Digital Storytelling in Education: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Digital Storytelling is one of the most recurrent art media used today to give a voice to invisible, silenced or marginalised groups. In this way, this methodology is framed within the cultural and educational sphere, and through a narrative approach it is capable of integrating multi-format resources that project information and stories of great richness from a hypermedia language. In fact, digital storytelling is occupying a priority role in identity studies in education. In this paper, we present a systematic review of the literature on digital storytelling in education. The methodological process was based on the PRISMA protocol. The results offer a qualitative and bibliographical synthesis of educational studies focused on digital storytelling. Firstly, there is a growing interest in the development of lines of research that focus on digital storytelling as a privileged vehicle for exploring digital stories. This is based on the premise of giving voice to the voiceless, a priority aspect in cultural, educational and social research. For this reason, throughout the systematic review we explored different research that decided to study these discourses from a democratic and participatory approach. Finally, we encourage future research to explore this new resource further.


Introduction
Digital storytelling has emerged as a powerful tool in recent years for research in social and educational settings (Jager et al. 2017;Robin 2008). As some authors (Cunsolo, Harper and Edge 2012) argue, digital storytelling is a processual method of illustrating personal narratives and stories using different digital media. As the same authors state, they are like "a mini-film told in the first person" (p. 132). In this sense, Digital Storytelling (DST, hereinafter) allows us, through the use of technology, to enter into the depths of the person, in the social and qualitative sense so necessary and sometimes forgotten. The DSTs are inserted in the biographical-narrative framework (Bolivar and Domingo 2019), but with a technological sense typical of the 21st century. Despite the current emphasis on the use of this type of multimedia research, digital stories have been used for decades. There are records of their use in the United States as early as the 1970s and 1980s, betting on the power of the personal voice to bring about social change (Center for Digital Storytelling 2005).
Storycenter, which began in 1994 under the leadership of Dana Atchley and Joe Lambert, focused on enhancing personal narrative for social and artistic purposes. DSTs help people find their own life stories and tell them in a personal and digital way expressing their feelings through images, music, stories, drawings, words or silences. It allows to give voice to the most vulnerable, those who have historically been silenced because of gender, ethnicity, race and culture, and thus achieve change towards social justice at individual, community and political levels (Cunsolowillox 2012).
Digital storytelling is a multipurpose methodology, its use in the field of qualitative research makes it an accurate methodology, combining digital and traditional media (Saritepeci 2020). At the same time, they become an effective tool to promote creativity and narrative skills of the person who makes them, while at the same time they become artistic representations with personal and group identity (Lambert and Hessler 2018). As stated by Niemi et al (2013), DST can create virtual learning environments by encouraging the use of web applications, mobile technology, social networks when used for learning in both formal and informal educational contexts.
The stories analyzed through DHT have been collected, as research shows, in multiple ways. On the one hand, through personal stories created by the participants themselves (Iseke 2011) in workshops, meetings, internet platforms, projects, focus groups or calls for proposals. On the other hand, through stories gathered from social networks (De Fina and Gore 2017). In the same way, the DSTs have been used to achieve different educational or social purposes, all of them biographical and focusing on the identity aspect of the person.
Digital storytelling is an emerging field that must be exploited in the social and educational field (Du Preez, Barnes and Thurner 2018). This fact encouraged us to carry out a systematic review of the international literature on digital storytelling in the educational field. Our research purpose was based on the identification of the most relevant findings that respond to the following research questions: Therefore, this article offers an international parenthesis of 26 articles indexed in the WOS, ERIC and Scopus databases in the last decade, which deal with digital storytelling in education. Below we describe the method used in detail. Afterwards, the research findings are presented, highlighting their bibliometric characteristics, the purposes of the articles analyzed and the main results. Finally, we discuss the results with research in the area and show the implications of the findings for professional practice.

Method
The present study is a systematic review of the literature (Gough 2013), whose purpose is to build a qualitative synthesis of the main points about the use of the Digital Storytelliling method in the educational field. To achieve the proposed objective and answer the research questions, a thematic exploration of the literature (Hallinger and Bryant 2013) was carried out on the one hand, identifying objectives, contexts and research designs. And on the other hand, emerging issues within the field of study were explored.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
For the appropriate selection of the literature, including a given time period, type of source and thematic appropriateness, a series of criteria were established for inclusion in our research, which are shown below. All documents that did not meet these inclusive requirements were discarded for analysis.
-All literature was selected from the result of the search equation (see table 1 -All the articles belonging to the temporary period 2011-2020 -Studies belonging to the research areas of social sciences and educational research were included.
-Studies on digital stories in relation to the educational field.
Definitively, we included those articles whose topics responded to our objective and research questions.

Search Strategy and Data Analysis
In order to establish a comprehensive search of the literature for SLR in the selected databases, keywords were selected from the ERIC thesaurus. After this selection, a comprehensive search of documents was carried out through a search equation in each of the databases. Once the search equation was established, the results were examined through the database filters. After this first filter, duplicate articles in the three databases were eliminated and a thematic evaluation was carried out through a peer review among the researchers (Sarthou 2016). This thematic analysis process was supported by qualitative analysis software (Nvivo). For this process of data selection and analysis, we followed a consensus protocol to improve the quality of systematic review research as outlined in the PRISMA Statement (Moher, Liberati, Tetzlaff and Altman 2009). The following is a flow chart showing the different phases of thematic research based on the PRISMA Protocol.

Results
The main findings in this systematic review are presented below. The following table summarizes the territorial distribution, methodological design, sample/participants in the research and main findings of the studies selected in our SRL. author is based on his own experience as a mediator and researcher of an applied theatre project.
with a majority African-American population, high rates of child poverty, school drop-out and crime.
stands as a "space of possibility" to: offer young people opportunities to reflect on and reconstruct complex notions of identity, culture and community; challenge the dichotomy between youth as consumers and youth as producers; build their own stories about themselves and their communities, to critique the systems of power that affect them (institutionalized racism, generational poverty and abusive policing) Arraiz et al (2020) Canada To discuss the use of digital story methodology as an inquiry into the queering of teacher education.
Filmmaking, group discussion and analysis Four queer women (two professors and two teacher candidates) Through the experience of DST the participants articulated a swimming pool that brought together the individual and collective voice. Through it, they explored their queer identities within the educational context and in the specific environment of their classes. A key finding was to verify "outness" as a common theme of the group, expressed through the sub-themes of vulnerability, compartmentalization, visibility and representation. The study concluded that the original story was embedded or "nested" in a meta-history in which the original narrator became an object of evaluation and analysis. The act of telling is evaluated in light of how accountable, credible and legitimate it was. The original story undergoes a series of transformations in which various linguistic and semiotic resources are brought into play.

Greece
To examine the potential of the In the example studied, the DST facilitated an experience where the cognitive and the affective were brought together, and thus the participants were able to share their stories, which in most cases spoke of family problems of abuse or absent parents. Gaeta et al (2015) Italy To present a new methodology to enrich the creation of stories related to museum objects. Experimental study, case study.

Not specified
The work proposes and validates a methodological approach to enrich the design of digital storytelling in museums. It proposes to implement a storytelling authoring system that recommends content for a specific visitor profile and generates experiences from digital artifacts. Gearty (2015)

Student teachers
The DST promotes anti-racist approaches in education by generating experiences of critical self-revelation that confront student teachers with their racist prejudices.

Spain
To present and study the personal digital story as a tool for students' reflection on their personal identity (Self).

Not specified
The reflective process on personal identity through the DST method is articulated in two moments. The first is the construction of the story by the student and the second is the reception of the story by the class. The process of creating the story involves the structuring of personal identity from a narrative and non-essentialist perspective, which allows the student to restructure his or her mental schemes and to live emotions in a vicarious way. Iseke (2011) Canada Three "at risk" youths.
The findings showed the interrelationship between a set of skills and the ability of young people to communicate a story

Discussion
The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review of the literature on Digital Storytelling-based research in the field of education. Digital storytelling has become a privileged vehicle for the study of the voices and narratives of participants under study (Lambert and Hessler 2018). The research that encompasses its objective with this type of resource is often aimed at investigating life experiences, critical incidents, or significant participant narratives (Hendry 2007). On other occasions, digital storytelling is used to improve educational skills such as language (Assaf and res.ccsenet.org Review of European Studies Vol. 13, No. 2;2021 22 O"Donnell 2019) or digital literacy (Aguilera and López 2020).
In relation to the first research question proposed, which refers to the bibliometric characteristics of the studies included, our findings show that this type of research is developed in different territories of the world, since as shown in the table of results, there is a wide variety of countries that make up this systematic review. At the same time, there is also a plurality of research methodologies in these studies. However, it is interesting to highlight the predominance of studies of a qualitative nature. This is in line with other research such as Denzin and Lincoln (2005) who indicate that in Digital Storytelling, the methodological nature of the studies is of a social and human nature, more qualitative. Another of the aspects to highlight would be that of the participants of this type of studies. Our review of the literature also analyzed this variable. On most occasions, the participants of the studies were groups that were not socially visualised, or were particularly vulnerable. In this sense, these findings are consistent with other studies such as Hendry (2007) or Ladson-Billings and Tate (2006) that indicate that Digital StoryTelling is an ideal resource for giving voice to the voiceless.
In order to answer the second research question, it should be noted that, as can be seen in the findings section, the purposes and main themes are varied, although with a common objective. This objective is based on the analysis of digital storytelling through the methodology of digital storytelling. The population groups are more varied, with university students, teenagers, queer collective, foreign students and even teachers. This coincides with research of this type, which always has as a priority objective the analysis of the discourse of groups or collectives of special interest.
The predominant presence of research that focuses on our object of study makes us reflect on the importance of this type of resource in an era with growing access to technology, as Robin (2008) points out. This is why experts in narrative research justify this incessant increase in studies with the emergence of a new future in qualitative research (Denzin and Lincoln 2008). Digital StoryTelling is therefore an opportunity to enhance narrative skills from a more up-to-date and digitized approach (Svoen, Dobson and Bjorge 2019).
However, as it is a new and short method, there are some limitations such as the difficulty of access to technological resources or the inadequate competition for the creation and/or edition of digital material. In addition, this type of methodology sometimes implies excessive public and intimate exposure, since these digital storytelling can be reproduced in scenarios within the reach of a large audience (Fine et al., 2003).
As we commented before, digital storytelling can be used to give voice to silenced groups, however, can it be that by making their situations/circumstances visible, social/cultural stereotypes about them are further perpetuated?
Another aspect to highlight is the great importance of ethical issues in the articles included. Vulnerable young people, indigenous populations, immigrants or rufugees are some of the main groups involved. As highlighted by authors such as Sitter, Beausoleil and McGowan (2020), the information dealt with in this type of research is of a delicate nature. For this reason, its treatment and analysis must be based on ethical and moral principles and values. Wexler, Eglinton and Gubrium (2014) emphasize that it is important to be extremely careful in the process of preparing digital storytelling and propose a procedure for verifying informants. Also, that this may be impossible without real involvement and commitment on the part of both the researcher and the researchee. Some of the suggestions that we propose to take care of ethics in this type of research are to guarantee the respect of the participants through a report with all the detailed methodological process and requesting their consent to participate in our study. At the same time, provide participants with the possibility of their anonymity, using an external narrator and/or metaphorical images that hide their visual appearance.
In line with objective three, future research and educational implications could address their studies through Digital Storytelling. We consider that despite the great body of studies consolidated at present, there are still various horizons that could be investigated by encouraging the active and visual participation of those groups of social and scientific interest. This type of methodology has become one of the most adapted ways to contextualize social research (de Jager et al., 2017). The truth is that, as Martin et al. (2019) argue, despite its growth, there is still a need for studies that serve to empower traditionally discriminated groups, such as women. We also consider very pertinent studies that reflect in a didactic way the process of construction of this type of research, and didactic materials that help researchers and scholars to make use of digital resources for the creation of this type of narratives.

Concluding Remarks
Using Digital Storytelling is a novel and creative experience to capture stories of interest to the scientific community. Through digital storytelling it is possible to make visible the invisible, real the traditionally hidden, and necessary the unfortunately undervalued. In a digitized era, new technologies are gaining strength. Researching the human side has lost value in a society based on parameters and standards. We believe that Digital Storytelling demonstrates how research can be done on social and cultural aspects from a more digital approach, but without losing the true essence, personal and group identity.
Educational systems increasingly have digital and technological resources in their school curricula. In addition to being a research method, Digital Storytelling has another main purpose, and that is the promotion of language skills and abilities. Therefore, this type of resource can be a facilitator to connect students with the value of narrative and audiovisual media.
Digital storytelling can also be conceived as artistic elements and samples of collective identity. These could be considered as very powerful visual and corporal expressions although it is important to emphasize that sometimes they can take other forms of participation like comments and post in social networks. We encourage future researchers to embark on this type of narrative and innovate in other forms of expression to relate life experiences within this framework.

-Implications for professional practice and future lines of research
This study can be useful for developing a series of didactic and pedagogical guidelines for students and professionals in the field of education. In this way, gathering a synthesis of the studies that have used digital storytelling in their research can be very useful for extracting comprehensive keys and future guidelines in the elaboration of similar scientific production.
On the other hand, digital storytelling aims to analyse digital narrative from different approaches but always from a virtualised scenario. Encouraging future researchers to reconvert their field of study towards new digital horizons could be an interesting option. At the same time, in an increasingly digitalised world, this methodology could be considered as a potential in moments of confinement such as the last one that occurred during the COVID-19 crisis.
As implications for future professional educational practice, we believe that teachers should consider this type of resource in their classrooms and conceive of it as a way to empower the voice of their students, making them protagonists of their learning history. One of the principles to make learning meaningful is to capture the attention and motivation of the students. Digital Storytelling could be a way to engage students in their own learning process. Undoubtedly, placing them in the "camera lens" could be a good option to involve them in educational activities that take place in the classroom. Finally, we conclude by highlighting the essence of critical feeling that this type of methodology develops, in a world that increasingly requires reflective and empathetic individuals.
Otto, D. (2018). Using virtual mobility and digital storytelling in blended learning: analysing students" experiences.