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

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.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Education and Digital Technologies

Grantor

University of Ontario Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Thompson, Stephanie

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Hughes, Janette

• Digital storytelling
• Bullying
• Engagement
• Digital literacies
• Empathy

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10155/422

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ontariotechu.scholaris.ca:10155/422