A new hope: Negotiating the integration of transmedia storytelling and literacy instruction
Citation
Slota, Stephen T; Young, Michael F; O’Byrne, W. Ian; Ballestrini, Kevin. (2016) A new hope: Negotiating the integration of transmedia storytelling and literacy instruction. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 59(6), 642–646. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.512
Abstract
Teachers seeking to combine technology, pedagogy, content knowledge, and learning theory in their courses face a challenge that is seldom a lack of teacher creativity or will — rather, it is the complexity involved in introducing contemporary, technology-enabled instruction in traditional educational spaces where achievement outcomes are more deeply valued than both teacher creativity and the learning process itself. This column examines the affordances and possibilities for merging transmedia storytelling with literacy instruction, using the Star Wars universe as a case study. Transmedia storytelling occurs when integral elements of a particular narrative are dispersed across multiple delivery channels using multiple media, creating an integrated and coordinated storytelling experience. The authors conclude with guidance on integrating popular culture and transmedia narratives into literacy instruction.
Notes
Star Wars was a useful entry point because it’s a narrative every student in the room already carries. They know the characters, the mythology, the moral universe — and they’ve encountered it through film, games, graphic novels, merchandise, and fan fiction. That’s transmedia storytelling in action: the story doesn’t live in one medium; it lives in the ecosystem of media through which people engage with it.
The pedagogical argument is that this ecosystem can be a resource for literacy instruction, not a distraction from it. If students can trace how the same narrative strand plays out differently across different media — what the novel does that the film can’t, what the game teaches about Jedi ethics that the movie leaves implicit — they’re engaging in genuinely sophisticated textual analysis.
Kevin Ballestrini’s story is what animates this piece for me. He’s the teacher of record, working in a system that values test scores over creative engagement, looking for a way to connect his students’ out-of-school enthusiasms to in-school learning objectives. That challenge is not particular to Star Wars or transmedia — it’s the perennial problem of relevance, and transmedia storytelling is one response to it.