Using storytelling in distance learning: Beliefs, online tools, and experiences of teachers within the context of school lockdown : La narración de historias en la enseñanza virtual: percepciones, herramientas digitales y experiencias en la escuela primaria durante el confinamiento

Resumen

Storytelling is claimed to be an engaging educational tool for young learners. There is abundant literature, which highlights the importance of storytelling as a memorable vehicle in language learning (Cameron, 2001; Kim, 2010) that promotes meaningful language use (Magid, 2013). Teachers’ beliefs also play a very important role in education because they determine the methods that lie behind the delivery of lessons. Storytelling is no exception and the extent of its implementation is based on the conviction that it is a powerful learning instrument (Utami, 2016). The COVID pandemic has accelerated the implementation of distance learning in primary education and has tested the effectiveness of telling stories online. The aim of the present study is to explore the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and their implementation of digital tools for English as a foreign language teaching and particularly for storytelling in the framework of a school lockdown. The instrument for data collection is an online structured questionnaire that was partially answered by 54 Catalan Primary School teachers and fully completed by 32 educators. The findings seem to indicate that despite lack of training and a number of challenges, both technical and pedagogical, online tools have been extensively used to promote language learning and to read stories to children.