Keywords

1 Introduction

Educational digital storytelling (EDS) has grown out of Digital Storytelling (DS) in the past two decades. EDS refers to digital storytelling in the field of education, such as schools.

EDS is often presented as a technology-enhanced learning approach with powerful educational benefits. Starting from Lambert’s definition of DS as a short narrated film [1], is it possible to define EDS as facilitated production of a short digital story in an educational community setting that should contain a mixture of digital media, including text, recorded audio narration, pictures, music and video.

Due to its nature, EDS could be an optimal tool to create and share digital stories to stimulate career plans. Students can think about their futures and use media to express their aspirations, expectations, needs and dreams in a narrative way. Although often used as a tool for agentic identity development [2, 3], its use as a career guidance tool is very recent [4].

This paper deals with the educational uses of digital storytelling and presents an overview of how EDS can be used to support career guidance. The first section “Education Digital Storytelling” begins with a definition of EDS and focuses on how EDS is being used in education as support teaching and learning. The second part “Life design paradigm” proposes career guidance interventions focusing on the life design (LD) paradigm. The following part “Link between Educational Digital Storytelling and Life Design” discusses the use of EDS as a tool for LD career intervention. The paper concludes with a description of the NEFELE ERASMUS+ project that will implement tangible user interfaces in classrooms to promote the use of EDS as a tool for LD career intervention.

2 Educational Digital Storytelling

“When we enter human life, it is as if we walk on stage into a play whose enactment is already in progress – a play whose somewhat open plot determines what parts we may play and toward what denouements we may be heading” ( [5], p.34).

Storytelling is sharing ideas, needs, and experiences through words to make meaning about our lives [5]. Through narrative, individuals shape their imagination and reflect on the concept of “the possible”. In this sense, the focus is transferring meaning [6]. Storytelling practice enhances the ability to negotiate new meanings and understandings and allows bringing together both the canonical and the exceptional and cultivating the possible [5].

Digital Storytelling (DS) offers new instruments for revisiting storytelling, blending multimedia, interactivity and the web into traditional storytelling practices [7, 8]. It can be defined as a modern expression of ancient storytelling [8]. Individuals become active creators by creating electronic personal narratives [9,10,11].DS is conceived as a new creative cultural mode [7].

Seven elements of DS are presented by Lambert [9, 12]: point of view, a dramatic question, emotional content, the gift of your voice, the power of the soundtrack, economy, pacing. Point of view refers to the personal perspective of the narrator and the sense of authenticity of the story. A dramatic question is defined as an “existential” question to which the narrator wants to find an answer at the end of the story. Emotional content reflects the emotional connection to the story. The gift of voice and the power of the soundtrack refers to the personalization of the story. Finally, economy and pacing refer to just enough content to tell the story and its pacing (slowly or quickly).

Robin [13] describe the types of digital stories: personal narrative, which includes stories with significant incidents in the narrator’s life; historical documentaries, which refers to the exploration of dramatic events in search of meaning; stories designed to train concepts or practices.

DS was applied in different fields, e.g. health [14] and youth civic engagement [15]. In the last year, its application in education has grown [16]. DS storytelling offers a meaningful context for the effective integration of digital technologies in the classroom [17].

In a recent review, Wu and Lee [16] showed five types of EDS orientation: appropriative, agentive, reflective, reconstructive, and reflexive. The appropriative EDS is designed for storytellers to understand through production. The agentive EDS is structured to enhance autonomy. The reflective EDS is designed to engage in a reflective process. The reconstructive EDS refers to the process of reconstructing meanings of a concept. Finally, the reflexive EDS allows to negotiate and manage the understanding of self and others.

Eight types of outcomes of EDS can be identified [16]: affective, cognitive, conceptual, academic, technological, linguistic, ontological, and social. Affective refer to learner attitude (e.g., motivation, empathy). Cognitive outcomes refer to creative thinking. Conceptual outcomes are concerned with a reformulation of concepts. Academic, technological and linguistic outcomes refer to the related skills. Ontological skills refer to identity topics. Finally, social outcomes are concerned with all the collaborative skills. Moreover, learning to construct and tell stories is a means of defining and reflecting on personal experiences and communicating them to others.

In the context of disability, structuring storytelling educational interventions is challenging. New strategies and forms of storytelling practices are mainly designed for typically developing pupils. However, there is no lack of evidence of the potential of storytelling and DS tools in special and inclusive education contexts for students with disabilities or special educational needs (SEN) such as physical and sensory disability, learning disorders or intellectual disability [18].

Particularly, DS activities could be useful and engaging to support the expressive abilities of children and young people with disabilities or SEN. One of the toughest difficulties of pupils with disabilities and SEN, indeed, concerns the ability to communicate. Communication impairments range from language disorders, inability to effectively implement non-verbal communication or difficulty expressing feelings and thoughts; they all generate negative emotions and interfere with learning and development (DSM-5, [19]).

Neurodevelopmental disorders, such as intellectual disorders or autism spectrum disorders, often pervasively affect children’s language learning and communication abilities; then, one of the main interventions’ purposes is to teach them effective expression strategies. In order to reach this goal, visual communication tools for Augmented Alternative Communication (ACC), such as PECS protocol (Picture Exchange Communication System), were developed, but also new technologies that empowered this communication system based on a solid Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) methodological framework [20]. In one study [21], researchers integrated the PECS communication system with a digital storytelling intervention for disabled children who suffer severe impairments in body and fine-grained movements and limited cognitive functions such as memory, problem-solving, attention, visual and language comprehension. The approach was applied in a real school context, where the benefits for disabled children were evident in positive emotional expression, linguistic and narrative capability improvement, moreover in autonomy and movement control, but also for classmates in social cohesion and a stronger sense of community.

One aspect that makes DS particularly suitable for pupils with disabilities or SEN is that it is a highly adaptable and flexible methodology; therefore, it allows the personalization of interventions and features of the tools used based on the needs, potential and competences of individuals. Having identified specific objectives, teachers and educators can organize storytelling activities and materials (visual, auditory, and more) so that each student can make the most of their personal resources. DS is also a cooperative learning tool, as it stimulates children with SEN to interact and collaborate with their peers to develop social and interpersonal skills, thus promoting true inclusion.

Certainly, to fully exploit the support of digital media for storytelling and involve vulnerable children in the development of expressive skills, it is important to customize the design and intervention based on the differences of each one. Botturi and colleagues [18] developed a model, the digital storytelling for development model (DSD), to support DS activities implementation in educational contexts for children with SEN.

3 Life Design Paradigm

Career transitions represent critical developmental tasks in adolescence and early adulthood [22]. In the present era, a new social arrangement of work poses a series of concerns and challenges in careers [23, 24].

Due to this unstable environment, the relationship between adolescents and career choices must be carefully rethought [25]. New barriers interrupt the linearity of career transitions, and adolescents have to cope with unpredictable career trajectories increasingly. Moreover, the career choices do not end at a given moment in life (i.e., school-to-work transition), but the number of career transitions that individuals must make in their lifetime has dramatically increased [26].

The transitions among educational systems are the crucial career decision-making moments [27, 28]. During these transitions, the quality of career decisions and the difficulties that the individual encounters play a central role. Transitions like this can promote indecision [29] and are defined as the most widespread vocational problem [30].

Furthermore, adolescents are currently thinking about their future in this continuously changing context. These environmental risk factors could inhibit the development of the future orientation in adolescents [31], leading to a lack of optimism and hope toward themselves and their future [31]. The negative feelings about their future possibilities could become obstacles to adolescents’ career development and restrict their future expectations [32].

Becoming prepared for a career is necessary to master career transitions [33]. Lifelong learning, counseling and life designing are needed to help individuals access sustainable careers [34]. In this sense, constructing a sustainable career requires a preventive perspective in guidance and career intervention.

Interventions should guarantee a positive orientation toward future vision promoting hope and optimism [35] and enhancing coping strategies.

Although traditionally career guidance followed the person-environment fit approach that aimed to assess people’s skills and interests for oriented the suitable job [36], from the end of the 20th century the Life Design (LD, [37, 38]) was the leading paradigm. The LD model for career intervention endorses that preventive career interventions with children and adolescents are helpful to prepare adolescents for their transition, increase their choice opportunities and decrease at-risk situations and social inequalities [37]. LD conceives career as a self-directed process: the adolescents through personal negotiation meaning in social interactions shape their life course. In this paradigm, adolescents are actively engaged in the career development process and enhance the needed skills that can lead them to successfully interact with their environment [24]. In the LD model, individuals are required to tell small stories. Storytelling allows to make the self and crystallizes what individuals think of themselves. Savickas argues that “the more stories they tell, the more clients develop their identities and careers” ([37], p.15). LD allows individuals with and without disabilities to aspire to an inclusive and sustainable future [39].

Students with disabilities and SEN, due to lack of targeted opportunities for reflection, expression and support in career and life choices, often develop feelings of anxiety and worry, motivational and cognitive beliefs that include a low sense of self-efficacy [40]. It is important to emphasize that people in disadvantaged conditions, such as disability, can become more self-determined, autonomous, satisfied with their life and able to make life choices if they are provided with adequate support [41]: it is, therefore, essential to create self-expression spaces to stimulate reflection and awareness on personal resources, desires, and expectations for their future life. Therefore, the storytelling and narrative approach are not limited to the creation of educational spaces for linguistic-narrative development: they are tools to increase the self-awareness of people with disabilities that aim to design a life path as autonomous and independent as possible.

To promote disabled persons career guidance, it is necessary to provide more opportunities for reflection and expression. Young people with disabilities, in an inclusive perspective, should be helped to recognize and focus on their resources and strengths and the skills and competences needed to identify life goals. In addition, they could be stimulated to talk about themselves in a positive way, as well as their peers, to support positive visions of themselves and the future, helping them to overcome the stigmatization of their disability, obstacles, and barriers to their positive personal and professional development [40].

4 Link Between Educational Digital Storytelling and Life Design

In an EDS, students are encouraged to express their life stories jointly using music, video, and recorded voice. In the life design paradigm, individuals are encouraged to write their life stories. Career stories are at the heart of storytelling. Storytelling has a transformative role in enhancing adolescents’ ability in making a clear statement of their identity and helps them express their future expectations. LD paradigm believes that adolescents give meaning to careers through stories creating a narrative identity [38].

Pordelan and colleagues [4] have integrated the use of DS in LD intervention. The authors refer to specific career counseling sessions, and the DS was used as one part of the LD protocol. The findings showed that the use of digital storytelling in the LD promotes students’ career decision-making.

No studies have proposed the use of DS in a school setting, defined as EDS, to support career guidance.

We believe that the EDS can be used as a tool to support students to consider and pursue a meaningful life based on their interests, talents and aspirations. Telling is a crucial ingredient of peoples’ attempts to construct, deconstruct, reconstruct, and co-construct their career-life stories [42]. Due to the nature of the reflective practice [43], EDS can be a tool for telling career stories. In this way, EDS may help students talk about their needs easily and relate their present as students and future and life trajectories [44, 45] and their agency to pursue their aspirations [45].

EDS is a flexible and adaptable tool. Consistent with Pordeland and colleagues [4], the novelty approach of digital storytelling in LD is that over the development process because the story can be modified, enhancing career self-efficacy. Through “career digital storytelling”, adolescents can express their own career identity in terms of life themes [37, 38] and the identifications of a career path. This capability allows them to face social, contextual, and career changes, interpreting them as opportunities.

Moreover, as an innovative and flexible tool, EDS could empower the orientation and career guidance process of students with SEN: EDS opens to different and creative ways of expression. The digital features of EDS, such as images, music, different presentation forms, allow a selection of those techniques that best suit each student. To view and show one story means narrating differently than through words. It means being able to listen to it several times and modify it, if necessary, in the process of continuous reflection and construction of oneself and one’s life story. Storytelling with images means understanding everything from a new point of view, and if it is a good exercise for all, vulnerable children could discover new strategies for naming emotions and ideas.

5 NEFELE Erasmus+ Project

Against this background, the NEFELE Erasmus+ project aims to develop an authoring tool that allows the creation of games for middle school pupils to support career choices.

This innovative tool allows students to experiment with themselves in different roles, opening to a positive future vision and enhancing planning and future orientation skills. The game, in this sense, is an elective tool for engaging learning, in which children in an authoring system will be able to construct their contents.

Alongside the tangibility of the real objects and multisensorial experience, the storytelling tool itself will allow adolescents to think about the future, encouraging meaning-making processes and enhancing a positive vision of the future characterized by hope and optimism.

Consistent with Maree [42], the school provides the adolescent with a much-needed holding environment. The ability to hold refers to enabling adolescents to make meaning in their careers. In line with this point of view, teachers in the school environment should allow adolescents to acknowledge and validate their narratives [46].

The authoring tool will be based on the Tangible User Interface paradigm. Tangible user interfaces (TUIs) is defined as user interfaces that allow the individual to interact with digital information through physical environments [47]. TUIs’ potential is to encourage exploratory and expressive activities to enhance learning [48], and there are several uses of TUI in educational settings [49, 50]. TUI paradigm has been used for storytelling. For example, Ryokai and Cassell [51] developed Storymat, a play carpet that can record and replay children’s stories to support children’s everyday narrative play. Instead, Shiva’s Rangoli [52] is an interactive and tangible storytelling installation that enables composing the emotional context of the stories by shaping the ambient settings (light, sound, music, and video). According to Gupta and colleagues [52], TUIs at the service of storytelling allows creating an emotional tone augmenting specific components like lights, sound, music to make them stand out more, aiding in narrative coherence.

TUIs have been widely used to stimulate learning for children with special needs (for example, [53, 54] and enhance participation, inclusion, and a sense of community in a classroom environment [55]. In this way, all students become constructive agents of their realities.

Thanks to the TUIs approach, NEFELE wants to guarantee laboratory activities for all children in the classrooms designed to create an environment that stimulates storytelling and design a sustainable and inclusive future for all. We believe that EDS can serve as a tool in educational systems to strengthen and foster the necessary skills as well as awareness of the choices available for oneself, to design and continuously improve a collective vision of multiple possible futures and ways of being both individually and collectively, to foster students’ optimism and hope about their future.

6 Conclusions

Adolescents career decision-making is required to go through a process of self-understanding, exploring an umbrella of career options with the aid of guidance and planning [56, 57]. Life design interventions in a lifelong paradigm are intended to support students in their career plans, helping them generate actions that promote sustainable careers and decent working conditions [34].

EDS, through the creation of a digital story, makes the creator think more deeply [58]. We believe that this process is helpful to enhance student career plans. As a tool for lifelong LD intervention, EDS is expected to foster students’ empowerment and fulfilment while tempering the impacts of fragmented career paths.

In conclusion, EDS brings old and new and has an adaptable, dynamic and inclusive nature. Therefore, it allows it to be an optimal tool to empower students to shape their future.