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.
Huizinga and Caillois (2006) emphasizes the voluntary nature of play, how disconnected play is from real life. More recently, Juul (2010) focused his discussion of games with players, discussing how players feel attached to game outcomes, and why that value space carries importance. Drawing from Koster’s (2014) discussion of “grokking” as satisfying pattern recognition that humans love to revisit, this paper explores how “pattern recognition” maps to contemporary conversations on habits of mind (Coster and Kallick, 2008). 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 presenterA Nicole Pfannenstiel
Studier of play, the internet, videogames, digital rhetoric, and mostly writing. I enjoy exploring how play helps learners connect to understanding rhetorical situations for empowered learning and learners. Associate Professor of Digital Media, English and World Languages Department at Millersville University.