ABSTRACT:This study describes an example of design-based research in which we make theoretical improvements in our understanding, in part based on empirical work, and use these to revise our curriculum and, simultaneously, our evolving theory of the relations between contexts and disciplinary formalisms. Prior to this study, we completed a first cycle of design revisions to a game-based ecological sciences curriculum to make more apparent specific domain concepts associated with targeted learning standards. Of particular interest was using gaming principles to embed standards-based science concepts in the curricular experience without undermining the situative embodiment central to our design philosophy. In Study One reported here, the same first-cycle elementary teacher used the refined secondcycle curriculum, again with high-ability fourth graders. We then analyzed qualitative and quantitative data on student participation and performance to further refine our theory and revise the curriculum. In Study Two, another teacher implemented a further refined secondcycle curriculum with lower achieving fourth graders, including several students labeled as having special needs. We use the design trajectory and results to illustrate and warrant the creation of a situationally embodied curriculum that supports the learning of specific disciplinary formalisms.
Abstract.Although every era is met with the introduction of powerful technologies for entertainment and learning, videogames represent a new contribution binding the two and bearing the potential to create sustained engagement in a curricular drama where the player's knowledgeable actions shape an unfolding fiction within a designed world. While traditionally, stories involve an author, a performer, and an audience, much of the power of videogames as media for advancing narrative springs from their affordance for the player to occupy more than one role-and sometimes all three-simultaneously. In the narratively-rich videogames that we design, players have the opportunity to perform actions, experience consequences, and reflect on the underlying social values that these situations were designed to engage, affording a type of narrative transactivity. Elsewhere we have discussed designing these media as contexts for engaging academic content; here we illuminate the power of videogames to engage children in ideological struggles as they are experienced in game-based adaptations of classic literature. Toward this end, we present our theoretical argument for the power of games as a contemporary story medium, grounding this discussion in the context of two game design projects and their implementations. Implications are discussed in terms of the potential of immersive, interactive mediavideogame technology, in short-for achieving wide-ranging educational ends.
Videogames are a powerful medium that curriculum designers can use to create narratively rich worlds for achieving educational goals.In these worlds, youth can become scientists, doctors, writers, and mathematicians who critically engage complex disciplinary content to transform a virtual world. Toward illuminating this potential, the authors advance the theory of transformational play. Such play involves taking on the role of a protagonist who must employ conceptual understandings to transform a problem-based fictional context and transform the player as well. The authors first survey the theory and then ground their discussion in two units that, as part of their design-based research methodology, have simultaneously given rise to and been informed by their theory of transformational play.They close with a discussion of research and design challenges.
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