The traditional story of a hero is a model that can be found in different media formats

What is it about?

Narrative across different cultures and a range of media is a crucial element of curricula in English language teacher education. In the twenty-first century, this ought to be supplemented with learning about multiliteracies and multimodality. In combination, this permits equipping pre-service teachers and their future pupils with essential tools to critically analyse mediatized narratives. Adaptation from one media format to another, a thriving practice in recent years, provides student teachers with a focus to engage with transmedia storytelling. In order to make multiple strands of literacy accessible to students, the template of the hero’s journey has proven to be a useful implement. A pervasive if not comprehensive structure, the quest pattern tends to be dominated by male protagonists and, hence, requires addressing issues of gender and stereotype. In a first step the archetype is introduced by means of picture books and then the scope is widened to cover samples from various media formats. Parallel to this, student teachers require an introduction to the critical analysis of graphic novels and film. Three projects conducted in teacher education in Zurich are presented to exemplify how transmedia storytelling can be explored in the (university) classroom in order to foster multiliteracies: the first involves Philip Pullman’s hybrid “novel-cum-graphic-novel” Spring-Heeled Jack; the second focuses on Tim Winton’s Lockie Leonard trilogy and its adaptation for television; the third makes use of Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz, adapted both as a graphic novel and as a motion picture.

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Why is it important?

There are many references to the relevance of multiliteracies in education but there are only few examples of how to adequately teach them. In order not to overwhelm the learners with the abundance of literacies and the relevant jargon, this article suggests working with vignettes that allow to consider selected instances.

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