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Learning values through moral stories
40
LEARNING VALUES THROUGH MORAL STORIES USING A STORYBOARD
Geraldine De Mello; Nalini Arumugam; Hoo Fang Jing
Mohd Amin Bin Mohd Noh
geraldine@melaka.uitm.edu.my
ABSTRACT
Moral stories serve as a useful platform to educate listeners, especially young children. It is
an idyllic medium through which children can be taught valuable lessons about life because
the engaging narratives captivate even young children‘s attention. This study investigated
the effect of narrating moral stories using storyboard on students in two primary schools. 57
children aged 7 participated in this qualitative study for four weeks. Observations and semi-
structured interviews were carried out to elicit information. The results indicated that moral
stories using storybord was an effective tool in primary schools. The results also revealed
that children attempted internalizing values demonstrated by the characters and learnt to
discriminate between praise and detested values practiced by people and environment.
Value-based stories help students to raise their self-esteem and take greater responsibility
for their own behaviour and learning. Overall, it enables pupils to examine the kind of life that
is worth living and to consider what kind of life they want for themselves. Moral stories also
inspired children to choose their own positive personal, moral and values like good
mannerism and to take greater responsibility for their own behaviour especially using a
storyboard, an excellent tool as the children. Furthermore, narrating moral stories via
storyboard motivated children to listen and understand stories in a more fun-filled manner.
Key words: values, stories, fun- filled learning, storyboard, experiential learning
Introduction
Literature claims that value based stories are an extremely useful tool in character education
because stories form mental images in children's minds. Children learn much better from
pictures than from precepts; they learn much better from examples than from teachings.
Therefore, stories help transmit proper values. According to Manjari and Mei-Yu (2002)
children need to be taught what is right, and value based stories do this teaching in a
pleasurable way. These stories also allow for frequent repetition of values that educators try
to teach. In order to be learnt, moral values need to be taught over and over again. Stories
allow that to happen without boring children.
Cooper (2007) suggested that the use of moral stories will enhance young children‘s moral
development. Moral stories create opportunities for children to learn meaningful lessons as
well as in achieving broader learning, where they can show compassion and empathy to one
another and at the same time be part of a community, creating positive change
(Baumgartner & Buchanan, 2010). It is clear that the narration of moral stories is an
effective approach to inculcate values among children. Therefore, teachers should
intentionally address children‘s development the moral aspect
Learning values through moral stories
41
Molenda and Bhavnagri (2009) revealed that moral stories entrench virtues and enhance
good values among children such as helping, sharing workload, tolerating one‘s weakness
and exchanging information. Parallel to this, they found children demonstrating the same
values learned from the stories. Kelly (2008) claimed that using moral stories is an effective
way to introduce values among young children. He also stressed that it is plausible if realistic
and practical images depicting good deeds with children.
Hsiu-Chih (2008) investigated ten teachers who used English picture stories in Taiwan and
revealed that young students benefited linguistic value and the value of the story. A pattern
of how the teachers presented the books also emerged from the data: the majority of the
teachers perceived themselves as a mediator whose job was not to transmit the meaning of
the book to the students, but to encourage participation and interaction. Meanwhile
Oxenberg (2008) studied the effects of using character education lessons to reduce negative
behaviours and increase positive behaviours among fourteen (14) students. It is therefore,
important to use moral stories to instil values among children.
It is necessary for teachers to use divergent approaches to actively engage students in the
learning process (AMLE, 2010). However, teachers are still looking out for an interesting
method of instruction that can cater to the needs of the young learners and of developing
strategies to integrate the methods into the curriculum. Research has shown the potential of
ICT to enhance the learning opportunities that young children have during their early
(preschool and lower primary) education. One way to exploit the potential of ICT is by
integrating technology into the curricula and everyday classroom activities. For instance,
using technology to support academic and classroom activities like creating stories using
storyboard to illustrate a story would enable young learners to visualise the story plot in a
realistic setting (Zuniga-Dunlap & Marino-Weisman, 2006).
Many, especially young learners with very limited language skills, find it a great challenge to
understand different types of texts. Storyboarding as a type of reading activity could help
learners to understand and visualise the plot of the stories. This visualisation helps to
organise their ideas and gives a clear picture of the whole story (Doherty & Coggeshall,
2005). Storyboarding unifies what some other techniques separate. It also allows for the
expression of thought-and-feeling responses.
Moral stories serve as a useful platform to educate listeners, especially young children. It is
an idyllic medium through which children can be taught valuable lessons about life because
the engaging narratives captivate even young children‘s attention. It is for this reason that
stories have been told for generations and continue to be used throughout the world today to
teach children moral values, such as honesty. From an early age, children are exposed to an
abundance of traditional stories and fables that serve as a means of socialization and a tool
for conveying values (Henderson & May, 2005; Kim, Green, & Klein, 2006). Yet the effect of
these stories on children‘s actual behaviour remains largely unexplored. Thus, this study
aims to answer the following question:
What is the effect of moral stories in developing moral values among primary school
children?
Learning values through moral stories
42
Methodology
This study aims to indicate that value based stories could help the learners enhance their
good characteristics and values to practise in their daily routines. In this study, a team of four
experts were formed. These experts comprise experienced lecturers from the English
language department and Faculty of Arts and designs from a public university in Malaysia.
Original stories were written by these experts. The visuals were also created and drawn by
the team. The study was carried over a duration of a month. Two public primary schools
from Alor Gajah were selected to participate in this study. These schools were selected
randomly to investigate the effectiveness of using moral stories using storyboard to instil
values among the young children. From School One (S1) 25 children and from School Two
(S2) 32 primary one children were selected. They were of different cultural and socio-
economic background. The selection of classes and teachers to be observed and
interviewed were assigned by the school headmasters. The selected teacher respondent
(TR) arranged a schedule that included thirty minute observational time in classrooms and
20-30 minute interviews.
Four different moral stories were used in this study. Namely; ‗A Monkey and Its Master‘, ‗A
Baby Donkey‘, ‗Be Grateful for What You Have‘ and ‗Twin Sisters‘. The stories were given to
the class teachers. The TRs narrated the stories using storyboard. Researchers observed all
four sessions. Every session during which one story was narrated lasted for 1 hour. Video
recording and photographs were taken as part of observation. After all the four stories were
narrated and discussed, the researchers interviewed the TRs to elicit the effectiveness of the
stories in changing the children‘s behaviours and attitudes. Direct observation was used in
this study. The activities conducted, behaviour and physical aspects were documented.
Theoretical Foundations
Vygotsky‘s Sociocultural Theory (1978) posits that learning takes place when people interact
socially. Vygotsky argues that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development
of children‘s cognition. He suggests that ―education is realised through the student‘s own
experience, which is wholly determined by the environment, and the role of the teacher then
reduces to directing and guiding the environment‖ (Vygotsky, 1987, p.xxiii). He claims that
Storyboard
(Value based stories)
these features facilitate knowledge acquisition through modelling and environment. Thus, by
putting together Vygotsky‘s arguments that learning is a social enterprise, children must be
surrounded with lots of good role models to enhance their personal attributes and it is
believed that this can be achieved through moral stories. The stories will expose and
familiarise children with good values which will later become a platform for their future
character building. Young learners are able to internalise virtues demonstrated by the
Sociocultural
Theory
Vygotsky (1978)
Second
Language
Acquisition
Learning values through moral stories
43
characters and learn to discriminate between praises and detested values by people and
environment. Therefore, using storyboard to instil good values will be easy for young
learners to internalise the optimistic values and characteristics.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Stories are an ideal tool in learning values as they guide us through our life. Stories can
attract children‘s attention, because they provide challenging topics based on their everyday
interests such as love, respect and good behaviour. They also provide a huge space for
fantasy. Children have an amazing ability to absorb values illustrated by the characters in
the stories. TRs narrated the stories to children emphasising on the good traits
demonstrated by characters. First, the teachers introduced the story. Then they showed the
pictures to make connections between the printed text and the illustrations. All the stories
were written and illustrated on storyboard (AMLE, 2010; Zuniga-Dunlap & Marino-Weisman,
2006).
Children can also recognise moral and ethical dilemmas by observing the behaviour of the
characters in a story. Value based stories are the platform for teachers to train children to
discriminate between right and wrong, their ability to think critically about how their actions
affect the well-being of others, and their expression of values such as caring, respect for
others, and responsibility. This was also emphasised by Koc and Buzzeli (2004) who felt
that value based stories are a useful tool in children's moral development. Thus, it is
evident that young children can be taught moral values through moral stories. It not only
encouraged TRs to actually evoke mental stimulation of children but also enhanced imbibing
values among children. When children identified the moral values demonstrated by
characters in the stories, they were seen to practise the values depicted by the characters in
the stories narrated by TRs. The children were influenced by the good main characters and
were able to rise above their own negative traits or weaknesses and overcome personal
challenges and problems.
It was observed that the storyboard with colourful illustrations made the lessons interesting
and fun and motivated the children to participate in classroom activities like drawing the most
liked character and identify the reasons for liking the character. In this activity, the children
were able to relate all suitable traits with their chosen character. It is remarkable that all
children liked the good character and none of them preferred the villainous character. It
reveals that though they are young children they are able to discriminate between good and
bad values. They also identified with characters who were morally good.
When interviewed, the TRs felt that value based stories in the classroom would lead to
open up an avenue to learn good values and could establish a confidence among the
children. The TRs responded in their structured interviews that reading stories was a very
useful strategy for teaching the good values to children. This ensured teachers to observe
that the learning process and imbibing of values have taken place among children. The
teachers also hoped to enforce such learned values to encourage children to progress not
only in instilling good values but also learning the language in a fun filled manner.
The impact of the valued based stories in promoting good behaviour and respecting elders‘
among primary children was seen clearly. As we expected, results showed that hearing ‗A
Learning values through moral stories
44
Monkey and Its Master‘ and ‗A Baby Donkey‘ succeeded to significantly increase children‘s
tendency to be obedient in class and listen to elders especially their parents and teachers.
This is evident in Excerpt 1.
Excerpt 1: S1 (A Monkey and Its Master)
Teacher 1
Do you like the story?
Learner 1
Yes…. (She took the book ……and showed it to the
teacher)
Teacher 1
Why do you like it?
Learner 2
I like the pictures. Very beautiful
Learner 3
Teacher, teacher I like ….. because she is very good. My
mother says that we must be polite. Can‘t talk rude to
people.
As for S2 too, the children liked good characters only. When TR2 asked, ‗Do you like the
Monkey?‘, ‗Will you be naughty like the Monkey?‘; all the children chorused, ‗No Teacher..
the monkey didn‘t listen to its master.‘ Then the children added that they would listen to
their teacher. They would be good students. The children became more receptive and also
researchers noted that when someone goes a little mischievous, their friends correcting
them and advising too.
Likewise, stories entitled ‗Be Grateful for What You Have‘ and ‗A Baby Donkey‘ created
awareness among children to be happy with what they have and not to tease their friends
about their weaknesses and physical appearance. In the story ‗Be Grateful For What You
Have‘ the main character Rita was criticised by her school friends but they regretted their
attitudes after hearing her experiences of taking care of her five siblings, juggling between
her family commitment and school work whereby she could not afford to beautify herself.
The TRs shared that all children stopped calling their friends names and nick names and
criticising them. They tried to be happy with what they had and appreciated that GOD has
given them a good life and loving parents. However, TR2 said, ― After a while they forgot
that they should not looking down on others and some of them started their usual habit of
calling their friends names.‖ She added that the children need continuous reinforcement
until the values are integrated. It should not be taught individually. It is noteworthy; the
children continued their good mannerism in being obedient and respectful to teachers in the
class.
One factor contributing to the effectiveness of ‗A Monkey and Its Master‘ and ‗A Baby
Donkey‘, is emphasising on the positivity of being obedient and respectful. When the main
character in the stories illustrated the negative consequence of being disobedient, the
obedience-promoting effect was demonstrated by all children. The key elements of ‗A
Monkey and Its Master‘ and ‗A Baby Donkey‘ include the fact that it makes salient to children
the principles of obedience and the reward and compliments for being obedient to teachers
and elders, and it suggests appropriate behaviour after one transgress. As for the ‗Twin
Sisters‘ Jill was very polite and welcomed the visitor humbly and lovingly. Jill was praised for
her good conduct and she received approval from her father after engaging in such
appropriate behaviour (i.e., Please come in Sir, Welcome to our home, Please take your
seat, Father, there is a guest to see you, Jill carried a chair for the farmer), which is a
Learning values through moral stories
45
consequence that may be particularly striking to young children who typically wish to please
adults (Bandura, 1986).
Notably, the messages like respect elders and environment is important to shape one‘s
character conveyed by ―The Twin Sisters‖ and ―A Monkey and Its Master‘ are similar to many
of the characteristics associated with empathic inductive-parenting methods, which are
positively correlated with children‘s compliance and pro-social behaviours and negatively
correlated with their rule violations (Carlo, McGinley, & Hayes, 2007). It should be noted,
however, that the negative characteristics showed by some characters like Baby Donkey
trying to imitate was imitated by some children as a ‗joke‘.
The TRs also felt that using moral stories in the classroom was essential for a productive
learning process. Moral stories had helped them to improve their soft skills as claimed by
Molenda and Bhavnagri (2009) and Kelly (2009). They claimed that moral value based
stories enhance children to practise good values such as helping, sharing workload,
tolerating one‘s weakness and willing to share information.
It was observed that the confidence level of the children in the classroom in terms of
discussing and highlighting the values and admirable characteristics was very high. Visual
illustrations via storyboard have helped the respondents to improve their understanding of
the stories and use the values outside the classroom too. Besides, it also helped the TRs to
contextualise the new language, and students could get meaning easily and understand the
use and functions of the language.
CONCLUSION
Students have an amazing ability to absorb values when activities are familiar and enjoyable
to them. Stories were an ideal tool to utilise in learning the values as they were the central
axes of the whole process. Moral stories made the children's learning more interesting,
amusing and memorable.
The TRs found storyboard a powerful tool to help children understand the storyline though
the learners had limited competence in the language. The illustrations made reading and
understanding the stories easier and enabled them to understand the whole plot of stories.
The use of storyboards had a much more positive impact on the students as they could have
the opportunity to increase their knowledge of technology and augment their motivation.
Also, our study assessed only the immediate effect of value based stories on children‘s
obedience and being respectful. The results of the country reading benchmarks were taken
into consideration in order to see if the use of moral stories via storyboards resulted in not
only inculcating values in children but also allowed the students to transfer the skills they
learned and apply them in their daily life. As children discuss the problems with TRs and
peers, they work out their differences; develop their conceptions of what is fair and just.
Through this project the TRs could reflect on their practice, be aware of what works or does
not work when teaching the language, as well as discuss, analyze and find ways to create
better lessons to shape good students. Hence, instilling values and shaping good
characters will be easier through stories. One general implication of our finding is that
Learning values through moral stories
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highlighting pro-social values may have beneficial effects on young children‘s moral
behaviour.
Recommendation
Clearly, researchers need to explore more respondents to enhance values in daily life
further. Likewise, it would be plausible to apply this research study for a longer period of
time. Future research needs to explore whether telling children such value based stories
can have lasting effects on their good behaviours.
Learning values through moral stories
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