The use of short stories and theatrical practices in the training of future Primary Education teachers: an embodied literacy experience in higher education

Abstract

We collected a didactic proposal carried out within the framework of the subject “Desarrollo de
Habilidades Lingüísticas y su Didáctica en Educación Primaria” at the University of Seville. The objective was
to incorporate the story and theatrical practices as strategies to work on encouraging reading and linguistic
skills with future Primary Education teachers. Our starting hypothesis was that the students had little knowledge
of Children’s and Young People’s Literature, so we proposed to introduce it into the classroom through
short stories, also addressing its didactic possibilities of the short stories and the theatrical practices for the
development of linguistic skills through embodiment. In addition, we also sought to improve the classroom
climate and promote an optimal environment for cooperative work. Here we present the theoretical framework
of our proposal, the didactic intervention carried out and the analysis of the evolution of the skills and
competences of the students thanks to the completion of a questionnaire, for which we adopt a methodological
approach that combines quantitative and qualitative methods.