Abstract:

This study aims to examine the emotions experienced by gifted students in robotics lessons through a digital storytelling (DST) workshop and the role of their interactions with teachers in these emotional experiences. The study group consisted of 12 gifted secondary school students, 5 girls and 7 boys, who attended the Science and Art Center and took the Information Technologies (IT) course. The DST workshop was conducted adopting the workshop process steps developed by the StoryCenter. These non-hierarchical steps can be listed as follows: sharing personal narratives in a story circle; writing stories, recording voices, collecting visuals, creating a digital story in video format by combining voice and visuals, and screening digital stories within the group. Each participant produced their own individual digital story about their experiences and emotions in robotics lessons. Researchers acted as facilitators in the DST process. One of the researchers is the IT teacher of the class. In this process, data were collected through audio recordings from the story circle stage of the DST workshop, students' story texts, digital stories, observation notes during the DST workshop process, and a semi-structured focus group interview after the in-group screening of digital stories. Content analysis was employed to examine the data. The analysis revealed that students experienced more joy, happiness, fun, love, pleasure, liking, curiosity, excitement, and additionally pride, enthusiasm, achievement, trust, and astonishment in robotics classes. When examining the interactions students had with their teachers related to these emotions, it was found that “teachers being supportive when students needed but also letting them free,” “not being repetitive,” “trusting their students,” and the students “seeing their teachers as experts” were mentioned as reasons why they experienced these emotions. Additionally, in the analysis of participant observer notes during the DST process, it was found that The DST workshop facilitated the expression of emotions. Two conclusions have been drawn from this study. First of all, the findings regarding the emotions of gifted students in their robotics lessons and their interactions with teachers obtained in this DST workshop can be considered in instructional design processes. Secondly, DST workshops can be used as a tool to reveal emotional sharing in students' learning-teaching processes in various classes.

Keywords:

Digital storytelling, emotions, teacher interactions, robotics lessons, gifted students.