Children’s Experiences on Learning the 21st-Century Skills With Digital Games

Abstract

Previous research on learning-related digital games has focused on studying learning outcomes with mostly adult participants. This study explores what children have experienced they have learned by playing digital games, how these learning experiences relate to 21st-century skills, and in which contexts do the children benefit from playing digital games. The data were collected from children’s essays, which were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results reveal that children’s learning experiences are often related to 21st-century core subjects and skills, but they also reported improved physical abilities and sports competences from digital games. Children felt that the skills they had gained were beneficial in the contexts of school, sports, and friendships. The results contribute to our understanding of digital games and children by providing children’s perspective on digital games and learning.

Serious Games as a Complementary Tool for Social Skill Development in Young People: A Systematic Review of the Literature

“…By using the gaming medium to teach social skills, we may improve upon the standard lecture model, which is limited by time constraints of the traditional class period and student disengagement (DeRosier & Thomas, 2018;Merrell & Gimpel, 2014;Read & Shortell, 2011;Sancassiani et al, 2015). However, despite the engaging and motivating aspect of games (Kahila et al, 2020), educators and researchers should refrain from being caught up in the excitement of innovation. Scaling these programs for larger groups has remained a challenge and research on serious games' use for educational purposes is still limited (Boduszek et al, 2019;Poling, 2013;Williamson, 2009) In this review, we find that serious games may be effective as tools to support social skill learning, particularly when paired with discussions.…”

Children’s gaming involves much more than the gaming itself: A study of the metagame among 12- to 15-year-old children

“…Research on digital games is often focused on learning from the game (software) (Garcia, 2017), although many researchers have argued that research should focus more on learning in the metagame (e.g. Kahila et al, 2019;Steinkuehler and Squire, 2014;Young et al, 2012) Individual metagame phenomena, such as social interactions in multiplayer games (Kaye et al, 2017) and gaming affinity spaces, which are informal learning sites focused on gaming (Gee and Hayes, 2012), have been studied from various perspectives, but there is still a paucity of research on children's metagaming as a whole. Understanding children's metagame activities is important for forming an overall picture of what children are doing around digital games and what learning is involved.…”

Transformation of relationships between primary school stakeholders in the context of digitization

“…This paper draws on the publications about topics (3) and (5) as they appear to be the most relevant to both the theoretical and experimental frameworks used in the study. The results from international research in Australia (Neumann, 2018;Kervin, 2016), Belgium (Vanbecelaere, Berghe, Cornillie, Sasanguie, Reynvoet, & Depaepe, 2020); Finland (Kahila, Valtonen, Tedre, Mäkitalo, & Saarikoski, 2019), Hong Kong (So, Chen, & Wan, 2019), and the Netherlands (Janke, Luyten, & Visscher, 2017) should be mentioned in this context. The most significant international research practices are discussed below, before we present the Russian pedagogical experiments.…”

“…The most significant international research practices are discussed below, before we present the Russian pedagogical experiments. Kahila et al (2019) highlight the children's own perception of their transversal skills development in the process of digital tools use. Children-respondents' answers revealed the most positive influence of digital games on their skills acquisition.…”