Video Games, Learning, and the Shifting Educational Landscape

Abstract

Video games are changing our imagination of what constitutes as learning, what we should learn, and how we learn. In this paper, I describe the ways in which video games mediating our realities are reshaping parts of United States’ educational landscape. Specifically, I focus my review on three slices of this larger educational landscape, including the discourses on literacy learning, informal learning, and game- based pedagogies. Here, video game playing is seen and argued as a form of literacy learning where players are learning to encode and decode meaning through this medium for active cultural participation in both societies at large and the specific video game cultures. However, when these cultural practices are situated within a stratified and hegemonic society operating under neoliberal logics, it is unclear who are we serving with these interpretations of learning.