Games vs. School

I’m immensely influenced by the work of James Paul Gee and Elisabeth R. Hayes, both researchers of literacy, who co-authored Women and Gaming. They introduced me to the concept of Passionate Affinity Groups (PAG), communities in which people relate to each other primarily in terms of common interests, endeavors, goals, or practices defined around their shared passion. Gee and Hayes study multiplayer games as a kind of PAG and their observations about how learning occurs within these communities are remarkable when you compare them to the standards of teaching in most schools.

Here are select excerpts:

“Gaming groups are not segregated by age. Newbies, masters, and everyone else share a common space. There is no assumption that younger people cannot know more than older people or have things to teach older people.

School is, by and large, segregated by age with only one adult around (the teacher).”

“Everyone can, if they wish, produce and not just consume. Passionate gamers often create new maps, new scenarios for single-player and multiplayer games, adjust or redesign the technical aspects of a game, create new artwork, and design tutorials for other players. In a passionate affinity group, people are encouraged (but not forced) to produce and not just to consume; to participate and not just to be a spectator.

School stresses consuming what the teacher and textbook says and what other people have done and thought. When students produce (e.g., a writing assignment), they do what they are told because they are told to, not what they want because they have chosen it.”

“Content is transformed by interaction. People comment and negotiate over content and, indeed, over standards, norms, and values.

School content is fixed by teachers, curricula, and textbooks, and the students’ interactions with each other and with the teacher rarely change anything in any serious way (with the proviso that some teachers, of course, try to adapt material for different sorts of learners, though often without these learners having much say in the matter or as much say as the assessments they have been given).”

“Both individual and distributed knowledge are encouraged. A passionate affinity group encourages and enables people to gain both individual knowledge (stored in their heads) and to learn to use and contribute to distributed knowledge.

In school, we are still fighting over whether students should use calculators in math class. There are few deep knowledge tools and technologies around in schools (computers are still too often one to a classroom). Further, students rarely get to trade on each other’s knowledge to supplement their own—in school that is often called “cheating.””

“Tacit knowledge is used and honored; explicit knowledge is encouraged. A passionate affinity group encourages, enables, and honors tacit knowledge: knowledge members have built up in practice, but may not be able to explicate fully in words. Designers in The Sims passionate affinity groups very often learn by trial and error, not by memorizing tutorials and manuals. They have their own craft knowledge and tricks of the trade. Players often pass on this tacit knowledge through joint action when they interact with others via playing the game or helping others design for the game. Not all tacit knowledge can be put into words. At the same time, the passionate affinity group offers ample opportunities for people to learn to articulate their tacit knowledge in words (e.g., when they contribute to a forum thread or engage in group discussion about a shared problem).

In school, unlike in many workplaces, tacit knowledge counts for nothing. Indeed, students often learn to articulate knowledge (say it or write it down) that they cannot apply in practice to solve problems.”

“There are many different forms and routes to participation. People can participate in a passionate affinity group in many different ways and at many different levels. People can participate peripherally in some respects and centrally in others; patterns can change from day to day or across larger stretches of time.

In school, by and large, everyone is expected to participate in the same way and do all the same things.”

“There are lots of different routes to status. A passionate affinity group allows people to achieve status, if they want it (and they may not), in many different ways. Different people can be good at different things or gain repute in a number of different ways.

In school, there are different routes to status (e.g., being a good students, a good athlete, and other things). Unfortunately, in the classroom as a community, too often there is only one route to status, that is, being a “good student,” which means being good at being a student, not necessarily being good at solving problems or innovating.”

“Leadership is porous and leaders are resources. Passionate affinity groups do not have “bosses.” They do have various sorts of leaders, though the boundary between leader and follower is often porous, since members sometimes lead and sometimes follow.

In school, teachers are leaders and bosses—and often see their role as telling, rather than resourcing learners’ learning and creativity—and students are followers.”

“People get encouragement from an audience and feedback from peers, though everyone plays both roles at different times. The norm of a passionate affinity group is to be supportive and to offer encouragement when someone produces something. This support and encouragement comes from one’s “audience,” from all the people who have responded to one’s production. Indeed, having an audience, let alone a supportive one, is encouraging to most producers.

In school, children rarely have any audience who really cares other than the teacher, and feedback comes, by and large, from the teacher, who is not a peer (not simply in the sense of age, but also in the sense of expertise) or someone most students aspire to be like, in terms of what they have a passion for producing and learning. School is not a source of encouragement for many students.”