Production, perception, and enjoyment of digital games in language arts

In homage to the century of AERA and Dewey’s influences on pedagogical thinking and practices throughout the world, this paper revisits Art as Experience to theorise some of the data generated as part of the research project, Serious Play: Digital Games, Learning and Literacy for twenty first century schooling (Beavis et al, 2012-2015). In Art as Experience, Dewey (1934) wrote: we have no word in the English language that unambiguously includes what is signified by the two words “artistic” and “esthetic.” Since “artistic” refers primarily to the act of production and “esthetic” to that of perception and enjoyment, the absence of a term designating the two processes taken together is unfortunate (p.53). This paper considers the processes undertaken by a group of fourth grade elementary students as they have “an experience” of producing their own digital games in a school context where the production, perception and enjoyment of the games is a literacy act of ‘impassioned learning’ (Dezuanni & O’Mara, forthcoming). Taking Dewey’s ideas with Gee’s encouragement that we should use the “fruitful principles of learning that game designers have hit on”, regardless or not whether we are using games (2005, p. 6, 2007), the paper considers the role of the teacher and the teachers’ beliefs in shaping this process as learning (Beavis et al, 2014) and how this artistic/esthetic production contributes to the students’ literacy learning. In this digital game-making project the young students made their own digital games using Scratch, produced picture story books of the narratives of the games, packaging and marketing materials for their game and played each others’ games. While this project cuts across several curriculum areas, it was primarily designed as a language and literacy project, with composition of these interlinked texts at the centre of the curriculum. This case-study data used in this chapter was collected from one teacher and his classes over a three-year period. The teacher reworked the project in an ongoing way, based upon his reflections on the classroom practice, so that with each iteration the digital game-making project became more refined and the language and literacy outcomes were more clearly articulated. In this paper, there is a focus on one particular artistic/esthetic experience, where older Ninth Grade students from middle school visited the elementary school students to view and review their games, bringing their own expertise as game makers to the task. Beavis, C., et al. (2014) Teachers’ beliefs about the possibilities and limitations of digital games in classrooms. E-learning and Digital Media. 11.6. Dewey, J (1934) in John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Abraham Kaplan (1987) The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925-1953, Volume 10: 1934, Art as Experience Edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Dezuanni & O’Mara (Forthcoming) “Impassioned Learning with Minecraft” in Beavis, C (Ed) Serious Play: Digital Games, Literacy and Learning. Routledge. Gee, J. P. (2005). "Learning by Design: good video games as learning machines". E-Learning 2 (1): 5–16. Gee, J.P. 2007. What Video Games Can Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. (2nd Edition) New York: Palgrave.