Vincent, Romain

Bringing video games into the classroom: juvenile gaming cultures through the prism of teaching practices - 2023.


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Video games are one of the latest products of mass culture to enter the classroom and their use, based on pupils’ digital practices, is intended to stimulate motivation and the development of skills. Research on this introduction often focuses on the effectiveness of the devices on learning or how it motivates students, without considering its educational implementation within teaching practices. The aim of this article is to study the encounter between school culture and the recreational device as well as between the recreational culture of teachers and that of their pupils. It is based on the observations and video recording of lessons given by 17 French secondary school teachers in various disciplines, supplemented by interviews with the teachers and some of their pupils. While the media, corporate companies and institutions sometimes talk about the need for teachers to draw on juvenile practices, few pupils know the games their teachers bring into the classroom. If games familiar to pupils are used, teachers may apply a scholarly interpretation of them that is far removed from the relationship maintained by players in their daily lives, which is more focused on pleasure and performance, thus revealing a cultural gap (Dagiral & Tessier 2010) between the recreational cultures of teachers and students. Paradoxically, importing juvenile practices can lead to a distancing of pupils’ personal experience in favor of a more academic apprehension of their leisure activities. This is accompanied by an alienation of girls’ recreational culture and challenges the idea that the scholastic use of mass culture may smoothly contribute to equal opportunities.