Recognizing New Literacies: Teachers and Students Negotiating the Creation of Video Games in School

This paper reports initial findings from the first year of a three-year ethnographic study examining how video game creation functions as a learning and literacy practice in secondary school classrooms. Conducted at a large high school in Western Canada, the research centers on two technology teachers who use game design as an entry point for teaching programming, one of whom works with Grade 11 and 12 Programming classes using Kid's Programming Language and the other with Grade 9 and 10 Information Technology classes using Game Maker. The authors situate their work within new literacies theory, arguing that literacy now encompasses visual, multimodal, and digital texts, and that video games may foster skills in navigating digital environments, particularly for boys who are often disengaged from conventional school literacies. They also raise concerns about gender disparities in technology engagement and whether games reproduce hegemonic values.

The methodology combined classroom observations over several weeks, interviews with nine students and two teachers, and a stimulated-recall technique in which students watched recordings of their own work and explained their reasoning. Data were analyzed using NVivo, with major themes identified including programming language acquisition, problem-solving processes, social construction of gaming, individual learning, and the teacher's role. The study is qualitative and limited in scope to one school, so its findings are exploratory rather than generalizable.

The students' accounts emphasized several features they valued: social sharing and peer feedback, a sense of empowerment and personal meaning, self-paced progression supported by instantaneous feedback, and a sense of achievement upon completing a playable product. Teachers described shifting into coaching roles, with students increasingly solving problems independently before seeking help. The authors also note that the open-ended, community-oriented environment resembled the collaborative practices found in gaming communities, though some observers might initially perceive the activity as off-task.

The paper concludes that video game creation fosters sophisticated learning that schools should recognize as valuable rather than dismiss as distraction. However, the authors acknowledge barriers to extending these practices into core subjects, including curriculum requirements, standardized examinations, reliance on textbooks, limited internet access, and parental expectations. Socio-political critical literacy was not explicitly evident in this early stage, a gap the authors identify as an area for continued investigation.