In teacher education,
students ideally develop the ability to construct their own knowledge and to
self-regulate their learning (Falus, 2004).
The definition of what makes a good teacher and the factors that make some
more effective than others are both contentious issues. However, there is a
relatively broad consensus that the development of the practical competencies
of pre- and in-service teachers can be achieved through the development of
different skills. International frameworks (e.g., ISTE and DigCompEdu) and
models (e.g., TPCK and SAMR) have attempted to define the optimal teacher
competencies (see Part IV). A fundamental task in teacher education is the
development of reflective practice (Szivak, 2010) in order to enable teacher
candidates to make sense of the broader context of the teaching-learning
process by reflecting on their own pedagogical practice.
The reception of stories on both the visual and verbal levels has a stimulating
effect on the lower left inferior frontal gyrus of the brain, an area that plays an
important role in controlling emotional responses (Urgesi et al., 2016). Sharing
and discussing narratives within a group, articulating personal experiences
of the content, and listening to the experiences of others all evoke emotional
involvement. Narrative-based learning enhances involvement in the learning
process, and students learn to listen to each other in a safe environment in
which they create films for themselves and for the audience. In addition,
the students feel responsible for the quality of their work and therefore pay
sustained attention to the content they are producing (Lanszki, 2017).
The art of narrative, be it a song, drama, novel, or theater, are treated by most
schools as a necessary evil, even though the success of education depends on
developing students’ sensitivity to narratives. Therefore, by bringing together
the social sciences and humanities, more specifically literature, history, drama,
and law, educators can open up new perspectives in education through active