Digital storytelling with moral values

Investigating listening engagement in an EFL classroom using YouTube Kids

Abstract

This study explores how sixth-grade EFL students engaged with animated digital stories and interpreted moral values during classroom storytelling activities using YouTube Kids. A qualitative descriptive design was employed with 15 sixth-grade students in one public elementary school in Indonesia. Data were collected through classroom observations, student worksheets, and a reflection sheet. The data were analyzed using deductive coding based on the behavioral, emotional, and cognitive dimensions of student engagement, combined with inductive coding to identify patterns in students’ responses to moral values. The findings indicate three interconnected dimensions of engagement. Cognitive engagement was reflected in students’ efforts to follow story sequences, interpret characters’ actions and consequences, and connect story events with their own experiences. Emotional engagement appeared in students’ expressed feelings toward particular events and characters, including fear, surprise, sadness, relief, and enjoyment. Behavioral engagement was observed through attentiveness, pointing at the screen, raising hands, smiling and nodding, repeating phrases, and verbally responding during discussions. The reflection data also showed that students interpreted moral values in context rather than uniformly. In The Frightened Lion, students commonly identified ideas related to avoiding negative assumptions, checking situations before reacting, and thinking positively. In Snow White, students identified kindness, patience, generosity, and the avoidance of jealousy and arrogance, while some also emphasized responding to wrongdoing without returning the same wrongdoing. Several students connected these interpretations with personal experiences or intended actions. The findings provide qualitative evidence of multidimensional classroom engagement and students’ moral-value interpretation during digital storytelling activities. The study does not claim direct improvement in language proficiency or lasting behavioral change; rather, it highlights how animated stories can provide a context for observable participation, emotional responses, cognitive interpretation, and moral reflection in a young EFL classroom.