Peer-reviewed article
Supporting Literacy and Digital Literacy Development in Early Childhood Education Using Storytelling Activities
Irena Yolanita Maureen, Hans van der Meij, Ton de Jong ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study tested whether storytelling activities could help 5- to 6-year-old children in Indonesia develop literacy and digital literacy skills. Children in one group did traditional storytelling activities, another group did digital storytelling, and a control group had regular classroom literacy lessons. After 3 weeks, children who did digital storytelling showed significantly better literacy skills than the control group, and both storytelling groups showed improvements in digital literacy.
Key points
- Digital storytelling activities produced significant improvements in literacy skills compared to control
- Both traditional and digital storytelling enhanced digital literacy skills
- Study involved 45 children across three classes in an Indonesian public preschool
- The intervention was delivered over 3 weeks using Gagné's nine events of instructional design framework
- Authors note findings need replication with longer interventions and larger samples
Limitations
The intervention was brief (3 weeks) and involved a small sample from a single preschool in one location, limiting generalizability. The document does not provide detailed information about baseline equivalence between groups or effect sizes.
Abstract
Educators have increasingly adopted formalized approaches for teaching literacy skills in early childhood education. In line with an emergent critique of this approach, the present study investigated the design and effectiveness of a literacy intervention that blended Gagné’s nine events of instructional design with storytelling. Three classes in a public preschool in Indonesia participated in an experimental study involving 45 children, aged 5–6 years. Across 3 weeks, one experimental condition received storytelling activities and a second experimental condition received digital storytelling activities. The control condition received regular literacy classroom activities. Before, and after, the 3-week storytelling intervention, measures of literacy and digital literacy skills were administered to all groups. In the digital storytelling condition, children’s literacy skills increased significantly compared to children in the control condition. Other exploratory data analyses suggested that both types of storytelling activities enhanced digital literacy skills. The findings need to be replicated with an extended series of storytelling activities that involve larger groups of participants.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Storytelling activities (traditional and digital) integrated with Gagné's nine events of instructional design, delivered over 3 weeks
- Population
- 45 children aged 5-6 years in three classes at a public preschool in Indonesia
Key finding
Digital storytelling condition showed significantly increased literacy skills compared to control