From Pride Rock to the Rendering Engine: An Observation-First Pedagogy for Teaching New-Age Adaptation through The Lion King (1994) and Mufasa: The Lion King (2024)

Abstract

Adaptation pedagogy has tended to introduce theoretical vocabulary before students are asked to analyse a text-pair, on the assumption that concepts such as fidelity, medium-specificity, and intertextuality must be taught before they can be applied. This article proposes an alternative, observation-first sequence: students first complete a structured comparison exercise recording concrete production, narrative, and performance differences between a source and its adaptation, and are introduced to interpretive framing only afterwards. The model is illustrated through Disney's The Lion King (1994) and its 2024 prequel Mufasa: The Lion King, a text-pair whose contrasting production technologies make adaptation choices unusually visible to students encountering the field for the first time. The article outlines the two-stage classroom design, reports on its transfer to a second, technologically minimal text-pair (Twelve Angry Men), and reads the sequence retrospectively against established learning theory, drawing on Kolb's experiential learning cycle, cognitive load theory, Vygotsky's account of scaffolding, and the revised Bloom taxonomy, to explain why observation-before-theory sequencing supports undergraduate analytical writing. The article closes with a discussion of the model's implications and limitations