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The multivoicedness of game play: Exploring the unfolding of a student’s learning trajectory in a gaming context at school

  • Kenneth Silseth
Article
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Abstract

The purpose of this article is to gain knowledge about how interactions in a gaming context become constituted as effective resources for a student’s learning trajectory. In addition, this detailed study of a learning trajectory documents how a computer game becomes a learning resource for working on a specific topic in school. The article reports on a qualitative study of students at an upper secondary school who have played the computer game Global Conflicts: Palestine to learn about the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A sociocultural and dialogic approach to learning and meaning-making is employed as an analytical framework. Analyzing different interactional episodes, in which important orientations and reorientations are located, documents how the student’s learning trajectory developed and changed during the project. When engaged in game play in educational settings, experiences with playing computer games outside of school can relevantly be invoked and become part of the collaborative project of finding out how to play the game. However, these ways of engaging with a computer game might not necessarily facilitate a subtle understanding of the specific topic that is addressed in the game. The findings suggest that the constitution of a computer game as a learning resource is a collaborative project, in which multiple resources for meaning-making are in play, and for which the teacher has an important role in facilitating student’s adoption of a multiperspective on the conflict. Furthermore, the findings shed light on what characterizes student-teacher interactions that contribute to a subtle understanding, and offer a framework for important issues upon which to reflect in game-based learning (GBL).

Keywords

Classroom interaction Computer games Dialogic Game-based learning Learning resources Learning trajectory Student-teacher interaction Voice 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

In particular, I would like to thank Hans Christian Arnseth for providing insightful and productive comments during my trajectory of writing this article. I would also like to thank Jerry Andriessen, Ola Erstad, Anniken Larsen Furberg, Per Linell, and Sten Ludvigsen for valuable comments on an earlier draft. Furthermore, comments from three reviewers of the CSCL community have contributed to the strengthening of my argument, and I am also in debt to Magnus Hontvedt for his contribution to the data collection.

Supplementary material

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Copyright information

© International Society of the Learning Sciences, Inc.; Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2011

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Educational ResearchUniversity of OsloOsloNorway

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