This article presents a pedagogical project developed within a university course in Social Pedagogy involving one hundred students of all genders. Participants were invited to write and read their own coming-of-age narratives (Bildungsroman), reflecting on formativeexperiences emerging from formal, non-formal, and informal learning contexts. The educational design combined three interconnected phases: autobiographical writing, individual silent reading aimed at fostering critical self-reflection, and dialogic sharedreading focused on reciprocal feedback and collective meaning-making. The impact of the project was assessed through a structured questionnaire exploring dimensions of self-awareness, reflexivity, and professional identity development. Findings suggest that the integration of individual narrative work and collaborative dialogue promoted multidimensional learning processes, strengthening participants’ capacity to connect personal educational trajectories with future professional aspirations. The study highlights the pedagogical value of autobiographical and dialogic practices in supporting identity construction and reflective learning in higher education.
Traditional creative writing instruction in secondary education is often characterized by a product-oriented, teacher-centered approach in which assessment emphasizes conformity to instructor-defined standards. Such practices may limit students’ opportunities for meaningful engagement, peer interaction, and the development of an independent authorial voice. This study examined the effects of dialogic pedagogy on the creative writing performance and writing self-efficacy of Senior High School learners, with additional focus on narrative agency and writing experiences. A mixed-methods explanatory sequential design was employed. A 12-week instructional intervention was conducted with 120 Grade 12 Humanities and Social Sciences (HUMSS) students across two intact classroom sections assigned to experimental and control groups. Quantitative data were collected through pre-test and post-test assessments using an analytical creative writing rubric and the Creative Writing Self-Efficacy Scale (CWSES), while qualitative data were obtained from focus group discussions and reflective journals. Results revealed that students in the experimental group significantly outperformed those in the control group in both creative writing performance and self-efficacy (p < .001), with notable gains in narrative voice, structural risk-taking, and metacognitive task monitoring. Qualitative findings indicated that dialogic pedagogy fostered a more interactive and supportive learning environment, reduced writing anxiety, enhanced narrative agency, and promoted active engagement in peer feedback and collaborative meaning-making. Overall, the findings suggest that dialogic pedagogy can transform creative writing instruction into a more participatory and process-oriented learning environment that supports student agency, confidence, and expressive development.
This phenomenological study aimed to describe the essential structures of learning motivation as experienced by elementary students during reading and writing activities. Employing Moustakas’s transcendental phenomenological approach, the study involved 18 first- through third-grade students from three public elementary schools. Data were collected through semi-structured phenomenological interviews, participant observations, stimulated recall using video recordings, and document collection including reading logs and writing journals. Analysis followed the modified Stevick-Colizzi-Keen method, yielding four invariant themes that constitute the essential structure of motivated literacy experience: the felt sense of competence as embodied satisfaction, the social visibility of literacy achievement, the perceived meaningfulness of the literacy task itself, and the temporal flow of engaged versus disengaged states. The findings reveal that learning motivation in early literacy is not a stable internal trait but a dynamic, context-sensitive intentional relationship between the child and the act of reading or writing. Motivation emerges from a self-reinforcing cycle in which successful performance produces embodied competence, competence becomes socially visible, the task is perceived as meaningful, and temporal awareness recedes, allowing absorption in the activity. The absence of any component disrupts the cycle, producing disengagement. The study contributes a phenomenological grounding to self-determination theory and offers practical implications for literacy instruction that supports children’s embodied, social, and temporal experiences of motivation.
This article presents a classroom‐based instructional cycle designed to support university‐level EFL learners in developing narrative writing through a targeted focus on orientation—the discourse component that situates a narrative in time, place, and character. Grounded in Labov's narrative framework and sociocultural theories of learning, the cycle integrates explicit instruction, peer evaluation, and guided reflection to support discourse‐level organization. Students first completed a narrative retelling task based on a short silent film; initial drafts frequently began with action, often omitting essential orientation elements. A mini‐lecture, model texts, and peer‐led discussion then guided learners in noticing and revising their use of orientation. In a subsequent task, students applied an analytic rubric to evaluate peer writing and compared their assessments with instructor ratings, promoting metacognitive engagement and deeper awareness of how orientation shapes reader interpretation. Post‐instruction writing illustrated students' increasing attention to contextually grounded narrative openings, while student reflections indicated increased attention to audience and narrative clarity. Overall, the study offers a practical, classroom‐tested model that positions orientation as a teachable discourse‐level feature and illustrates how process‐based, socially mediated instruction can foster genre awareness and reader‐oriented writing in EFL contexts.
This article presents an innovative pedagogical experience in university-level Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) education that integrates narrative reading and cooperative audiovisual production. The study explores how cooperative audiovisual production and multimodal storytelling may contribute to the development of linguistic competence, learner motivation, and intercultural engagement in CFL learning contexts.Implemented over three academic years (2022–2025) at the Complutense University of Madrid, the project combined the reading of Chinese short stories with the cooperative creation of audiovisual narratives inspired by those texts. A longitudinal mixed-methods design was adopted, integrating quantitative data from evaluation rubrics and student questionnaires with qualitative evidence derived from classroom observations, reflective journals, and content analysis.The findings suggest that cooperative audiovisual production may support the development of pronunciation, narrative organization, learner motivation, and creative participation, while also fostering symbolic and intercultural reflection through collaborative meaning-making. The results further highlight the importance of teacher mediation in sustaining group cohesion, creative autonomy, and pedagogical continuity throughout the production process.The study concludes that integrating audiovisual storytelling into CFL instruction may contribute to more participatory, multimodal, and culturally situated language learning experiences. At the same time, the exploratory nature of the study and the limited sample size invite cautious interpretation and point to the need for further research across diverse educational contexts.
The pedagogical efficacy of children’s stories within the classroom is fundamentally contingent upon critical teacher mediation, thereby transcending the traditional perspective that may regard them merely as a source of entertainment. The primary objective of this research is to analyse the impact of stories focused on social and civic values on a group of four- to five-year-old children. To achieve this, we employed a qualitative methodology and data collection techniques, such as the teacher’s reflective diary (documenting each session), semi-structured interviews with two participating teachers, unfinished stories created by the lead teacher to encourage co-construction, transcripts of children’s responses to ethical dilemmas during assemblies, and creative productions such as drawings and collaboratively composed story endings. The findings revealed that even an unhappy story can provoke meaningful reflection, encourage the proposal of alternatives, and foster prosocial attitudes and emotional well-being in children. Additionally, our study observed that situations involving conflict, play, and experimentation became powerful opportunities to promote learning in cooperation, environmental awareness, equality, diversity, and the exercise of rights and responsibilities.