Digital Storytelling as an Explanatory Practice in Primary STEAM Education

Digital storytelling can connect artistic expression with the explanation of a scientific or technological idea, yet production quality can conceal weak content understanding. This conceptual article develops an instructional model that links a claim, a storyboard, multimodal representation and audience-informed revision. Digital-storytelling scholarship, creative-programming resources and accessibility guidance inform a worked design in which primary pupils explain a simple water-saving mechanism. The analysis distinguishes evidence-bearing representations from decorative additions and separates scientific accuracy, narrative clarity, accessibility and responsible use of media. Proposed classroom tasks and an analytical matrix show how individual understanding may be examined alongside a collaborative artefact. The study reports no classroom implementation or learning gains. Its contribution is a bounded design framework for using digital stories to teach and explain aspects of the digital world through STEAM. Validation requires investigation of comprehension, authorship and transfer across varied classroom conditions.