Literacy Learning through Videogames: Adolescent Boys’ Perspectives
Sept 2008 – August 2011
Research Objectives:
This program of research represents an examination of a rapidly growing phenomena, i.e., video games, and the learning that takes place through video game play. It is critical that educators and parents develop a greater understanding of this form of entertainment/educational tool in order to be able to assess its advantages and detriments, and to respond to widely-held but largely unsubstantiated beliefs about video game play.
Working at three differing sites will provide a range of rich opportunities to observe and explore ways that videogame learning transfers across contexts. Additionally, these three groups will afford opportunities to work with the participants over a three-year period, enabling much-needed in-depth research into the participants’ understandings of videogames and the impact on their learning and their understanding of the world. This environment promises to be a rich site for building an extensive research project and developing greater understanding about the literacies that the adolescent participants are learning through videogame play and creation, and the role that gender plays in their learning.
The aims of this research are to examine the following questions:
- What are the literacy skills being learned by boys through videogame play and how do these literacy skills relate to school literacies?
- How do boys understand the relationship between values presented in videogame virtual worlds and their interactions with the real world of family, school, and community?
- How can these issues be addressed in informal and formal/school learning situations with adolescent boys as they play and create videogames?
