Everybody's got a story: examining the building of empathy and understanding for the bully, the bullied, and the bystander through digital storytelling

Abstract

Digital storytelling as a pedagogical practice has been extensively explored as a means of increasing engagement, developing 21st century skills such as creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication, and refining digital literacies in students. However, there is a lack of data on how the use of multimodal digital tools can be used to explore pervasive social issues such as bullying in adolescents. In this study, a group of grade seven students provided their views and self-assessed their levels of empathy and understanding for victims of bullying, bullies and bystanders prior to and after the completion of a digital storytelling project. Using Likert scale data, along with an in-depth content analysis of the stories and presentations the students produced, the study explored whether participation in this digital storytelling project led to a noticeable and measurable impact on their understanding of and empathy for victims of bullying, bullies and bystanders.