Playful Knowledge: An Explorative Study of Educational Gaming

Background and purpose
Over the last five to ten years, much has been said and written about the educational use of games – whether it concerns educational computer games, simulations, role-playing, or debate games etc. In spite of the growing research interest in this topic, still only relatively few detailed empirical studies exist of how game scenarios can be used within educational contexts (e.g. Magnussen, 2008). Instead, game researchers have had a tendency to either try and crystallise the universal “essence” of game phenomena or measure the “effect” of game-based learning processes. Thus, there is a lack of practice-oriented knowledge on how games can be enacted as a learning resource and as a form of teaching. Against this backdrop, this dissertation reconceptualises the educational use of games through a contextualised approach, which draws on a sociocultural understanding of the meaningmaking processes of educational gaming. The educational use of games is thus seen as a social phenomenon in which the dynamic interplay between different actors – game design, teachers and students – implies on-going negotiations and interpretations of mutually constituted scenarios, discourse and interaction patterns.

Using Fredrik Barth’s anthropology of knowledge as a starting point, game phenomena and educational practices can be seen as two different traditions of knowledge that each build upon locally embedded aspects of knowledge in terms of assertions, modes of representation and social organisation (Barth, 2002). Based on an action-oriented understanding of knowledge, the integration of game activities and educational activities is not a matter of course, as it entails an overlap between two domains whose meaning-making processes cannot be “controlled” in any simple sense. Rather, educational gaming requires that the intentions of a game scenario are meaningfully adapted by teachers and students in order to be legitimised in relation to particular validity criteria, which are both an integrated part of the game design and the local practices of the game participants. Consequently, this dissertation is based on the hypothesis that the educational use of games generates a playful and unpredictable tension between different ways of enacting and validating knowledge. On the one hand, game scenarios may enable participants to explore specific hypotheses through engaging, creative and strategic decision-making processes in relation to relatively established goals, roles, frames and game resources. On the other hand, game-based knowledge forms, by definition, generate unpredictable outcomes that only partially coincide with the institutionalised knowledge criteria of educational systems concerning what “counts” as valid or relevant knowledge. This raises the following research question: How are game scenarios enacted and validated by teachers and students in relation to particular practices and knowledge forms?

Methods and empirical studies 
In order to answer this question, this study has explored the adaptation of a particular game scenario through a series of design interventions – a methodological approach inspired by educational design-based research (Barab & Squire, 2004). This means that as a part of the research project, I designed and re-designed a game scenario in order to explore particular theoretical assumptions and design hypotheses on educational gaming. More specifically, the empirical aspect of the dissertation is based on the design and use of the ICT-supported debate game called The Power Game, which allows upper secondary students to perform as politicians, journalists and spin doctors in the attempt to win a Danish national parliamentary election. The students are grouped in four or six political parties, which each represent ideological positions in the Danish political landscape by using generic party names, e.g. the Socialist Party and the National Party. Using the real political parties’ websites, each group is then expected to find, re-phrase, present and debate three political key issues in order to run for election. In this way, the game has been developed on the basis of an election scenario as a particular “semiotic domain” that requires the game participants to imitate how professional political actors try to win a parliamentary election (Gee, 2003). Based on the students’ debate practices, the game is labelled as a debate game. Moreover, the overall objectives of The Power Game share similarities with the overall goals for citizenship education within the context of Danish upper secondary education. Thus, the participating students are expected to find and adapt knowledge through particular competencies, which are important to becoming a wellfunctioning citizen in a democratic society (Jerome & Algarra, 2005).

Based on collaboration with five social studies teachers from two upper secondary schools, this research project documents five different game sessions with The Power Game lasting five to six hours each. The empirical material primarily consists of field notes and video and sound recordings in addition to post-game interviews with teachers and selected students conducted after each game session. The methodological framework for describing, analysing and interpreting how teachers and students enacted the election scenario follows Judith L. Green and James Paul Gee’s discourse analytic approach to video analysis which takes an ethnographic perspective on social actors’ discursive actions and practices (Gee & Green, 1998; Green et al., 2007). The empirical studies are structured in relation to three different analytical perspectives that describe the five game sessions from a design perspective, a teacher perspective and a student perspective. Consequently, the dissertation explores three empirical questions:

1. What is the relation between the intentions and the actual enactment of the game design?
2. How do the teachers facilitate the game scenario through different pedagogical approaches?
3. How do the students enact different competencies within the frame of the game sessions? 

Theoretical perspectives
In order to explore these analytical questions, the dissertation introduces a theoretical model that addresses the knowledge production of educational gaming. The model extends Barth’s anthropology of knowledge by applying three complimentary theoretical perspectives and reveals how educational gaming is related to specific assertions, modes of representation and social organisation (Barth, 2002). Based on John Dewey’s pragmatic theory of games, play and learning, educational gaming can be described as a scenario-based inquiry of certain assertions about the world, which involve experience in relation to concrete aims and ends-in-view, causality (rules) and contingent outcomes (Dewey, 1916). Similarly, Erving Goffman and George Herbert Mead’s interactionist theories of games, role-play, performance and frames are used to describe the knowledge that emerges through the social organisation of educational gaming (Mead, 1934; Goffman, 1959, 1961a, 1974). Finally, the theoretical model of the dissertation draws upon Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogic communication in order to describe the representational knowledge of educational gaming which in The Power Game primarily refers to spoken dialogue (Bakhtin, 1981, 1984a, 1986). The aim of integrating these three complimentary theoretical perspectives is to develop an analytical framework, which makes it possible to foreground (and background) particular aspects of game-based knowledge. This is based on the assumption that the meaningmaking processes of educational gaming emerge through a dynamic interplay between scenariobased inquiry, social interaction and dialogical communication.

Analytical findings
By describing the empirical data from a design perspective, a teacher perspective and a student perspective, the dissertation presents a number of different analytical findings. The first analytical perspective maps the design, adaptation, and re-design of The Power Game by exploring the discrepancy between the intention of creating a “realistic” election scenario, the actual enactment of the game and the successive responses from the participating teachers and students. As the findings indicate, the initial intention of creating a realistic educational game was gradually transformed into an attempt to ensure the relevance of particular game elements. The attempt to balance realistic game elements with the relevance criteria of the educational context is thus described as a question of achieving relevant realism. Another design hypothesis is explored on the value of combining the students’ game participation with selected online video clips. Even though teachers and students gave positive responses to both types of learning resources, the combination of game activities and computer activities created a clash between different interpretive frames. These examples show how the design of educational games requires decisions on what knowledge aspects should be foregrounded and validated at the expense of others.

The second analytical perspective describes the game sessions as seen from a teacher perspective. In order to execute the election scenario, the five teachers had to re-define their familiar teacher roles as instructors to facilitators. When understood as a dialogical form of pedagogy, the teachers also tried to authorise the students’ participation in the game sessions. Finally, the teachers evaluated the subject-related content and the general pros and cons of the educational game. By comparing how the teachers taught with and reflected on the same game, three pedagogical approaches concerning the game emerged. More specifically, the teachers interpreted the game scenario as a scripted, a performative and an explorative form of teaching. The difference between the three approaches was particularly clear in the way that the teachers authorised the game results in the end-of-game discussion. Thus, one teacher promoted particular interpretations of the game which were only partially related to the students’ game experience. Two teachers chose to let the assertions and results of the game determine possibilities for interpretation, while two other teachers explored and validated multiple different interpretations of the game session. These three pedagogical approaches also indicated three different epistemological views on the subject-related knowledge of the game scenario. The scripted approach mostly focused on the “facts” of the game and validated game-based knowledge as being either “true” or “false”. The performative approach viewed game knowledge as an entertaining contrast to the more “serious” knowledge of upper secondary education. Finally, the inquiry-based approach validated the students’ game-based knowledge as a construction and re-construction of hypotheses.

The third analytical perspective describes the five game sessions from a student perspective by focusing on the students that played politicians, which was by far the most significant and demanding role. In order to appear convincing in the eyes and ears of their classmates, these students imitated the debate practices of professional politicians. For example, the students tried to avoid losing “face” or, in their own words, “being butchered” by their political opponents. In order to meet this demand, the students had to have social competence when navigating in the strategic knowledge game of the election scenario. Similarly, the politicians positioned themselves within the dialogical game space through ideological voices that were parodic, personalised, professionalised and/or reproductive. In this way, the students had to demonstrate communicative competence in order to appear persuasive and trustworthy to their classmates. Finally, the politicians generated hypotheses on the possible consequences of presenting and defending their different key political issues. This meant that the students had to enact scenario competence in order to predict outcomes of their actions and make creative decisions. These three competencies all address significant aspects of being educated as democratic citizens. At the same time, several students also questioned the validity of their “soft” game knowledge” in relation to the prevalent “hard” knowledge forms of the upper secondary educational context.

Conclusion
Through a theoretical and empirical analysis of educational gaming, this dissertation has contributed with practice-oriented knowledge on game design, game pedagogy and game competencies. Generally speaking, the educational use of games can be understood as a tensionfilled meeting between two knowledge traditions. On the one hand, teachers and students both regarded the adaptation of The Power Game as a valuable form of teaching, which could be described as a staged and focused form of problem-based project work with verbal presentations. On the other hand, the students’ game-based knowledge was given an ambivalent status as their game competencies were difficult to integrate with the existing validation criteria within the curricular and pedagogical context of upper secondary education. This reflects how educational gaming facilitates contingent knowledge, which can be difficult to legitimise even though it is able to add new perspectives and unfold scenario-based hypotheses within the dialogical space of teaching and learning.