Игра как практика образования: феноменолого-герменевтический аспект

Abstract

The article aims to analyze the concept of an educational game in two philosophical concepts – phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics. This approach is promising. It allows addressing the original meanings of the game, conducting a categorical analysis, and formulating a theoretical foundation and a methodological platform for the process of introducing game practices in education. This is relevant because, despite the numerous practices of using the game in education, the pedagogical and psychological justification of the game as a special method, a common semantic field regarding the concept of the game has not yet been formed. The ambiguity and instability of the term “game” today creates a situation of uncertainty in its use, and each time we need to redefine it for implementation into practice. To reach this aim, the authors use the works of Eugen Fink and deduce the main contradiction between the ontology of the game as the fundamental basis of human existence and the game as an educational practice. The game in its ontology takes place in “free time”, it has no purpose and is carefree, while educational practice always has a purpose. As an example of solving this contradiction, the authors refer to the works of Piero Bertolini. He proclaims the need to return to the real game. The teacher should leave the student alone with the game, give him/her freedom, realizing that the game itself is already part of learning. The game is a phenomenological method that allows the player to meet with the authentic and discover the realm of the “possible”. From this understanding of the game follows the problem of interpreting its meaning. As a source for this analysis, the authors use the phenomenological hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Based on the interpretation of hermeneutics, we cannot find objective meaning when interpreting games, but we are aware of our own subjectivity, the irreducibility of our own subjectivity in any act of interpretation. Moreover, this reasoning applies both to players inside the game who interpret game phenomena and actions of other players, and to a possible external observer of the game. The task of the interpreter in the case of a game as an educational event is to determine the factors that determine one’s own horizon of interpretation. The result of the review was the designation of another problem in understanding the game as an educational practice – the impossibility of its unambiguous interpretation, which also contradicts the external goal-setting of pedagogical methods. The solution of these two problems, according to the authors, is a promising task for subsequent research.