Appropriation of adaptive literacy games into the German elementary school classroom

Abstract

The study presented here was aimed at understanding how teachers go about appropriating technology from the iRead EU Horizon 2020 Project into the classroom. iRead provides an adaptive personalised literacy game called Navigo that is deployed in tablets and intended for regular usage in the elementary school classroom. In our case, the game was provided for beginning readers of German. The goal of iRead was to develop these games and then understand how these can be deployed successfully into the classroom. The adaptation of technology by teachers has been a well‐studied phenomenon for decades in some countries. However, in Germany, elementary schools lag behind in digitalisation, making such studies more difficult, resulting in a knowledge gap this study seeks to fill. Appropriation of the Navigo game by the teachers was studied through a series of semi‐formal interviews with 21 teachers from 9 schools, scheduled at the beginning, middle and end of the project, resulting in a total of 55 interviews. Results show that teachers had similar experiences within the project, and faced common stumbling blocks, such as (a) technology, (b) digital literacy and (c) understanding the pedagogical use of adaptive learning games. While teachers generally accepted that interacting with tablets taught pupils the important skill of digital literacy, most teachers did not fully understand how pupils acquired language skills through Navigo. Those teachers who understood the academic benefit of the learning game appropriated Navigo fully by purposefully leveraging the adaptivity of the games to support pupils in a personalised manner. Using thematic analysis and automatic clustering of keyword occurrences in the interviews, we were able to identify four ‘personas’ on the continuum of teacher characteristics. Mapping teachers to these ‘personas’ determined the level of support required during the appropriation process. It was shown that the ‘personas’ are relatively stable and can be identified within the first weeks of appropriation to ensure a successful process as soon as possible. What is already known about this topic Appropriation of technology models. Technology use in school for older pupils. Educational games outside of school. What this paper adds A view on technology usage in elementary schools particular to the German context with large amount of teacher interviews from diverse schools. Personas that can be identified early on in the process of appropriation based on simple interviews. Particular challenges of using adaptive technology in the classroom. Implications for practice and/or policy A simple model for picking appropriate teacher support in appropriation. Results show a clear need for improving technology support in the schools. Teacher training must include digital competence and openness to the idea of independent learning paths.

The use of Digital Game-Based Learning (DGBL) in teachers’ training: a scoping review

“…Concerning the type of study, 10 studies can be defined as mixed-method studies (Charlier and De Fraine, 2012;Allsop and Jessel, 2015;Karadag, 2015;Cózar-Gutiérrez and Sáez-López, 2016;Meletiou-Mavrotheris and Prodromou, 2016;Marques and Pombo, 2019;Sousa and Costa, 2020;Casanoves et al, 2022;Dashtestani, 2022;Mystakidis and Christopoulos, 2022), 3 studies are quantitative (Hsu et al, 2017;Sánchez-Mena et al, 2019;Gordillo et al, 2021), and 4 are qualitative (Pauschenwein et al, 2013;Kamışlı, 2019;Kelleci and Aksoy, 2021;Pflaumer et al, 2021).…”

“…Although the studies presented very homogenous outcomes in terms of the positive effects of DGBL on learning processes and positive teachers' attitudes toward this innovative methodology, they are very heterogeneous in terms of methodological features. Many of the screened studies (Charlier and De Fraine, 2012;Allsop and Jessel, 2015;Cózar-Gutiérrez and Sáez-López, 2016;Meletiou-Mavrotheris and Prodromou, 2016;Marques and Pombo, 2019;Sousa and Costa, 2020;Kelleci and Aksoy, 2021;Pflaumer et al, 2021;Mystakidis and Christopoulos, 2022) included very small samples (<100 participants), and most of the studies presented a cross-sectional design. Only four studies (Cózar-Gutiérrez and Sáez-López, 2016;Sousa and Costa, 2020;Gordillo et al, 2021;Pflaumer et al, 2021) included a pre-and post-test research design.…”

“…Many of the screened studies (Charlier and De Fraine, 2012;Allsop and Jessel, 2015;Cózar-Gutiérrez and Sáez-López, 2016;Meletiou-Mavrotheris and Prodromou, 2016;Marques and Pombo, 2019;Sousa and Costa, 2020;Kelleci and Aksoy, 2021;Pflaumer et al, 2021;Mystakidis and Christopoulos, 2022) included very small samples (<100 participants), and most of the studies presented a cross-sectional design. Only four studies (Cózar-Gutiérrez and Sáez-López, 2016;Sousa and Costa, 2020;Gordillo et al, 2021;Pflaumer et al, 2021) included a pre-and post-test research design. Measures were generally both quantitative (self-report questionnaires) and qualitative (open-ended questions, interviews, focus groups); however, the statistical analyses performed were, in most cases, item analyses (descriptive statistics reported in terms of means, frequencies, and percentages) and content analysis for the qualitative explorations.…”

“…Concerning the studies that investigate teachers' attitudes and perceptions related to the use of DGBL at school 7 studies (Allsop and Jessel, 2015;Cózar-Gutiérrez and Sáez-López, 2016;Hsu et al, 2017;Kamışlı, 2019;Sánchez-Mena et al, 2019;Pflaumer et al, 2021;Dashtestani, 2022) presented cross-sectional surveys that measure teachers' opinions and experiences with DGBL.…”

Reflections on Personalized Games-Based Learning: How Automation Is Shaped Within Everyday School Practices

“…Games-Based Learning: How Automation Is Shaped Within Everyday School Practices digital competencies, mistrust in AI, or the clash between AI and curriculum-driven teaching have been identified as reasons to why teachers struggle to take up the opportunities of automation, for example, by disabling the PGBL from acting autonomously (e.g., [14] and [15]). The assumption that this technology can contribute to more effective learning and teaching has also featured prominently in policy discourse (e.g., [4] and [5]).…”