Gaming as a pedagogical tool

A transformation in pedagogy?

When first engaging with the research and writing for this team blog, I had the expectation that the knowledge that I gained would force a personal re-adjustment of my prior teaching practices.  Gaming, with its ability to give precise feedback to the learner and connect the out-of-school youth popular culture with classroom learning, was to transform the current pedagogies that I employed (Williamson, 2009).  I was eager to embrace this technology, as I had with so many of the previous ‘innovative pedagogies’ suggested by my university lecturers and teaching colleagues.  However, unfortunately in the case of gaming, what I discovered made me more cautious than I had previously been in implementing this particular technology in the classroom.  This bias, although informed by evidence drawn from the discipline of neuroscience, is perhaps not the intended end to my personal journey as scaffolded by this unit’s assessment process. 

(Harden, 2011)

A re-conceptualisation of gaming in teaching practice

I, like the researchers identified in Foster and Mishra’s study (2009), had not taken into account how pedagogical affordances of different games interacted with the learning, social and cultural context.  Although, this personal stance does not mean that I will adopt a policy against the use of gaming as a means to meet the future learning needs of my students, rather I will be more cautious in locating and embedding gaming resources in the units of work I create.   Gaming is not merely a ‘carrot’ in the form of entertainment that I can use to motivate my students to engage with curriculum area content.  An example of a more fundamental educational level of support that gaming can offer is its ability to increase student automaticity in information processing.  Developing this understanding of how and why learning occurs in its interaction between technology, content and the students’ curriculum knowledge is perhaps one of the greatest future challenges I face.  To achieve this goal I will use what the academic literature and my own prior experiences suggests is best practice in implementing a gaming informed pedagogy in the classroom.

What place does gaming have in pedagogy?

A systemic implementation of gaming as a pedagogic tool in classrooms faces a range of barriers and enablers that can impede or promote the use of this technology.  Internationally, the TALIS Report (2008) identified the challenges that schools and teachers faced in the early adoption of new technologies for the benefit of student learning.   Technology was characterized as being subject to such rapid change that educational authorities often lacked clear guidance in how to best use ICT in the classroom.  It is, therefore, not surprising that TALIS found a positive correlation between the use of technologies like gaming, and teacher participation in ICT-related professional development.  It is likely that teachers are unwilling to use new technologies, if they are not aware of the affordances that this change of behaviour in their everyday teaching practice will have on their students' learning.  In Australia, this conservative tendency runs contrary to the stated intentions of the government's recent Digital Education Revolution [DER] Program (Australian Government, n.d.).   However, as a teacher I found this initiative tended to emphasize the provision of the physical requirements necessary to implement this program, but not the less tangible elements needed to support the pedagogic shift that should accompany this process. Thus computers were provided to all staff members at my rural school, but the opportunity to engage in the PD required to exploit this technology was not readily available.  This resulted in a sporadic uptake of different elements of this program, with teachers who were "tech-savy" much more willing to engage with the outcomes identified in the DER.  Unfortunately in this context there were also teachers who used 'token' ICT elements in their lessons, unsupported by a strong understanding of whether their choices were pedagogically appropriate.  This approach resulted in negative experiences that were then reported back in subject area team meetings, resulting a dismissal of what might otherwise be a potentially worthwhile learning resource for our curriculum area. 

The cognitive impacts of living in a wire world

As a qualified Learning Support Teacher I was perhaps most interested in the potential effects of gaming on cognition.  I had previously used the program Mathletics to develop automaticity in Year 9 students who struggled with information processing.  According to my understanding of meta-cognition, the increased speed that these students demonstrated was due to a reduction in the cognitive load placed on their working memories (Dunlosky & Metcalfe, 2009).  What I did not realise, until I had viewed the speech given by the neuroscience Baroness Susan Greenfield (2011) (see below), was the physiological response that too much exposure to this sort of rapid fire stimulus and a reward-based gaming system could have.  Greenfield proposes that if this sort of process is allowed to dominate, a child will experience exposure to higher levels of dopamine, reducing their attention span, stimulating the need to repetitively practice the reward inducing behaviour and inhibiting the functioning of their pre-frontal cortex.   Literally, this sort of game can rewire a student’s brain and personality if engaged with to excess.   As one might imagine I was horrified.   In interacting with these ideas I learnt to treat gaming as a pedagogic tool with respect.  It is not always an innocuous fun activity; gaming can be both a powerful tool for positive or negative learning outcomes, depending on how the student engages with it.  It can also increase our students’ ability to process information, but does not necessarily lead to knowledge construction (Greendfield, 2011).

Baroness Susan Greenfield's Seminar at Science World 2011

References: 

Australian Government.  (n.d.) Digital Education Revolution.  Retrieved October 18, 2011 from http://www.deewr.gov.au/Schooling/DigitalEducationRevolution/Pages/default.aspx

Dunlosky, J., & Metcalfe, J. (2009). Metacognition. Los Angeles: SAGE.

Foster, A. N., & Mishra, P. (2009). Games, claims, genres, and learning.  In R. E. Ferdig (Ed.), Handbook of research on discrete event simulation environments: Technologies and applications [IGI Global edition] (pp.33-50). doi: 10.4018/978-1-59904-808-6.ch002

FisherScientificUK.  (2011). Baroness Susan Greenfield's Seminar at Science World 2011 Part 1 [Video file].  Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMLEWryTdSc&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

FisherScientificUK.  (2011). Baroness Susan Greenfield's Seminar at Science World 2011 Part 2 [Video file].  Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcejJN8RRbU&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

FisherScientificUK.  (2011). Baroness Susan Greenfield's Seminar at Science World 2011 Part 2 [Video file].  Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LyvZZAVxnw

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD]. (2009). Creating effective teaching and learning environments: First results from TALIS.  OECD Publishing.  Retrieved online from www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/17/43044074.pdf

Williamson, B. (2009).  Computer games, schools, and young people:  A report on using games for learning.  Futurelab.  Retrieved at http://archive.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/project_reports/becta/Games_and_Learning_educators_report.pdf