This paper asks, what should be a fundamental question of educational game designers, “does learning happen through play or the game?”. In asking this difficult question, this paper explores theories of play, cognition, and game design to offer suggestions for curricular developments of play to support disposition (or habits of mind) development, learning, and the possibility space for transfer of learning.
James P. Carse, in Finite and Infinite Games (2011), managed to distill play into just two categories. Incidentally, D. Kahneman and A. Tversky (2011) described mental processes in a paired manner as well. And then Barbara Tversky (2019) added a layer of spatial thinking on top of internal concerns. By mapping these binary language sets on top of one another we can see parallels in observations about learning and action as complete ecosystems which helps explain the relationship between discrete lessons and overarching course goals.
In designing a classroom card game as a template to be filled in by the actions and imaginations of students, rather than prescriptive methods like gamifying existing pedagogy, a bridge was found between those finite lessons and the infinite, life-long pursuit of critical literacies.
This paper discusses the value in considering game design as supporting habit of mind development more than content development, in focusing on how players learn to think and enjoy thinking while playing, to understand how play supports learning.
About the presenterJason Hertz
Graduate student at Millersville University of Pennsylvania.