Post # 10, Bogost Chapters 8-11

Bogost shifts his message in the final chapters of his book to the actual application (pedagogy) of the theories and principles he's explicated on thus far. He introduces two contrasting methods of learning, the behaviorist method, and the constructivist method. When we speak of education in the Western perspective, we are speaking of a didactic pedagogy in which information is transferred from the teacher and accompanying texts to the student in a classroom setting. The method that is most often used for this in Western society is the behaviorist method.


Behaviorists posit that learning is all about reinforcement. We respond, according to this logic, to positive and negative incentives (in the case of teaching, these positive and negative incentives come in the form of letter grades--A & B = good, C, D, & F = bad). Because we are also creatures of habit, behaviorist argue, we also learn via repetition. Ergo, put in a child in a classroom, and run through a teaching "drill" that repeats valuable and good knowledge, all the while expressing the necessary positive and negative reinforcement, and that child will come away from the process well educated. It sounds good on paper, but the reality isn't quite so simple. In reality, this method disregards the importance of the personal aspect of learning. Behaviorism, so caught up in it empirical observations, does not account for the subjectivity in our natural learning process. Behaviorism wants to assume that we are all wont to learn in the exact same manner, and this simply isn't true.


Constructivists posit that "the learner 'constructs' knowledge individually, that learning is inseparable from the learner's interaction with the environment." (234). Constructivism focuses education around the individualized cognitive development. We are already very familiar with this type of learning as it is usually the first type of learning we are introduced to in Western schools. Kindergarten (literally "children's garden") is constructivism. In this form or learning, you are encouraged to engage with your environment, to go where your interests draw you, to engage with your surroundings and fellow students. In kindergarten, play was indistinguishable from learning. They were one and the same. It's odd, but until I read Bogost's book, I'd never really given much thought to how kindergarten differed so much from grades 1-12. I mean, I knew there was a difference, but I never focused on what that difference was--that kindergarten made learning fun, and every grade afterwards was less so. The behaviorist take on learning robbed education of much of its inherent fun.

So how does this apply to videogames as educational tools? A behaviorist take on a video game would focus on how a videogame represents a real world process or material, and then judge it based on whether it conveyed these surface aspects adequately, and whether or not what was being conveyed reinforced something that was "good" or "bad." For example, Ninja Gaiden would be said to convey something bad, i.e. killing and overall ninja-badassery. A constructivist look at video games would focus on the abstracts and open engagement that a videogame allows. But the point Bogost makes when pointing out the differences in the two teaching philosophies is not that one is necessarily better than another. In fact, videogames are good learning tools because they combine the best parts of each philosophy. When people play videogames they are learning procedural literacy by way of the abstracts in the game. Those abstracts are models/facsimeles of real world materials or processes. Videogames teach a biased perspective about how these real world materials or processes work. These perspectives are taught via procedural rhetorics that the players “read” through direct engagement and criticism (by playing the game).


The values placed on education can change it drastically from one person or group to the next. Bogost points out that Liberals and Conservatives view the state of education in America very differently. Liberals believe that more money should be spent on education in order to extend equal opportunities to children in poorer districts, and in order to raise the level of pay for teachers to a level comparable to other professionals. Conservatives, on the other hand, believe that too much money is being put into a system that doesn't produced the desired results (those results being high scores on standardized tests). Our society immediately favors a behaviorist view of education and any deviation is frowned upon. Thus, we end up with what are known as concentration campuses, where anyone who strays from the rigid norm and learns in a more constructivist manner is somehow punished, ostracized, or singled out.


In chapter 10, Bogost looks at the phenomenon of exergames. He talks a great deal about immensely popular game, Dance Dance Revolution. DDR manages to get players to engage in exercise while enjoying it. This is done primarily because the players don't really consider it to be exercising, which is often boring and too time consuming to be enjoyable, to say nothing of the physical exertion involved. However, by successfully taking exercise and having it presented by the procedural rhetoric of videogames, games like DDR teach players to enjoy something that is undeniably beneficial to them while not always necessarily enjoyable.

Bogost closes his book by stressing that we "recognize the persuasive and expressive power of procedurality." (340). As both players and creators of videogames, we must be aware of procedural rhetoric's ability to help us engage with, comment on, and change our world. Because we create videogames, they reflect back on us and allow us to better understand ourselves, our world, and what we aspire for. This is ultimately the power of videogames in education.


Questions:
1) Would you agree that the curriculum in the M.A.E. (or M.A.P.C.) program at Clemson should be more like the Montessori model of schools?


2) In what ways has No Child Left Behind been counterproductive?


3) Having come to the close of Bogost's book, do you feel that he made a weaker or stronger argument for games as educational tools than Gee?