The Power of Digital Literacy to Transform and Shape Teacher Identities

In this chapter, the authors focus their attention on the case studies of three beginning teachers and their use of digital storytelling in their preservice education English Language Arts classes. They undertook this research to determine if preservice teachers who are exposed to new literacies and a multiliteracies pedagogy will use them in transformative ways. The authors examine their subsequent and transformed use of digital media with their own students in the classroom setting. One uses a digital story to reflect on past injustices. Another finds new spaces for expression in digital literacy. A third uses the affordances of digital media to raise critical awareness of a present global injustice with secondary school students. The authors explore their shifting perceptions of multiple literacies and critical media literacy and how these shifts in thinking help shape or transform their ideas about teaching and learning in English Language Arts.