Game-as-teacher: Modification by adaptation in learning through game-play

Abstract

This paper will explore how game-play in video games as well as game centered approaches in physical education (PE) such as Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) can draw on complexity thinking to inform the learning process in physical education. Using the video game concept of game-as-teacher (Gee, 2007), ideas such as enabling constraints from complexity thinking (Davis & Sumara, 2006) and information-movement couplings from motor learning (Davids, Button, & Bennett, 2008), learning will be framed as emergent, adaptive and self-organizing. To explain these concepts the following examples will be used (1) an auto-ethnographic narrative of the author's memories learning to play tennis with his father, (2) an account of a beginner learning to play as an avatar in the video game Guild Wars, and (3) a group of beginners learning to play tennis using a TGfU approach. Drawing on the author's narratives and the video game concept of game-as-teacher, the paper concludes by emphasizing the principle of modification by adaption as a way to engage players of different abilities to experience worthwhile game-play in PE.