How commercial and “violent” video games can promote culturally sensitive science learning: some questions and challenges

Abstract

In their paper, Munoz and El-Hani propose to bring video games into science classrooms to promote culturally sensitive ethics and citizenship education. Instead of bringing “educational” games, Munoz and El-Hani take a more creative route and include games such as Fallout 3® precisely because they are popular and they reproduce ideological and violent representations of gender, race, class, nationality, science and technology. However, there are many questions that arise in bringing these commercial video games into science classrooms, including the questions of how students’ capacities for critical reflection can be facilitated, whether traditional science teachers can take on the role of using such games in their classrooms, and which video games would be most appropriate to use. In this response, I raise these questions and consider some of the challenges in order to further the possibility of implementing Munoz and El-Hani’s creative proposal for generating culturally sensitive science classrooms.