StoryTimE: Digital Storytelling mit dem Tablet im Englischunterricht der Grundschule

StoryTimE is an interdisciplinary research project on digitally supported English teaching in elementary schools. Based on an understanding of teaching as a co-construction of the actions of teachers and students in relation to a subject matter (Praetorius & Kleickmann, 2022), constructive learning support is examined as a process characteristic of teaching (Pohlmann-Rother, Kürzinger & Lipowsky, 2018) in primary school English teaching from a subject-didactic as well as a primary school and media-didactic perspective. The project thus combines findings on the process quality of teaching from empirical teaching research with insights from research on technology-enhanced teaching (TET). Digital media are understood as components of a complex teaching-learning arrangement, taking into account the mediating role of the teacher (Scheiter, 2021). Digital storytelling serves as a practical teaching example, whose didactic concept encompasses the reception and production of stories in a combination of different modes of presentation (Contini et al., 2018). Tablets are ideal mobile devices for implementing digital storytelling, as they allow for various forms of presentation, control types, and sequence structures (Bastian & Kolb 2020).

The project examines how teachers' learning support in terms of type, frequency, and quality can be characterized in digital storytelling with tablets in elementary school English classes. It also asks what opportunities tablet-based teaching offers for students' oral and written language production.

To answer the research questions, a digital storytelling sequence developed for the project (“Story time – Let's create our own digital fairy tale”) is carried out in 4th grade English lessons and analyzed using lesson videos.