Young twins’ journey via digital storytelling towards multi-literacy development

Digital Storytelling (DST) employs digital technology to enhance traditional storytelling by incorporating digital elements such as graphics, audio, video, and music. This study, grounded in sociocultural theory (SCT) and constructivism, investigated how DST contributes to and facilitates multi-literacy development and language skills among young students by leveraging cutting-edge technology. To achieve this, a narrative inquiry approach was utilised to provide insight into the lived experiences and emotions of 13-year-old twin participants. The observations, semi-structured interviews, and think-aloud protocols were used to collect data as the participants narrated their digital stories (DSs). Using thematic analysis, this study employed an inductive bottom-up coding strategy to comprehend the phenomenon by reducing and reconstructing the data into codes and categories. The findings revealed that DST can contribute to linguistic or non-linguistic skills, including multiple literacies, English language proficiency, diverse learning strategies, and social skills. In addition to demonstrating the instructional benefits of using DST, certain limitations were also identified. The implications of this study for instructors, researchers, and young students are discussed.