The politics of gaming in schools: a sociocultural perspective from Western Australia

Abstract

This paper discusses gaming in a Western Australian school for boys. The overriding ethos of the school is supportive of the potential of ICT to better engage students and deliver enhanced educational outcomes. The school sees game-based design as at the vanguard of innovation, but also accepts its important duty of care responsibilities. Tensions were revealed between the opportunities presented by educational gaming and the perceived problem of managing student distraction, particularly the tendency for students to spend large amounts of time playing games that have little or no educational value. The paper describes the forms of gaming that emerged at the school, considering both their educational impact and propensity to detract from students' opportunities to learn. It is argued that the perceived benefits and risks of gaming are not well understood, and that powerful political forces are at play which shape school policy, teachers' pedagogy, parent perceptions and student actions.

Student-centred digital game–based learning: a conceptual framework and survey of the state of the art

“…aged 10-11 (Hwang et al 2013). Secondary (11-18) was well represented (Bate et al 2014;Bowen et al 2014;Shahriarpour 2014;Annetta et al 2013;Liu and Chu 2010;ter Vrugte et al 2017); however, only one paper attempted longitudinal study over a 3-year period (Bate et al 2014), with most studies focusing on a particular class or group within an academic year. Tertiary age (17+) was the focus of another group of papers (Lin and Lin 2014;Seng and Yatim 2014;Peng et al 2017;Ameerbakhsh et al 2018;Neville et al 2009;Monteiro et al 2011;Norton et al 2008), one of which investigated adult learning alongside university students (Norton et al 2008).…”

“…This principle was integrated through, for example, adventure games (Shafie and Ahmad 2010) and visual novels, where such decisions are the main interaction players have (Bowen et al 2014). World building was a well-represented section, appearing in a number of studies (Shafie and Ahmad 2010;Bate et al 2014;Bowen et al 2014;Shahriarpour 2014;Lin and Lin 2014;Seng and Yatim 2014;Peng et al 2017;Garcia and Pacheco 2013;Hwang et al 2013;Hwang et al 2015;Wang et al 2018;Yang et al 2010;Annetta et al 2013;Liu and Chu 2010;Ameerbakhsh et al 2018;Neville et al 2009;Kiger et al 2012;Su and Cheng 2013;ter Vrugte et al 2017;Diah et al 2012;Monteiro et al 2011;Norton et al 2008). Commercial games such as SimCity allowed players to learn while creating and developing their world during their integration of the game into the classroom (Lin and Lin 2014).…”

“…Skills as strategy was the least well-represented category within problem solving (Bate et al 2014;Lin and Lin 2014;Ameerbakhsh et al 2018;Kiger et al 2012), although some papers used games that were able to tie a student's progression to their understanding, with greater understanding of the game mechanics allowing greater success (Lin and Lin 2014).…”

Teachers’ beliefs about the impact of games on the academic and social experiences of diverse and at-risk children in schools: a Deleuzian perspective

“…A parallel strand of scholarship explores the role of games in developing the kinds of generic skill sets or dispositions that are sometimes badged as twenty-first century skills (e.g. Chee 2015) or life-long learning competencies (Bate, MacNish, and Males 2015). This encompasses references to the ways that games can encourage team work, collaboration, communication, and negotiation skills, and foster creativity, risk-taking, or problem-solving (Jenkins et al 2009).…”

Being together in classrooms at the interface of the physical and virtual: implications for collaboration in on/off-screen sites

“…It is worth noting that my focus here is not the teacher's use of the game or its effectiveness in supporting learning although, as others have argued (e.g. Bate et al 2014;Steinkuehler et al 2012), these are important areas to consider. The teacher was interested in exploring ways of using games to 'enhance' the existing curriculum and to 'transform' learning experiences in the classroom (Burnett et al 2005).…”