Abstract
Interactive learning environments such as videogames may facilitate learning through engagement. However, not all kinds of engagement are relevant to learning in formal education; much depends on the use of pedagogical approaches and videogames in the classroom. This study investigates a curricular unit in an upper secondary class using the commercial videogame The Walking Dead to teach ethical theories in a citizenship course. We focus on how the teacher’s design of the lesson facilitated students’ disciplinary engagement and find that productive disciplinary engagement (PDE) principles, together with dialogic interactions, extended students’ engagement beyond gameplay and helped them understand the meaning of the theoretical content. Based on our findings, we propose a set of recommendations concerning educational design for teaching and learning with commercial videogames.
Highlights
‘At the heart of teaching well is the core challenge of getting learners engaged in productive work’ (Ball (2000, p. ix), as cited in Engle & Conant, 2002, p. 400)
This quote, which concerns the design of productive disciplinary engagement (PDE), emphasises the importance of students’ active engagement and meaning-making processes in disciplinary work (Kumpulainen, 2014)
It is challenging to design and enact gamebased learning (GBL) that fosters engagement with conceptual knowledge, productive work and learning (Hanghøj, 2013), and this challenge cannot be solved by games alone
Summary
‘At the heart of teaching well is the core challenge of getting learners engaged in productive work’ (Ball (2000, p. ix), as cited in Engle & Conant, 2002, p. 400). This article focuses on the educational design of GBL and how students respond to such design, including both the game and the related disciplinary work. Design for learning refers to the teacher’s enacted design, which is context-sensitive and enables serendipitous events to occur The latter results from the interaction between students and teaching and involves social and cultural experiences in non-school contexts. We followed a class of students in a vocational upper secondary programme in Portugal in which the teacher used the videogame The Walking Dead (Telltale Games, 2012) to teach ethical theories. The design of such new learning activities strategically aims to prevent school dropout during the Portuguese economic crisis. What characterised the teacher’s educational design, and how did it foster students’ engagement beyond the game?
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