What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy

As part of my Doctoral work at DVU I was assigned to read the book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee. In this conversation style book, the author uses the medium of video games to identify and describe new types of learning styles. Gee, who is a trained and practicing linguistics professor, centers the book around his belief that "learning should be frustrating and life enhancing” (Gee 3) and that the key is to find "hard things that enhance life so that people keep going and don’t fall back on learning only what is simple and easy” (Gee 3). For Gee, video games provided the platform to introduce and discuss his comprehensive list of new learning theories. This list was then further developed by completing the video games himself. all of which provide for an interesting intersection between reality and the game world.

Learning theories apply to all of us, including adults. In our profession, we take on a different “superhero” identity beyond mother, father, husband, or wife. Our identity comes with expected professional behaviors, common use of a shared language, and a presumption of attitudes that are akin to one another. In his book, Gee discusses this idea of virtual identities on page 55 by talking about good science classroom instruction. “In a good science classroom, a virtual identity is at stake. Learners need to be able to engage in words, interactions, and actions that allow them to take on the identity of a ‘scientists’ (Gee 55). Gee goes on to explain that scientists as an affinity group use common language and complete various actions as scientists (55).

The idea around affinity groups was most striking to me as I walk the halls of my school. It appears that by the time our students reach fourth or fifth grade they have already enmeshed themselves into different affinity groups. Potentially, this process begins at an even younger age and is maintained through our adult life. Personally reflecting on my own affinity groups, I can identify my participation in a few. A running group, weightlifting partners, a book club these are all examples of my affinity groups. Affinity groups are not necessarily a bad thing. They can help us develop our skills and help to push us through barriers that, individually, we might not have been able to break. As I mentioned earlier, upper-elementary and middle school students are developmentally inclined to form their own affinity groups as they learn to navigate the mean social world that they are now a part of. Walk through any cafeteria of a middle school, and you will see the students broken up into their various affinity groups. Is this necessarily a bad thing? On the outset, I would declare, no. Where it begins to become a problem is when affinity groups try to hold dominance over other affinity groups and vie for positions of power in the social world. Even as adults in society, we can see how affinity groups often compete for top position in our society.

Gee, Paul James (2003). What Video Games Have To Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Griffin.

#intheoffice #workspace