Self-Efficacy in Multimodal Narrative Educational Activities: Explorative Study in a Multicultural and Multilingual Italian Primary School

Abstract

The international migration changed the situation in the Italian school system: it is asked to update educational practices with new pedagogical models of narration and expression (multiliteracies and multimodality) and to promote digital skills from childhood. Self-efficacy, more than the actual performance, influences the will to try again and not give up. Few studies are available on how narrative self-efficacy affects expressive development, especially in school contexts characterized by multilingualism and multiculturalism. This exploratory survey aims to investigate the narrative self-efficacy of eighteen 8-year-old children attending primary school, with a significant presence of international migrant children (two out of three). For three months, these students were involved in multimodal narrative learning activities through gestural/mime languages (theatre), visual languages (drawings), verbal languages (oral and written) and digital languages (digital video narration). The research questions were: (1) Does the multimodal workshop influence the self-efficacy beliefs of the narrative skills perceived by Italian students (L1) and international migrant students (L2)? (2) Does the most influence come from the mime/gestural, the digital video or the entire multimodal narrative activities? (3) In which aspects of the narrative is the self-efficacy most influenced by the multimodal workshop for L1 and L2 groups?