Cultural Alignment and Game-Based Learning

Culture can be understood as systems that produce and reproduce meaning, or as stable sets of meanings within a community. The authors illustrate how educational games produce and reproduce meaning, both related to the content being addressed and about the educational process itself. Educational gam...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEducational technology Vol. 57; no. 2; pp. 31 - 35
Main Authors Hammer, Jessica, Davidson, Drew
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Educational Technology Publications 01.03.2017
Subjects
Alignment (Education)
Beliefs
Cultural Context
Cultural Education
Educational Games
Educational Technology
Learning Activities
Values Education
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Summary:Culture can be understood as systems that produce and reproduce meaning, or as stable sets of meanings within a community. The authors illustrate how educational games produce and reproduce meaning, both related to the content being addressed and about the educational process itself. Educational games also rely on shared meanings and norms, which can often be sites of conflict among educational stakeholders. Cultural alignment in games, then, is the degree to which the meanings constructed through game mechanics, game content, and the socio-cultural context of gameplay reinforce one another. Current research on educational games suggests that a high degree of alignment should support learning. However, cultural misalignment can also be educationally productive in some situations. To enable both approaches, a reflective process around cultural alignment in games is needed.
ISSN:0013-1962