Pedagogical Design of Digital Storytelling in Language Learning: Narrative Construction, Scaffolding, And Multimodal Composition

Digital Storytelling (DST) brings together language use, story development, and meaning making through a range of digital resources. The diversity of DST practices suggests a need to explain more clearly how narrative construction, scaffolding, and multimodal composition are connected within language learning. This study used a Systematic Literature Review, with search and selection procedures reported according to PRISMA 2020 and PRISMA-S. Searches were conducted in Scopus and ERIC for English-language empirical journal articles published between 2016 and 2025. Thirty-four full-text articles met the inclusion criteria and were examined through deductive–inductive coding and methodological appraisal using the 2018 Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT). The findings show that narrative construction shapes story content and communicative purpose, scaffolding supports story development and revision, and multimodal composition enables narrative ideas to be represented and, in some cases, reconsidered. These three dimensions interact iteratively through storyboarding, collaboration, feedback, transmediation, revision, publication, and reflection. Their configuration varies across educational levels, language contexts, task structures, collaborative arrangements, and technological environments. Synthesis produces a relational conceptual framework and seven propositions derived from recurring patterns across literature. Together, they explain recurring pedagogical processes in DST without prescribing a fixed instructional sequence or claiming an empirically validated learning model.