Beyond gamification: reconceptualizing game-based learning in early childhood environments

Abstract

The recent promotion and adoption of digital game-based learning (DGBL) in K-12 education presents compelling opportunities as well as challenges for early childhood educators who seek to critically, equitably and holistically support the learning and play of today's so-called digital natives. However, with most DGBL initiatives focused on the increasingly standardized 'accountability' models found in K-12 educational institutions, the authors ask whose priorities, identities and notions of play this model reinforces or neglects. Drawing on the literatures of early childhood studies, game-based learning, and game studies, they seek to illuminate the informal contexts of play within the 'hidden' and 'null' curricula of DGBL that do not fit within the efficiency models of mainstream education in North America. In the absence of a common critical or theoretical foundation for DGBL, they propose a conceptual framework that challenges what they regard to be the institutionally nullified dimensions of autonomy, play, affinity and space that are essential to DGBL. They contend that these dimensions are ideally situated within the inclusive and play-based curriculum early childhood learning environments, and that the early years constitute a critically significant, yet overlooked, location for more holistic and inclusive thinking on DGBL.Keywords: DGBL; digital game-based learning; early childhood education; videogames; situated learning; hidden and null curriculum; critical pedagogy Introduction Children aged 3-10 represent the largest demographic of the virtual worlds and online games (Kzero, 2011) they themselves choose to engage with and identify as significant to them (de Castell & Jenson, 2004). The recognition that digital games are a critically important dimension of younger children's lives at home and in early years locations presents challenges as well as opportunities for early childhood education. Though there is a growing body of work on the use of technology in the early years, much of the research has focused on multimedia tools and popular culture as pathways to multimodal literacies with relatively little focus on digital games (Marsh, 2010;Marsh, Brooks, Hughes, Ritchie, & Roberts, 2005;Plowman, McPake, & Stephen, 2008;Plowman, Stephen, & McPake, 2010;Wolfe & Flewitt, 2010;Yelland, 2010). , Communication & Society, 2014 Vol. 17, No. 5, 594-608, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2013 Though funding and access to resources are often cited as the primary barrier to technology adoption and integration in early learning contexts, the role of negative dispositions towards technology and digital games has not been fully considered as a contributing factor in the relatively slow pace of technology adoption in early childhood education. These negative dispositions towards technology may also reflect more than a century of dominant values informed by the naturalist and romantic beliefs about children, childhood and children's learning. For example, in their study of technology integration in a UK preschool,...

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