The second part of three posts based on my JALTCALL 2022 keynote.

2. “Mattering”

This is about what matters in games and in ludic language pedagogy.

What does “matter” mean? A dictionary definition:

“To be important or significant” Ok, that’s simple enough. So, what’s important? What’s significant? So, what matters?

I’m all over the map on the answer to that question of what matters.

At times, I’ve thought that everything matters, which of course it does. Everything has value. Everything connects to everything. Little levers and gears and knobs and relationships all influence other things. Students, teachers, researchers, websites, social media, government, local situations…  everything matters equally. But thinking this way can definitely be overwhelming. If everything matters, then everything can and needs to be thought about and influenced, then one has to consider everything all the time. But of course that can lead a person to nervous breakdowns and burnout. Speaking from experience….

Or on the other hand, I’ve at times thought that nothing matters. Which of course is true. JALTCALL, games, me, you, the earth, our schools, our students, everything we see, do, say, or try is a tiny blip that cannot influence the entirety of the universe in any meaningful way. And so we should just give up. Like, now. But of course that can turn a person into a cynical, bitter, pokey jerk. Speaking from experience….

We can and should CHOOSE to MAKE something MATTER.

I have decided (for this, for my work) that you matter. Your students matter. Good teaching matters to your students. Good research matters, if it connects to good teaching.

3. “SHIPMENT51” themes

I’m going to be using some themes and concepts throughout this. These themes will connect to my perspective on what really matters in games and play in researching and teaching language.

Here’s my Shipment 51. It was reviewed pretty well in 110%4gamerRZ Magazine. 😉 

Sustainability

Definition: the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level.

In JALTCALL/LLP: New tech is always appearing in research and classes. Are we using new and old technology in wise ways? Policies and trends bounce around. Are we creating and maintaining sustainable teaching and research standards as well as relationships with students and each other? 

Are our research agendas maintainable? Can we continue to teach at sustainable quality levels? Are we balancing work, home, health and society in our lives and work? 

Hype cycles

A hype cycle is a graphical and conceptual presentation of the maturity of emerging technologies through five phases: a trigger, inflated expectations, disillusionment, enlightenment, productivity. In JALTCALL/LLP, as I just said, there are numerous tech triggers. There is also plenty of tech disillusionment.

I recently looked at well cited game based language learning articles and rarely saw teaching actions mentioned or discussed.

deHaan, J. (2020). Game-based language teaching is vaporware (Part 1 of 2): Examination of research reports. Ludic Language Pedagogy (2), 115-139.

Cornillie et al (2012) showed less and less interest in teaching. What effect does this trend have on expectations and disillusionment?

Cornillie, F., Thorne, S. L., & Desmet, P. (2012). ReCALL special issue: Digital games for language learning: challenges and opportunities: Editorial Digital games for language learning: From hype to insight?. ReCALL, 24(3), 243-256.

Can (or how does) research influence us to help us reach tech enlightenment and productivity in our research and in our classes? Does tech actually even matter? Can we distance ourselves and our students from the tech a bit to ask about other things that matter?

Integration

Integration means the combination of technology and teaching. (Puentedura, 2006) outlines Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition. Look at the bottom and then the top. Are we substituting new games without changing how we teach or research? Can games actually give us a way to create new ways of teaching and learning (I think they can… I’ll share my approach later)? The field is stuck at the bottom.

It’s really about thinking differently about both pedagogy and content that moves us out of the bottom in any way that matters.

(2) Reaching the goal:How can teaching help? (3) Reaching the goal:How can games/play help?

(1) THINK ABOUT THE GOAL FIRST:Short term vocabulary differences? 😠Empowering learners? Improving school / society? 😁Mattering?Making a difference?

Jeff Kuhn recently published a lovely article on the history of DGBLL and the failure to integrate games into teaching. He argues for a “backwards design” approach to integration. NOT starting with technology first and then thinking about what we can do, but rather starting with the goal of education and then thinking about how first pedagogy and then games can be used to reach those goals. 

I think this nicely sums up the majority of goals for writers, academics and researchers on games in language learning.

Blinders on. Vocab from hell to breakfast. Does vocabulary …. Matter? Does an overfocus on vocabulary …. Matter? Does focusing on vocabulary instead of other goals … make sense? What other goals should we be thinking about?

If the purpose of education is to develop students’ interests and abilities to participate, as they wish, in various private, public and professional areas of life, then games, if used at all, should directly facilitate students’ reaching this goal.

deHaan, J. (2019). Teaching language and literacy with games: What? How? Why? Ludic Language Pedagogy, 1, 1-57. https://doi.org/10.55853/llp_v1Art1

And of course we can talk more about backwards design, exploratory pedagogy, reflexive pedagogy if you want….

Praxis

“an integrated approach to engaging theory with research and teaching practices … a dialogic back-and-forth between action and reflection grounded in reasoning and experience” (Reinhardt, 2018, p.2)

Zhou (2016) argues that continued experimental studies make it difficult for teachers to“adopt or to implement” (p.4) games. This is my little ranty hill to die on. I see research and practice diverging. Researchers are doing short term small group experimental studies or large scale surveys. Teachers are perpetuating weak forms of language and communication. Teachers don’t access or can’t use research, and research doesn’t consider teachers; The best ways to get published don’t make a difference in the classroom. These sides do not have a shared theory of learning to draw them together, nor do their efforts talk to each other. I’m sick of paywalled articles with mullings of potential, and throw away “implications” for practice.

There is a huge need for projects that have praxis baked in: classroom based teaching drawing on theory and research that makes a difference for teachers and students and society , and not requiring that teachers access paywalled research articles that pay lip service to teaching with throw away “implications” for practice.

Can we work together to design, run, and publish game-based praxis-driven CALL? 🤔

M is NOT for MOTIVATION

M is NOT for MOTIVATION. Too many game-related projects focus on motivation.

Jules crafted one of my favorite quotes in the game literature: 

“For a game-based activity to be educational, we need more than engagement in general, we need cognitive engagement with the subject matter. And we need more than motivation for entertainment, but we need to foster motivation to learn. With this in mind, a game-based activity will more likely be an educational one: one that will prepare learners for experiencing the world in richer ways; that is, that will prepare them for future learning. This, we believe, is the greatest, as yet unfulfilled, promise of computer games.”

Filsecker, M., & Bündgens-Kosten, J. (2012). Behaviorism, Constructivism, and Communities of Practice: How pedagogic theories help us understand game-based language learning. In H. Reinders (Ed.) Digital Games in Language  Learning and Teaching (pp. 50-69). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Of course motivation is important, but the field needs to move beyond asking “do students like games?” to questions like “how can teachers help students meaningfully apply their motivations for many things in meaningful work in and outside the classroom?”

Is this what education’s about? 

What games and education are about? Rewards or punishments – which are pretty much the same thing. Are rewards and punishments all that games can do? I don’t think so!  Let’s drop the stick, drop the carrot and bring some meaning to the field. Yes, it’s going to be hard to do more meaningful things and more things that matter. I’m fine with that. I think you should be, too. 

And for those of you interested in gamification, James published a wonderful paper in Digital Culture and Education: HOW IS GAMIFICATION LIKE BEING TRAPPED IN THE MATRIX? AND WHAT IS THE ‘REAL-WORLD’ OF GAME-BASED LEARNING? Read, and share. Red pill others, please.

M is for mediation

Mediation is the interaction that teachers have with students before, during and after gameplay and other activities. For example, explaining, modeling, framing, guiding, questioning, prompting, giving feedback and so many other actions.

Yes, teachers/researchers can choose games and make worksheets, but they can (and this is RARELY shown in the research literature) also interact with students during and after gameplay.

Methods, Materials and Mediation make game based teaching and research DELICIOUS!!  MMM!!!

York, J. & deHaan, J. (2021). Ludic Language Pedagogy is MMM … way more delicious than digital game-based language learning. Ludic Language Pedagogy, 3, 21-25. https://doi.org/10.55853/llp_v3Pg1

Digital games CAN provide feedback to learners. But teachers are still the ultimate interactive technology. They help students take successful gameplay experiences into discussions and further learning and doing. 

There are not enough research projects that investigate or detail what teachers do and say before, during and after gameplay. This is a huge missed opportunity, a goldmine, for teachers and researchers to make a name for themselves in the field. 

Can we stop describing games so much? Can we describe teaching a bit more? Please?!

Empty babble

Talk for its own sake  (ala Pennycook, 1994).

I know some people will argue with me about this. Some people and some students enjoy and find meaning in “just talking” or “just using” the language in the CLT classroom. Which is fine. But is that the only type of interaction that students can and should be having in the classroom? 

I challenge my students to raise their hand and ask me or each other “so what?” or “who cares?” once a class or a semester. 

What does just talking result in? Fluency? Sharing? Practice? Fine. But what other goals should we set, and what kind of communication inside and outside the classroom should we be striving for? And what kind of classes and teacher actions will get students doing that?

We don’t have to stamp out all the empty babble. It’s our jobs as teachers (and researchers) to mediate game-based learning to add to and go beyond empty babble. Which can be done by thinking about what the ultimate goals for our classrooms and research projects are.

Much of the literature on teaching language with games is missing an ideological backbone, ignoring fundamental purposes and processes of education. 

deHaan, J. (2019). Teaching language and literacy with games: What? How? Why? Ludic Language Pedagogy, 1, 1-57. https://doi.org/10.55853/llp_v1Art1

If the purpose of education is to develop students’ interests and abilities to participate, as they wish, in various private, public and professional areas of life, then games, if used at all, should directly facilitate students’ reaching this goal.

Once you start to ask “why am I using games (OR X)  in the classroom or the lab?”, you’ll probably find that there will be much less “empty babble” and instead discussions and conversations that are focused, humane, purpose-driven and more enjoyable to boot than “did you like the game?”

Why are we using games in teaching and research? What do games really add to our teaching and learning? Do games matter? What “good” are they? Games: So what?

If you dare, ask your students “so what?” 😉 ask yourself, as a teacher, or researcher, about your own work… “So what?” “Why does this matter?” Please keep asking me “so what?” 😉

Normalization

“The state in which the technology is so embedded in our practice that it ceases to be regarded as either a miracle cure-all or something to be feared” (Chambers & Bax, 2006). Games — a miracle cure-all? Games — something to be feared? Still pretty popular opinions, I think.

Thinking only about technology keeps technology from being normalized. To normalize a technology is to consider how it will be used — in what context and for what kind of learning. (Bax, 2011) 

Stephen Bax, S (2011). Normalisation Revisited: The Effective Use of Technology in Language Education. International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching 1(2), 1-15, April-June 2011

Normalization work makes sure that EXPERT INTERVENTION is connected to technology use; teachers scaffolding, modeling and challenging in order to bring about better learning. Doing this would mean moving from one-off experimental studies in labs to an “action research” model of creating, trying, reflecting on and continuing interventions with learners and technologies in classes.

What pedagogy or research would treat games like we treat pencils? It’s worth a long discussion and lots of great scholarship together.

Transformation

“to increase students’ mastery of key course concepts while transforming their learning-related attitudes, values, beliefs, and skills.” Slavich and Zimbardo (2012)

I like that transformation includes skills and coursework, but also other holistic and interpersonal aspects. 

PLEASE check out https://www.humanrestorationproject.org/ 

I’m concerned that neoliberal education narrows the range of human potential and also the range of teaching and research that we do. To see change, we focus only on what we know we can change: some vocabulary increases or a bit of speaking fluency.

To make CALL/LLP matter a bit more, How about this:

A) Let’s get to know our students/subjects more.

B) Let’s collaboratively set some broader, more lofty, more humane, more transformative learning goals.

→ Let’s figure out how to get them from A to B.    

Teachers lead development. Teachers can lead students’ radical and humane transformations.

To understand who our students are and who they want to be before we can hope to help them transform towards their goals, we have to ask them.

deHaan, J. (2020). Language and literacy teaching with games: the “who” and transformative actions. Ludic Language Pedagogy, 2, p.162-186. https://doi.org/10.55853/llp_v2Pg8

We have to MEDIATE.

Can we TRANSFORM our teaching and research to be more … TRANSFORMATIVE?

50(L) Literacy

“the ability to read and write.”

We can expand that to include experiences (all kinds of media, not just printed text) and to understand those experiences deeply and to connect understandings to society and culture, and to participate using text, media and other things in society (reading and writing culture, another nod to Freire: reading the world and the word, and writing the world and the word)

“the ability to experience and to understand and to participate.”

There’s a huge untapped potential in CALL and teaching with games. We can matter more by thinking about deeper and broader literacies. 

Language and literacy

• Other genres (reviews, tweets, emails, streams)
• Other contexts – personal, public, professional, academic, hobby, online, in communities
• Other audiences
• Society / power / technologies / meanings

Students’ game literacy 

• to play, understand and make games (Gee, Zagal)
• Using games to participate in society

Teacher’s pedagogical literacy 

• Exposure to, study of and application of different methods
• Things like connected learning, project based learning, edu punk, pedML, media literacy education

1(I) Impact

Paulo Pedercini explores “impact” in that talk I mentioned earlier. it’s one the best talks ever given on games and learning and research. 

He discusses impact’s complexities and difficulties (and conditioning or possibly even brainwashing involved) in truly measuring the effect one thing has on another.

He also critiques sustainability: we researchers get funding, make a game, test it with a few or a few thousand gamers, the funding dries up and the game becomes abandonware. What impact does this model have for students or society? Any?

We shouldn’t be chasing easy but non-impactful changes: narrow vocabulary increases, gamified motivation spikes or likes or shares on social media. We need to consider long term, sustainable impact, which means that we need to think about smaller, meaningful (grassroots) projects that are designed to be continued.

Even if we accomplish those things, we’ll still struggle to measure impact.

So, Paulo offers a radical reframing and solution to this that’s been a good mantra for me: make ourselves obsolete. EMPOWER people to make games (or anything) to enact the change THEY want.

You know what to do: don’t hand out fishes. Teach people to fish for themselves. To have real impact: Empower learners. Help them make, research, communicate and thrive in their own self-defined ways

Can we teach our students to do research? To talk to others in humane ways? To make games? and to decide what impact THEY want to have?.

Can we make ourselves obsolete? 😉 That’s honestly how we might have the most impact.

Ok, so there is it. My Shipment 51.

• Sustainability
• Hype Cycles
• Integration
• Praxis
• Mediation
• Empty babble
• Normalization
• Transformation
• 50(L) Literacy
• 1(I) Impact

I’m going to call back to those themes throughout the remainder of this (and in my career, too…) 😉

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• Part 1: Introduction
• Part 3: Avoiding pitfalls and mattering together