Making Your Stories Work: Storytelling as a Democracy Hub in EFL Teacher Education

Project members: Bianca Roters (University of Education Ludwigsburg, Germany) & Dr. Saskia Schabio (University of Stuttgart)

In an era of rising global uncertainty, democratic education must go beyond fostering empathy—it must empower critical reflection, multilingual engagement, and social action. This project positions storytelling as a transformative practice in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher education, reimagining the classroom as a democracy hub within a cross-institutional Community of Practice.

Drawing on critical cosmopolitanism, civic education, and sustainability discourse, our approach integrates creative and digital storytelling, cognitive literary strategies, socio-emotional reflection, and sociolinguistic story mapping. Pre-service EFL teachers engage with global narratives, multimodal text analysis, and storytelling methods that ask for and challenge positionality, explore identity, and inspire action. From graphic novels to podcasting, from reflective journaling to digital showcases, participants design lessons and artifacts that promote social and environmental justice, stories of democracy and empathy. By embedding these practices in interdisciplinary collaboration and dialogic pedagogy, the project contributes to current research on Critical Cosmopolitan Citizenship, eco-cosmopolitanism, and the role of compassion in language education—inviting future educators to not only teach language, but also co-create spaces for democratic resilience and hope.

News
project presentation:

Symposium: Building a community of practice of critical cosmopolitan citizens with digital storytelling (together Dr. Helga Haudeck, Prof. Adriana L. Medina)