The personal literacy experiences English Language Arts (ELA) teachers have are an important factor in shaping their pedagogical thinking about literacy. More research is needed, however, on the relationship between literacy experiences and pedagogical thinking for preservice teachers implementing new literacies such as transmedia stories. Transmedia stories are an emerging twenty-first century storytelling form in which a narrative is told over multiple texts and media platforms and is often extended further by reader contributions. Theoretical research has suggested that transmedia stories can be used in the ELA classroom to teach both traditional literacies and 21st century literacies. While researchers, scholars, and educators have begun to theorize about how such stories might benefit literacy and ELA education, little empirical research exists as to how these narratives are perceived by teachers and how this new literacy might actually be implemented in a classroom. Research is needed on how preservice ELA teachers engage with transmedia stories and how this relates to their perceptions of teaching this new literacy. The current study addressed this research need by investigating how preservice ELA teachers perceived, read, and created transmedia stories and how they saw implementing these texts in an ELA classroom. Specifically, this study asked: 1) In what ways does engaging with a transmedia story influence how preservice ELA teachers perceive transmedia stories?; 2) In what ways does reading a transmedia story influence how preservice ELA teachers perceive implementing transmedia stories in the classroom?; and 3) In what ways does creating a transmedia extension text influence how preservice ELA teachers perceive implementing transmedia stories in the classroom? To investigate these questions, the study used Hawley-Turner and Hicks’ (2015) Connected Reading Model as a theoretical framework to conceptualize transmedia stories as a new literacy that encourages different ways of encountering, engaging with, and evaluating texts. An exploratory case study design was used, and data were collected from ten preservice ELA teachers in a purposefully selected course on adolescent literacy and young adult literature through a pre-and post-survey, reading logs, a reflection, a participant-created transmedia extension text, a visual map of reading, an individual interview, and a focus group. The data sources were analyzed through inductive, deductive, and focused coding. From this analysis, the study found that the preservice teachers perceived transmedia stories as enjoyable, immersive, interactive, creative, and social and saw implementing these stories in an ELA classroom to: engage students; develop technological and media literacy; scaffold to canonical literature; and develop comprehension, literary analysis, and writing skills. While the preservice teachers experienced transmedia story engagement as a new literacy and were optimistic about the new possibilities afforded by such engagement, these results suggest that the preservice teachers most often perceived implementing these texts as tools to scaffold to the standards and goals of a traditional ELA curriculum and were less likely to integrate transmedia storytelling as a transformative new literacy defined by the new ethos elements they experienced and identified. These findings reflect research on how teachers often leverage new literacies to teach a traditional curriculum. The findings also suggest that preservice teachers negotiate between experience and ideology when implementing new literacies, sifting through their personal literacy experiences for where these experiences align with their existing education ideologies when thinking about how to implement new literacies. Building on such research, the study aims to contribute to transmedia studies research, teacher education research, and the field of English Education by investigating how the sample of preservice ELA teachers engaged with and perceived teaching transmedia stories and by paving the way for future empirical research on transmedia stories, new literacy implementation, and preservice teacher education.
