The comic core: a theory of teaching sequential art narratives

Abstract

This research study develops a theory of effective pedagogy for teaching sequential art narratives grounded in the experiences of six graduate students and twelve junior high school students who studied graphic novels within their respective English Language Arts courses, which coalesced during a shared field teaching experience. Video recordings of all class sessions, field notes taken during observations, student interviews, and student compositions (both prose and multimodal) comprised the data set used to develop the theory, which establishes that sequential art narratives should be taught in conjunction with visual literacy modeling, quality mentor texts, and frequent opportunities for student collaboration, creative composition, and transmediation experimentation within a gradual release of (instructor) responsibility framework. A visual model of the proposed theory is included in the findings.