The Six Learnings Framework: Exploring the Dialectics of Intuition and Adaptivity in Citizenship Education

Abstract

This chapter describes the use of a citizenship education videogame in the development of adaptive dispositions among young learners. The design principles which informed the intervention were adapted from Lim’s (J Virtual Worlds Res 2(1):3–11, 2009) Six Learnings framework for curriculum design that leveraged Gee’s (What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2007) notions of projective identity. In doing so, the videogame The Rise of Li’ Ttledot (hereafter abbreviated to Li’ Ttledot) sought to develop nascent intuitions about appropriate values associated with good citizenship, as the participants sought to adapt their in-game strategies and tactics. Li’ Ttledot is a curricular programme for citizenship education that leverages the experiences of learners through a bespoke videogame to generate points of discussion in a face-to-face dialogic setting. Li’ Ttledot was designed for use during regular Social Studies lessons for 11–12 year old primary school students. It was designed under the auspices of a grant awarded by the Ministry of Education to a primary school in Singapore through which the teachers worked with a principal investigator from the National Institute of Education and a third-party software developer, with the hope that the use of ICT in citizenship education would go beyond using multimedia to providing a more authentic experience for students and engaging them in deeper issues that would demand the use of higher-order thinking skills.