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Program of Study
Introduction
Video games evoke numerous fears, especially in parents and educators: Violence. Addiction.
Inactivity. Attention Deficit. Social Isolation. Media continue to suggest that players consume video
game messages, while the players themselves consistently report that they ‘know real from not real.’
However, most research in this field argues that video game play is more complex than either media or
players recognize.
Objective
This research study is concerned with how best to engage this widespread anxiety, educationally, and
bring research, scholarship and educational practice to bear on a general climate of misinformation and
misunderstandings about the impacts and implications of video game play on its school-aged players.
The objectives of this research are: first, to identify, describe, and critically interrogate the central
areas of concern named above; second, to conduct workshops which educate parents and teachers
about video game play and content, introducing them to research which directly engages with their
fears and hesitations, and offering them an ‘insider’ viewpoint on the range of games available to youth
and the meanings and practices involved in video game play; third, these workshops will also provide
a context for investigating how parents and educators engage adolescents in dialogue about video
games and with what perceived effect. The workshops will address fears about video games, the
learning involved in video game play, and how to engage in critical reflective dialogue with adolescents.
Central Research Questions:
• How can parents’ and educators’ fears be examined and addressed so that they can engage
adolescents in critical thinking about video games?
o What are the fears? Where do the fears come from? How do the media perpetuate the
fears? What do parents and teachers want their children to do with video games? What are
parents’ and teachers’ experiences with video games? What role have they played in their
child’s/students’ video game playing so far?
• In what ways do parents and educators approach critical thinking with their adolescents before
and after participating in the workshops?
o What fears still exist? What do they understand about video game literacy? What do they
understand about video game learning? How do they perceive video game content and
video game play? What have been their experiences with their children and students’ with
videogames since the workshop? What have the conversations looked like? What has the
video game play looked like?
Context
What is being neglected in video game play is the critical examination of the content. NortonMeier (2005) proposes that video game play is “not about the teaching of facts; it is about the action and
interaction of values, dilemmas, and decisions” (p. 430). Gee (2003), Lankshear and Knobel (2003) and
Williams (2005) all urge that video games need to be examined more critically. Lankshear and Knobel
(2003) use the term ‘Attention Economics’ to describe the inundation of new media and forms of
information (cell phones, internet, email, chat rooms, movies, television, etc.) which constantly demands
attention and leaves little time or energy for reflection. These discourses (media, peer groups, schools,
churches, work, etc.), “have their own more or less distinctive language uses and they shape our
identities in particular ways – as we take on their beliefs, purposes, ways of speaking and acting,
moving, dressing, and so on” (Gee as cited in Knobel & Lankshear, 2003, p. 13). The video games that
adolescents are engaging in for numerous hours in the week initiate them into the discourses of the
gaming culture; a culture that has gone largely unquestioned and unexamined except simply to condemn
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the portrayal of violence. A more thoughtful perspective is offered by Henry Jenkins (2000) who says,
“We should instead look at games as an emerging art form – one that does not simply simulate violence
but increasingly offers new ways to understand violence – and talk about how to strike a balance
between this form of expression and social responsibility” (p. 120). It is work of this kind upon which
educators can more profitably build and which underpins the research here proposed.
Video game play can usefully be seen as a powerful literacy practice that many researchers (Gee,
2003; Jenkins, 2000; Knobel and Lanshear, 2003; Prensky, 2001, 2006; Williams, 2005) are
recommending needs to be taken more seriously and incorporated into educators’ teaching and literacy
curricula. In order for parents and educators to understand and mobilize the learning that good video
games can support, they need to first discuss and reflect on their fears and misapprehensions. Video
games provide multiple positive learning opportunities such as problem solving skills, positive
engagement with computers, and practice of “turn taking, risk taking, [and] decision making” (NortonMeier, 2005, p. 429) and “leadership, competition, teamwork and collaboration” with multi-player
games (Jenkins, 2000, p. 120). Parents and educators then need further information and opportunities to
experience video games themselves and they need time and support for reflecting on what they have
learned and see as valuable for students to be engaging with.
Methodology
Theoretical Perspective:
A feminist post-structuralist and critical reflective lens (Bromley & Apple, 1998; Richardson, 2003)
will guide this qualitative research study. Discourses are evidence of how we are socially constructed;
our background experiences, cultures, and beliefs affect the discourses we use and rely on to make
meaning in and of our contexts. By examining the various discourses used by parents and educators as
they explore the context of video games, I will hope to make their discourses evident to them through
ethnographical narratives or poetic representations and provoke further examination of their own cultural
beliefs and values surrounding learning and video games. I have considered drawing on Winnicott’s ( )
theory of play and Freebody and Luke’s (1990) Four Roles/Resources of the Reader.
Methods:
Workshops will be offered to parents and educators in the community about how to engage
adolescents in critical reflection of their literacy practices, using video games. Workshop sessions will be
offered multiple times over a one year period at local recreation centres, Professional Development days,
and for Parent Advisory Committees. Primary data collection will be to interview parents and teachers in
one or two follow –up sessions about their role in their child’s/students’ video game play. Other data
collection could include ongoing webblog responses for parents to contribute to as they learn more about
video games, and observations of parents and child or teachers and students interacting around video
games.
Analysis:
I intend to use NVivo analysis software, version 7 to help me code and identify themes in my data.
Representation:
As mentioned above, in using alternative ways of representing my data I hope to make discourses
available to the partipants and readers to explore the multiple interpretations that are available in the
language and meaning that is shared, and perhaps encourage praxis through the process. I also want to
make the participants’ voices available to the reader as a way of valuing the complexities involved in
parenting, educating, learning and video games.
Conclusion
This research answers the recommendation by Gee (2003), Lankshear and Knobel (2003), Jenkins
(2000), and Williams (2005) to encourage critical reflection of video games. By examining video games
as a literacy practice, parents and educators can more accurately value video games for the learning they
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encourage, but also address the values, interpretations, and assumptions that the video game players are
encountering as they play. This research also speaks to the concerns of educators who worry about the
lack of reflection involved. In addition, the workshops will provide a template for educators and teachers
to address new media literacies. Most importantly, this critical reflection is transferable to critiquing
and analyzing other in-school and out-of-school literacies that shape adolescents’ identities.
References
Bromley, H. & Apple, M. (1998). Education/technology/power: Educational computing as a social
practice. New York: State University of New York Press.
Freebody, P., & Luke, A. (1990). Literacies programs: Debates and demands in cultural context.
Prospect: Australian Journal of TESOL, 5(7), 7-16.
Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Jenkins, H. (2000). Art form for the digital age: Video games shape our culture. It's time we took them
seriously. Technology Review, 117-120.
Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2003). New literacies: Changing knowledge and classroom learning.
Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press.
Norton-Meir, L. (2005). Joining the video-game literacy club: A reluctant mother tries to join the "flow".
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 48(5), 428- 432.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital game-based learning. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Prensky, M. (2006). "Don't bother me mom - I'm learning!" St. Paul, MN: Paragon House.
Richardson, L. (2003). Poetic representation of interviews. In J. F. Gubrium & J. A. Holstein (Eds.),
Postmodern interviewing (pp. 187-201). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Williams, B. T. (2005). Leading double lives: Literacy and technology in and out of school. Journal of
Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 48(8), 702-706.