Pedagogical narrative strategies in the teaching and learning of oral and written expression in high school students

Abstract

Objective: To estimate the adjusted effect of a pedagogical intervention based on narrative strategies on oral and written expression among Ecuadorian high school students.Method: A quantitative quasi-experimental pretest-posttest study with an intervention group and a comparison group was conducted with 160 students (80 per condition) distributed across 10 pre-existing class groups (approximately 16 students per classroom). The pedagogical sequence lasted four consecutive weeks and incorporated reading and listening to stories, sequencing, organization of ideas, oral production, narrative writing, and revision. The analytical instrument contained 12 Likert-type items; I01-I06 assessed exposure to pedagogical narrative strategies and I07-I12 assessed oral and written expression. Content validity reached Aiken’s V = 0.833. Internal consistency for I07-I12 was α = 0.783 at pretest and α = 0.855 at posttest. The main analysis used a multilevel ANCOVA, with posttest I07-I12 scores as the outcome, pretest I07-I12 scores as the covariate, group as the predictor, a random intercept for class group, and cluster-robust standard errors.Results: Adjusted for baseline performance, the intervention group obtained a net advantage of 2.547 points over the comparison group (β1 = 2.547; robust SE = 0.817; p = 0.0018). The pretest covariate was positively associated with posttest performance (β2 = 0.568). The intraclass correlation was ICC = 0.287, indicating that 28.7% of the variance was associated with class-group clustering.Conclusion: The narrative intervention was associated with significantly higher adjusted posttest oral and written expression scores. The quasi-experimental design and the non-random individual assignment require cautious causal interpretation.