The critical dialogical method in Educommunication to develop narrative thinking

In the conceptualization of Educommunication, progress must be made towards the integration of its two great perspectives. Encouraging critical dialogue is a goal shared by both, so it is necessary to delve into its educational properties, methods and functions. A training model in Educommunication that has been tested through empirical research is presented. For two weeks, 246 children between six and eleven years old, attended training sessions with two types of audiovisual products. Half of the children were involved in a training process using critical dialogical methodology, whereas the training process for the other half of the children followed conversational dialogue methodology. The results show that children who follow the critical dialogical training benefit significantly in the construction of their media competence and narrative thinking, compared to the children of the conversational dialogical groups. The results also reveal that not all types of audiovisual content are beneficial to the construction of children's thinking. This research reveals the properties of the proposed critical dialogical method that allows children to improve their media competence and illustrates the complementarity between the diagnostic-static process of competences and the formative-dynamic process that leads to critical thinking. From an applied point of view, the critical dialogical method has been useful for use by teachers to foster a media education in their group of students that contributes to the development of narrative thinking.