Gaming and Literacy - two words I would never have put together!

Minecraft is all I hear about in my household!  Creepers and crafting are about all I understand of this game my daughters are obsessed with.  We are not a big gaming family.  I, for one, get terribly motion sick with anything 3 dimensional moving about on a screen.  I am ok with Mario Kart as I am behind the wheel, but put me on the toboggan run in Mario and Sonic Winter Olympic Games and I will be sick after about 10 minutes!  So reading about Gaming has sparked my interest as it is something I had never really thought of before, especially in terms of it being used for educational purposes.

There seems to be an awful lot of literature out there in cyberspace (by that I mean the library database at QUT!) about computer games.  Some say they are bad, some say they are good, I am still undecided, however I do say they have a place in schools.  I could easily write this entire blog about how bad games are, because there is plenty of well documented journal articles suggesting that.  Or, I could also fill this entire blog up with the positives of gaming.  Instead of taking a stand one way or the other, I am simply going to talk about a few that I found interesting.

Bijvank, Konijn & Bushman (2012) point out that adolescence is the time where young people are risk takers and this provides them with a thrill - a sense of excitement - sensation seeking is what they call it.  Video games provide adolescents with these feelings of excitement through participation in a virtual world doing things that they would not be doing in real life, and most of the games they are playing are violent.  These researchers hypothesised that the boys in their study who had lower educational ability were more aggressive and would be more attracted to violent games than boys with higher educational ability.  Their findings did support their hypothesis.  This is just one study and is not my personal opinion.  More reading would be required to prove these results are accurate for all boys who have lower educational ability.  They also go on to say that because of these findings, boys who have a lower educational ability should be directed towards games that are not violent so that they do not act out some of these gaming scenarios in real life.  I suggest that perhaps these games may be a good outlet for these boys to get their 'sensation seeking thrills' rather than looking for them in the 'real world'.

Video games are played by adolescents the world over and are the fastest growing form of entertainment.  Adolescents are known to play games for hours on end if left to their own devices.  Adachi & Willoughby (2012) discuss some of the positives associated with game playing.  Adolescents show initiative and motivation in game play.  There is a social benefit to game playing as many games involve collaboration and interaction with other players online.  Concentration and cognitive effort is required and gaming also provides adolescents with opportunities for problem solving, learning new skills, and as the games intensify in difficulty as the player moves up levels, they are confronted with more challenging problems and situations.  This has certainly got to be more beneficial than just watching TV!

Beavis & O'Mara (2010) illustrate how computer gaming can be used as a new literacy in the classroom.  They discuss how critical analysis of video games has been carried out by a teacher called "Mark" who structured a unit of work around "exploring the twin themes of representational violence - 'violence as text' - and retrospective reflection on students' earlier gaming selves" (Beavis & O'Mara, 2010, p.67).  Other examples of how gaming can be incorporated into the English curriculum are also provided and demonstrate how computer games can be seen as valid literacies if used wisely.  Beavis & O'Mara also illustrate the multi-literacies involved with game construction and present a case study where students learned to construct and make their own games.  Students in this case study were learning many new skills from this 'new literacy field'.

Now I must stress that I am a science trained teacher and really know nothing about the English curriculum nor anything to do with teacher librarians, but I am encouraged to see that gaming is being included in the curriculum by some very innovative teachers who are interested about what kids are into.  I am also grateful for the opportunity to learn about these 'new literacies' and feel able to discuss such findings with other teachers, especially those who are instructing my precious gems.

References:

Adachi, P. C., & Willoughby, T. (2012).  Do Video Games Promote Positive Youth Development?  Journal of Adolescent Research, 28(2), 155-165.  Doi: 10.1177/0743558412464522

Beavis, C., & O'Mara. (2010).  Computer games - pushing at the boundaries of literacy.  Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 33(1), 65-76.

Bijvank, M. N., Konijn, E. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2012).  "We don't need no education": Video game preferences, video game motivations, and aggressiveness among adolescent boys of different educational ability levels.  Journal of Adolescence, 35, 153-162.

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