How computer games help children learn - Wiley Online Library

THE BOOKS John L. Rudolph, Section Editor

How Computer Games Help Children Learn, by David Williamson Shaffer. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY, USA, 2006. xii + 242 pp. ISBN 978-1-4039-7505-8. Newspaper articles, policy reports, and research reviews about the educational promise of digital games and virtual worlds have recently moved into the center of public attention. This excitement must remind some of the early discussions about computers in schools that were announced with equal fanfare just a few decades ago. The promise of computers in schools has since received a great deal of critical scrutiny, and, although debates over their effectiveness has receded into the background, a number of scholars have recently initiated a long-overdue conversation about digital games and their pedagogical value, starting with Gee’s book What Video Games Can Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2003). A generation of kids has grown up playing digital games and continues to do so in their adulthood. Thus the idea of computer games for learning, or “serious games” as they are also called, seems within reach and reason. The publication of Shaffer’s book moves straight to the heart of the matter. At its core is an argument for a particular genre of digital educational experiences he calls “epistemic games”—a concept for which Collins and Ferguson (1993) deserve the credit. Epistemic games, he explains, are based on epistemic frames, around which the work of creative professionals is organized. An epistemic frame, he defines as a “collection of skills, knowledge, identities, values and epistemology that professionals use to think in innovative ways.” Also included in the idea are “real-world skills, high standards, and professional values, and a particular way of thinking about problems and justifying solutions” (p. 12). Many will recognize connections to cognitive apprenticeship and legitimate peripheral participation in this definition. Shaffer builds on these ideas but situates them in a context of role playing in imagined worlds where students make judgments and develop solutions according to the rules of the “game” in question. He claims that, for instance, in the context of a debate over the interpretation of historical events, “the rules of the imaginary world of the game do a better job in representing what it means to think like a historian than the traditional text-lecture-and-recitation of many history classes” (p. 29). Shaffer argues that if we want to design computer games that simulate aspects of what professionals do in their work, we need to create epistemic games that can help learners understand and apply the practices of the domain. In his book, Shaffer provides five different examples (six, if you include the debating game) of epistemic games and reports findings from observations and interviews with small groups of participants. Throughout the book, he weaves in concepts from contemporary educational psychology, research on learning in academic disciplines, and design and professional practice. While many of his observations and findings remain descriptive, they provide the reader with a sense that learning with epistemic games is complex and multifacetted and could have important implications for classrooms. (All the interventions


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except one take place on weekends, or in after school and summer camp programs with a small, yet ethnically diverse number of voluntary student participants.) For instance, in the Digital Zoo game, players use the SodaConstructor, a spring-mass based modeling system, to design and simulate moving creatures much like an animation designer, robotic scientist, or a biomechanical engineer would. Using the SodaConstructor “players join design teams, to work on a series of engineering design projects, . . . leading to the construction of virtual objects and creatures.. . . The teams develop innovative solutions by repeating basic steps of engineering: designing, building, and testing alternative solutions to problems” (p. 44). The recorded conversations of student teams, their notebook and Sodaconstructor designs, and exit interviews indicate that their designs became more complex after playing the game, that they learned from their design mistakes, and mastered key technical concepts and terms in the process. Another game was the Pandora Project, which emphasized values in professional practices by illustrating “how learning to think like a professional means learning to value things professionals think about as important, interesting and meaningful” (p. 105). This epistemic game offered a scenario where a hypothetical biomedical breakthrough opens up the possibility for xenotransplantation, the transfer of organs between different species. As they consider the risks involved, such as the spread of animal viruses to humans, players take on the role of negotiators using the mutual gains approach and identify trade-offs and best alternatives as they develop consensus on the most sensible health policy. Results from students’ participation in the project indicate that they began to respect multiple perspectives and were able to transfer this understanding to related situations. Other epistemic games Shaffer describes include science.net, in which players “become journalists reporting on the scientific and technological breakthroughs for an online newsmagazine” (p. 135). To help younger students, a computer-based system called “ByLine” provides prompts that guide students to communicate the findings to a larger audience according to the genres and practices prevalent in the journalistic profession. In Escher’s World, students adopt the role of computer-aided designers using transformational geometry, tessellations, and fractals to create designs. This game introduces students to “a microworld of points, lines and angles and polygons and the mathematical functions that can relate them to each other” (p. 84). Finally, Urban Science positions students as urban planners in charge of developing a pedestrian mall in their city, helping them consider the various social impacts of such work. One of Shaffer’s goals with the proposal of epistemic games is to move beyond the traditional academic disciplines found in schools to professions such as urban planning, medicine, and journalism. The virtual worlds of video and computer games, he argues, “make it possible for players to learn by doing things that matter in the world on a massive scale” (p. 191) and can recreate the practices inherent in the epistemic frames of these various professions. Thus, epistemic frames for professional practice, in this conceptualization, offer applications and illustrations of discipline in action. The focal point of Shaffer’s argument is the idea of epistemic practice—the idea that if we put learners into the shoes of professional scientists, engineers, and journalists, they can adopt their mindsets. This idea is not, of course, without its critics. Researchers Brown and Campione (1994) have argued that “even without an appreciation for daily life in grade school, the armchair philosopher must see the impracticality of suggesting that children be encultured into the society of historians, biologists, mathematicians, and literary critics. This may be the desired state of first-rate graduate school education, but it is surely not a reasonable expectation for grade school” (p. 190). While epistemic games may emulate certain activities and artifacts of professional practice, such as the design critiques and presentations, they omit others that are key to Science Education

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professional learning and experience, such as the role of economic pressures, marketing, cross-functional teams, and age differences. Choices of some of these features are obviously based on pedagogical needs and demands. Shaffer himself admits that the goal of epistemic games is not to train future urban planners but rather to provide a more authentic context for students’ inquiries. This desire for authenticity is not new (project-based learning is a notable example with a long history). But it seems to be at odds with the game side of his proposal. Game researchers often invoke Huizuinga’s (1938/1955) magic circle that describes play as a free and meaningful activity, bound by a self-contained system of rules, and carried out segregated (spatially and temporally) from the requirements of practical life. The professionalization seems to pull the epistemic games into two opposing directions: inside the circle for assumed role-play but outside the circle for assumed authenticity. Furthermore, the notion of epistemic games seems to take certain liberties with the very idea of “game.” While Shaffer‘s epistemic games are described as imagined worlds with rules in which players assume particular roles, their close ties to authentic professional practice put them much more squarely into the field of simulations rather than games. Throughout the book, in fact, terms such microworlds, simulations, and modeling tools are used after the example has been introduced as an epistemic game to describe the activities performed by students. The curricular software designed by Shaffer and his students follows a longstanding trend in educational technology to customize professional visualization and library tools for learners. This might help explain why the epistemic games described by Shaffer bear little resemblance to commercially available video or online games. Shaffer’s games are much more like educational software tools that have already established their curricular relevance. This focus on professional practice points toward an even larger issue, that of epistemology itself. The nature of knowledge is at the very core of the scientific enterprise. Yet it is also, perhaps, one of its most debated issues. Feminist researchers have argued for a long time that what is accepted as scientific inquiry is actually part of a political discourse within the scientific community. This book treats epistemology as a monolith. A crucial question that needs to be asked of Shaffer’s vision is whose professional practice or epistemology has been adopted in the service of education? Returning to the examples presented in the book, it appears that little discussion of this sort has informed the design and analysis of his epistemic frames. Perhaps this is something to be addressed in future research—the book brings little to bear on this key issue. With epistemic games, Shaffer has introduced a new perspective that will move beyond the drill-and-practice computer games often used in schools as motivational tools to reward students for completed assignments. Although his book presents an argument that should be of interest to science education, it also invites a number of questions that pertain to the core of the nature and practice of science. Some might argue that this proposal is too far removed from the realities of K-12 education. But if we want to entertain the possibilities of digital games for learning, then the idea of epistemic games can help us broaden our discussion. REFERENCES Brown, A., & Campione, J. (1994). Guided discovery in a community of learners. In K. McGilly (Ed.), Classroom lessons: Integrating cognitive theory and classroom practice (pp. 229 – 272). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Collins, A., & Ferguson, W. (1993). Epistemic forms and epistemic games: Structures and strategies to guide inquiry. Educational Psychologist, 28(1), 25 – 42. Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy? New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Huizinga, J. (1955). Homo Ludens: A study of the play element in culture. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. (Original work published 1938)

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BOOK REVIEWS YASMIN B. KAFAI Graduate School of Education & Information Studies University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA 90095-1521 USA DOI 10.1002/sce.20261 Published online 10 January 2008 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).

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