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In fulfillment of the requirements for EDUC 5863
TASK:
TASK:
As explored in class, how does Marone’s text theorize relations between play, games, and learning? What and how are people learning (differently) through play and making? How do these modes of play challenge traditional educational forms or traditional modes of teaching and assessing learning?
How does Marone’s work make connections between definitions of play (or game play) to support various arguments about learning, deeper learning, and why play and/or games are significant to meaningful learning. How do sociocultural learning theories fit in?
PLAYFUL CONSTRUCTIVISM
PLAYFUL CONSTRUCTIVISM
Marone offers a triangulation of play, design, and participation, where playful constructivism is at the intersection of the three components. The article explores how play through digital gaming is composed of systems, models and microworlds; that game design is composed of programming, modding, and editing; and participation through affinity spaces includes interest-driven places, knowledge resources, and hubs for collaboration. The uniqueness of the digital spaces extends play and game design into shareable spaces where users can participate around the world. The following quote helps to contextualize the Venn diagram into learning spaces and educational psychology.
Digital games, by acting as “virtual more knowledgeable others” and by offering ideal levels ofchallenge in the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978), allow players to be “a head taller than themselves,” extending and expanding their possibilities of doing and being. In this sense, digital games embody a dual nature of challenging and tutoring environments in whichplayers/learners are presented with problems, tasks, and missions that are progressively adjusted to match their current level of competence (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Digital games continuously “tell” players where they are and process their actions to set an ideal level of difficulty, thus enabling them to achieve overlapping short-, mid-, and long-term goals (Squire, 2011). The constant and copious feedback provided by these games (Gee, 2007) can be considered as a form of continuous assessment: the player/learner always knows his/her achievements, current level of knowledge and skills, and what needs to be done next.
Image from Marone, V. (2016)
Image from Brühlmann (2013)
I feel compelled to connect many of these concepts with the current research in the Thinking Classroom in Mathematics (Liljedahl, 2020). Liljedahl discusses fourteen conditions in the math classroom for teachers to implement in order to maximize student learning. In Chapter 5, he alludes to Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of flow to gamify the student learning experience. By balancing the axes of student skills and student challenge, the teacher will provide hints and extensions to keep students in flow so that their skills are met with adequate challenges. The teacher must be aware of the students’ zone of proximal development and help provide constructive opportunities for students to play through the problem solving process. Without the use of badges or levels, the teacher is gamifying the lesson material so that students or groups of students progress through to achieve the lesson target.
Image from Amazon.com
Many mathematics teachers may stumble with the zone of proximal development in mathematics since problem solving requires a balance of content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and curricular knowledge (Shulmann, 1986). This difficult balance means that teachers might know how to obtain the correct answer for a mathematics problem, but they might not know how to break it down into stages for students to progress or how to assess and troubleshoot student responses to provide students with thinking opportunities.
Image from Shulman (1986), found on Dove (2023)
What can digital games do differently with this learning opportunity? The digital aspect, especially with artificial intelligence in mathematics education, may provide students with personalized learning opportunities to help them stay in flow. Through Marone’s triangulation of play, design, and participation, digital games can provide students with flow by reimagining the following mathematics lessons:
Students are given increasing levels of challenge where basic skills are used first to build familiarity with the platform and to ensure success for all students.
The design of the game is programmed, modded, and edited in a way that promote playful interaction and participation through the use of mathematics concepts
Participants can share and provide feedback in a way that does not remove the thinking for the student
The drawback in many mathematics games such as Prodigy or Reflex Math is that students do not need to conceptualize the mathematics but rather they “try again until you get it right”. Students, when faced with a wrong answer, will click on another answer until they get it right. They’re circumventing the thinking because multiple choice questions on a computer means that the right answer is somewhere, and they have to click the right button. According to Marone, this design of instant gratification for the correct answer promotes meaningless learning.
Other math simulations and games, such as Gizmos, Desmos, and Solve.me Mobiles, allow for students to see the error, provide feedback on what the error caused, and provide opportunities for students to manipulate the scenario so that they can obtain the correct answer through an iterative process of trial and error or deductive reasoning. Whether these simulations are effective at replacing a teacher might require more conversation about the inclusion of plan, design, and interactivity in a classroom setting.
References:
References:
Brühlmann, Florian. (2013). Gamification From the Perspective of Self-Determination Theory and Flow. 10.13140/RG.2.1.1181.8080.
Caillois, R. (1958). The Definition of play and the classification of games. In: Man, Play and Games. University of Illinois Press. LINK
Dove, W. (2023). Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Computer Science. Ellipsis Education. https://ellipsiseducation.com/blog/pedagogical-content-knowledge-in-computer-science
Liljedahl, P. (2020). Building thinking classrooms in mathematics, grades K-12: 14 teaching practices for enhancing learning. Corwin press.
Marone, V. (2016). Playful Constructivism: Making Sense of Digital Games for Learning and Creativity Through Play, Design, and Participation. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 9(3).
Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those Who Understand: Knowledge Growth in Teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14. https://doi.org/10.2307/1175860
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