Application:



Application:

4.1 IDENTIFICATION:

Kathy Sanford

Associate Professor

Faculty of Education

University of Victoria

P.O. Box 3010, STN CSC

Victoria, B.C. V8W 3N4

2. PROJECT DESCRIPTION

1. Detailed description, including:

a) Purpose of the research

This program of research represents the examination of a rapidly growing phenomena, videogames, and the learning that takes place through videogame play. It is critical that educators and parents develop a greater understanding of the “post-literate culture” in which we live (de Castell, 1996) generally, and this form of entertainment/educational tool specifically in order to be able to assess its advantages and detriments, and to respond to widely-held but largely unsubstantiated beliefs about videogame play (Hagood, 2000).

The world of new technologies surrounds us, yet it appears that males are more often, at more sophisticated levels, engaging with new technologies. From pre-school age, it is not uncommon for young boys to spend hours playing videogames, trying out new strategies, puzzling their way through engaging and interactive “texts”. As we have examined boys’ practices with these “texts” (Blair & Sanford, 2004), it has become evident that literacy skills are being learned through new technologies. Agreeing with Gee (2003) and Johnson (2005), this research presents compelling arguments related to sophisticated learning through engagement with videogames. We are aware that videogame play can be powerful interactive learning, and we are also aware that it is predominantly boys who engage in these alternative literacy practices. We have a belief that engagement with videogames affects perceptions of the world and of one’s place in the world. But, if this is true, we do not know how it happens, and what the effects are. There is, then, a disconnect between the discourse that suggests that boys are failing in learning literacy skills, and the discourse that suggests the highly sophisticated literacy skills being learned through engagement with videogames. The objectives of this research are fourfold: 1) to investigate the literacy skills being learned by boys through videogame play and how these skills can be applied in formal schooling contexts; 2) to understand the worldview being taken up by adolescent males’ extensive videogame play and how this might be affecting their understanding of the world and their interactions with family, peers, and community; 3) to consider how these issues can be addressed in both informal and formal learning situations with adolescent boys who have been identified as struggling with traditional practices, as they engage with videogames; and 4) to determine if an educational videogame can be created that is identified by adolescent participants as effective.

If indeed boys are learning important literacy skills through videogame play, which is recognized as a powerful immersive experience, (Friedman,1995; Gee, 2003; Wolf & Perron, 2003; and Johnson 2005), are they also learning other aspects of the world? There is evidence to suggest that videogames are teaching many important literacy skills, but are they also addressing socio-critical literacies? Are videogame players critiquing and challenging the often highly patriarchal, sexist, and racist world that is presented in the videogame, or are they absorbing a world view that emphasizes hegemonic, Eurocentric patriarchal values of competition, rationality, hierarchy based on power, views that support racist and sexist notions of the world? What world views, then, are being learned by extensive videogame play and how is this learning affecting the players’success in literacy and their interaction in the world of family, school, and community? How can these issues be addressed in informal and formal learning situations with gamers as they play and create videogames?

The aims of this research are to examine the following questions:

1. What are the literacy skills being learned by boys through videogame play and how do these literacy skills relate to school literacies?

2. What worldview(s) is being learned by extensive videogame play and how is this affecting boys’ understanding of and interaction in the world of family, school, and community?

3. How can these issues be addressed in informal and formal/school learning situations with adolescent boys as they play and create videogames?

4. How can informal and formal learning opportunities be interfaced, using videogame technology and knowledge to enhance educational requirements in meaningful ways, to address critical literacy learning ?

b) Literature relevant to the conduct of the proposed research

The past decade has given educators, parents, and western society in general a very clear message about boys and their literacy learning – they are doing badly, and the downward spiral of their success in school is a continuing trend. International reports (Programme for International Student Assessment, 2005) and national reports (Government of Canada, 2004), as well as many local initiatives and public media have generated a moral panic regarding boys’ success in school and in post-secondary education – “the trouble with boys”, “alpha girls vs. snail males”, and “report card notes gender gap” encourage the notion that boys’ literacy skills are poor, worse than girls, and that we need to address these concerns in school and family literacy programs. Literacy, however, now encompasses a broader range of texts and of traditional reading and writing skills (Kress, 2003; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Sanford, in press) as children and youth are surrounded by a burgeoning array of technologies that are used for communicating information and ideas (alternative literacies). Recently scholars such as Gee (2003) and Johnson (2005) have suggested that the literacy situation is nowhere near as dire as suggested through reports of high-stakes test scores. Gee has suggested that activities boys are engaging in, such as video games, internet use, chatrooms and blogs, are indeed enhancing their literacy skills. He suggests that videogame creators employ numerous learning principles (e.g., transfer, practice, discovery) and that players (mainly males) are learning a wide array of literacy skills. Further, these are the literacy skills that will enable success in 21st century workplaces and communities. Students are developing skill in “reading” visual, multimodal texts as well as traditional print-based texts of formal schooling; they are developing skill in “writing” through the same number of technologies, i.e., instant messaging, chatrooms, e-mail, MSN, blogs, websites, computer games, as they learn to communicate effectively and efficiently, to create an array of new texts that can be shared with their friends and acquaintances around the world in an instant.

In a society of burgeoning information and technological advances, there is a need to reexamine our commonly accepted definitions of literacy that focus on the reading and writing of print-based texts, in order to provide educational experiences that enable ongoing learning and engagement in today’s world. Alloway and Gilbert (1997), for example, remind us that “what it means to be ‘literate’ is constantly being negotiated and renegotiated as we become increasingly affected by technological and informational change” (p. 51). Youth continually participate in popular media, developing a wide range of skills in understanding and creating texts using alphabetic, visual, and oral semiotic systems in diverse ways. Boys seem to engage more readily and in greater numbers in technological popular media, e.g., video games, computer-based activities, and computer programming, thus developing skill and confidence in navigating digital spaces and new technological tools. Kress (2003) suggests that “it is no longer possible to think about literacy in isolation from a vast array of social, technological and economic factors” (p.1). He sees the “dominance of writing being replaced by the dominance of the image; the dominance of the medium of the book to the dominance of the medium of the screen” (p.1). Literacy now relates to a much broader set of texts including visual, multi-modal, and digital texts that appear in many forms all around us all the time. Gee (2003) reports that “boys are resisting school literacies” where they have repeatedly been unsuccessful, “and instead [are] becoming literate in the semiotic domain of gaming which opens up experiences in different ways of speaking, listening, viewing, and representing” (p.18).

Youth, in particular boys, are finding many literacy activities, largely outside the realm of the school institution, that engage them and sustain long-term interest, e.g., video games (including computer and console systems); these games provide an interesting, engaging, dynamic, social space for many types of boys, both those who succeed at school literacy practices and those who struggle. In videogame play, these boys represent a cross-section of social groups, they can engage without interference or sanction from adults, whenever they choose or when they have opportunities, and in ways that provide social capital for making connections with peers in real-time and virtual spaces. The lack of boys’ success in formal schooling activities, so frequently reported in public press, can, we argue, be framed as resistance, both unconscious and conscious, against meaningless, mindless, boring schooling or workplace activities and assignments; instead, they engage in activities that provide them with active involvement and interest (Smith & Wilhelm, 2002; Blair & Sanford, 2004). Videogame play serves as a form of resistance also to stereotypical views of “boys” as a category who, by virtue of the fact that they are boys, have been categorized as unsuccessful learners – videogames are spaces where boys can be successful in their endeavours.

What it means to be male is also continually being negotiated and renegotiated in today’s society. From a poststructural perspective, there are multiple ways of being a male and creating/negotiating male subjectivities. These multiple and diverse positions open up the possibility of constituting subjectivity as multiple and contradictory (Davies, 1992) – every individual male accesses, performs, and transforms multiple versions of masculinity in various contexts and at various times. There are multiple ways that masculinity is performed; however hegemonic versions of masculinity are most highly valued, that is, performances of masculinity that embody “the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women” (Connell, 1995, p.77). Literacies presented through “legitimate” school practices as well as out of school practices “participate in constructing, circulating and naturalizing gender norms” (Rowan et al, 2002, p.59). As suggested by Gilbert and Gilbert (1998), boys’ and girls’ learning even before they start school has been different: boys’ learning has introduced them to performances of activity and “maverick individualism” (p.205) while girls’ learning has introduced them to performances of submission, passivity, and courtesy. We propose that videogames are supporting particular versions of masculinity and excluding a diverse range of other versions of masculinity.

Theoretical Framework

This research draws on a theoretical framework for literacy learning. As with all learning, literacy learning is affected by our continually changing conceptions of knowledge. As noted by Lyotard (1984) in today’s postmodern world of intensified digitization, knowledge and learning are undergoing rapid shifts; the learner who has technological knowledge and can access information has an advantage. However, schools have not as yet recognized the impact of technology in adapting their practices. Rather, school practices have been focused increasingly on ‘means and techniques for obtaining [optimally] efficient outcomes’ (Marshall 1998, p.8) and not on aims, values, and ideals. As Kress (2003) suggests, four momentous changes related to literacy “are taking place simultaneously: social, economic, communicational and technological” (p.9); the combined effects of these are profound. These factors are having a great impact on the nature of literacy in today’s society, an impact that has not been acknowledged in schools. Literacy learning is therefore access to technological knowledge that informs how we access economic success, communicate and socialize.

This program of research intends to address these factors and develop our understanding of videogame play as it relates to literacy learning. Based on a sociocultural perspective in examining new or alternative literacies, we draw on Green’s (1997) three-dimensional model to examine the complexities of literacy learning, both in its traditional and ‘alternative’ forms. As Green (1997) describes, we need to raise questions about operational dimensions (basic competence with the skills of reading and writing), cultural dimensions (competence with the meaning system of literacy as social practice), and critical dimensions of literacy learning (awareness that all social practices, and thus all literacies, are socially constructed and ‘selective’). Using this model, we believe that as we embrace videogames as a powerful learning tool (Gee, 2003) we will explore learning in all three dimensions, including the critical dimension; we believe that we must find ways to raise critical questions relating to these texts and to disrupt unexamined hegemonic masculine attitudes related to power, status, and exclusivity.

This program of research also draws on a sociocultural understanding of gender and masculinity. Connell (1995) defines gender as “social practice that constantly refers to bodies and what bodies do; it is not social practice reduced to the body. Indeed … gender exists precisely to the extent that biology does not determine the social” (p.71). Gender as a social construct impacts learning both in and out of school, dictating what is and can be learned and what is out of bounds. Gender, and therefore masculinity, is not fixed in advance of social interaction, but is constructed in interaction, and masculinity must be understood as an aspect of large-scale social structures and processes (Connell, 1995, p.39). Holland (1993) suggests that men are born into male bodies, but not necessarily into a successful version of culturally appropriate masculinity, therefore “becoming a man is a complex process of learning and doing within shifting sets of social constraints” (p.2).

This research will therefore be based on a critical literacy learning theory that proposes that boys outside of a school environment are learning literacy skills that will lead to social, economic, communicational and technological utility, valued in the workplace for ‘success’ in modern life. However, this success is taken on with unquestioned acceptance of dominant masculinity values and practices.

c) Proposed research methodology

This study will be developed in four phases; research of both parts will draw on qualitative research methodologies, namely symbolic interactionism, ethnography, and action research. Methods for data collection and interpretation will include case study, observation, focus groups, and individual interviews.

Context

The participants in the first two phases of this study will be 4-6 adolescent males who have participated in teaching videogame making summer camps to 10-12 year olds. These camps are run weekly throughout the summer and are also offered in the school term on a once-a-week basis in a unique videogame centre called The Game Academy (). This site is a privately run facility, offering comfortable space for children, youth, and adults to sit and play computer games in individual rooms equipped with comfortable couches, big-screens, and snacks. The camps are taught by the adolescents, aged 14-16, with one instructor for two students, in the summer for three hours/day for one week, or in the fall once a week for three hours. At the end of the camp the students are expected to have developed, either individually or as a team, a working two-dimensional video game using software called Stagecast Creator. In a pilot study conducted during one of the summer camps, the researcher observed five adolescent instructors as they taught their students, and conducted focus group interviews following each day of the camp. It became apparent that the adolescents involved in teaching these camps have developed significant background in playing videogames and through their involvement in the camps have thought more explicitly about their practices. They are interested in sharing their knowledge and are articulate in conveying their ideas and conceptions about learning through videogame play, even though they generally do not connect it to literacy learning. This environment promises to be a rich site for building a more extensive research project and developing greater understanding about the literacies that participants are learning through videogame play and the role that gender plays in their learning.

Research Design

The research will be conducted in four phases in order to address the questions outlined above.

Phase 1. What are the literacy skills being learned by boys through videogame play and how do these literacy skills relate to school literacies? The first phase of the research involves participant observation, where the researchers observe the adolescents teaching the week-long or term-long camps. Each of the sessions will be observed by the researcher, audio-taped, and video-taped where lighting permits. Follow-up focus group interviews with the adolescent instructors will take place each day after the session ends in order to help the researchers better understand the phenomena of learning diverse literacy skills. The focus groups will focus on the instructors’ perceptions of the literacy learning that is happening, for themselves and for the students.

Phase 2. What worldview(s) is being learned by extensive videogame play and how is this affecting their understanding of and interaction in the world of family, school, and community? Phase 2 of the research project will consist of the researcher and research assistants interviewing the instructors, both individuals and focus groups based on playing the games and teaching others to play the games; this will take place in two time-frames 1) once a week, late afternoons, or 2) daily for one week. The interview questions will attempt to understand how their interaction with videogames connects to their life, their family, school, their beliefs and values, and to determine the differences and similarities between the way they see literacy learning in the Game Academy context and at school. Further questions will attempt to elicit how the participants think the two could be connected – whether they should be, and suggestions as to how could this happen.

Phase 3. How can these issues be addressed in informal and formal/school learning situations with adolescent boys as they play and create videogames? Working with a group of teachers, i.e., those involved in the graduate program, we will examine videogame play as a site for learning a range of literacy skills, including operational, cultural, and socio-critical, develop strategies that consider how literacy skills can be learned more effectively for their students, and to consider practical and ethical issues in relation to how they could be taken up in their adolescent lives. The aim of this phase is to create an edited book with teachers using action research in order to take up issues in their classrooms, seeing how they manifest themselves. Additionally, in order to take advantage of the multiple literacies available to us, we plan to develop a DVD that represents the view and voices of the adolescent participants and of the teachers using diverse strategies for enhancing their students’ literacy learning skills.

Phase 4. How can informal and formal learning opportunities be interfaced, using videogame technology and knowledge to enhance educational requirements in meaningful ways? Working with Dr. Richard Levy and his team of researchers at the University of Calgary, and using the knowledge developed from the previous three phases of this research project, we will create educational software using PC platforms that works to enhance learning opportunities for youth. These designs will draw on the principles identified by Gee (2003) related to active, critical learning, design, committed learning, practice, and situated meaning. These educational videogame designs will be introduced to adolescent videogame players/creators for their input, using their expertise to further develop the educational games.

Method of inquiry

Phase 1 – Using a symbolic interactionist approach, a method used to ascribe meaning of symbols/artifacts to participants and their learning, to observe the participants in their videogame environment, case studies of the individual participants can be developed and shared with the participants, as a segue to Phase 2. Symbolic interaction is understood through participant observation, rather than surveys and interviews. Close contact and immersion in the everyday lives of the participants is necessary for understanding the meaning of actions, the definition of the situation itself, and the process by which participants construct the situation through their interaction. The emphasis on interactions among people, use of symbols in communication and interaction, interpretation as part of action, self as constructed by others through communication and interaction, and flexible, adjustable social processes make the symbolic interactionism methodology useful for this study.

Phase 2 -- This phase of the research will draw on ethnographic approaches, in order to study a small group of subjects in their own environment.. The adolescent participants will be interviewed, based on the case studies developed in Phase 1, in order to provide a means of learning more about their culture, both at the videogame site and at their school, in relation to literacy learning. Rather than looking at a small set of variables and a large number of subjects ("the big picture"), the ethnographer attempts to get a detailed understanding of the circumstances of the few subjects being studied. Ethnographic accounts, then, are both descriptive and interpretive; descriptive, because detail is so crucial, and interpretive, because the ethnographer must determine the significance of what she observes without gathering broad, statistical information. The descriptive data will be gathered through both individual and focus group reflections related to both their traditional and alternative literacy learning. The transcribed interview data will be analyzed using Critical Discourse Analysis, drawing on understandings of semiotics (a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals especially with their function in both artificially constructed and natural languages and comprises syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics) to interpret the various print-based, visual, and oral texts being collected and generated.

Phase 3 -- The researcher, working with teachers and adolescent participants of phases 1 and 2, will develop an action research approach, creating strategies to enable a broader understanding of literacy and a wider range of strategies to enable learners to enhance their literacy skills, both in the classroom and in out-of-school places. Action Research typically is designed and conducted by practitioners who analyze the data to improve their own practice. It gives educators new opportunities to reflect on and assess their teaching; to explore and test new ideas, methods, and materials; to assess how effective the new approaches were; to share feedback with fellow team members; and to make decisions about which new approaches to include in the team's curriculum, instruction, and assessment plans. Using a cyclic process which alternates between action and critical reflection, it is thus an emergent process which takes shape as understanding increases, enabling participants to continually refine methods, data, and interpretation in light of understanding developed in earlier cycles.

Phase 4 – This phase of the research will draw from interviews and focus groups with the adolescent participants, in order to inform the ongoing development of the educational videogame design. The participants will work closely with the game designers, using their experiential knowledge and understandings of effective learning tools to enhance meaningful engagement, in order to develop and redevelop the educational videogames.

Data Collection

Phase 1 – In this phase, the researcher will take extensive notes, audiotape conversations with the participants, take still photographs and videotaping of segments of teaching/learning situations, collect copies of journals created by students and copies of the videogames they have created.

Phase 2 – The case studies developed and the artefacts collected in Phase 1 will serve as a place to begin conversations with the participants about their understandings of videogames, and about literacies learned through playing and teaching about videogames. Individual and focus group interviews will be audiotaped. Demonstrations of participants playing games and describing what they are doing will be videotaped, attempting to more clearly understand their thinking behind their actions as players and as instructors.

Phase 3 – Drawing on the case studies, the transcribed interviews and the visual artefacts (still and video clips of participants creating and playing videogames), the researcher will work with practicing teachers in a graduate class focused on Alternative Literacies, supported and guided by ideas generated by the adolescent participants. Collaboratively, we will develop plan for taking this learning into schools, integrating understandings of alternative literacies (using a focus of videogames) with school-based curriculum requirements.

Phase 4 – Using the data collected in the previous phases, and the materials created in Phase 3 particularly to inform Phase 4, adolescent participants will be interviewed following their engagement in prototype educational videogame software, both individually and in focus groups, to elicit their feedback related to their experiences of playing the developed game. After implementing their feedback in reshaping the game, they will be further interviewed.

Data analysis

Using NVivo text analysis software program, and MAP, an audio-visual analysis software program, the data will be coded into categories, mapped, searched, synthesized and analyzed. Manual coding of themes will be conducted to supplement the computer analysis, shared with participant students. Poetic representations (Sparkes, 2003; Madill, 2005) will be developed and presented to participants for their response; this approach has been demonstrated to be a very effective approach for synthesizing interview data, recognizing student voices, enabling participants to have time to read their words, respond, and potentially add new insights.

d) Anticipated findings

Educators have been seeking alternative ways to engage struggling literacy learners (predominantly males) in their learning. Videogame developers have been seeking ways to create game experiences that enhance students’ educational experiences – both to little avail. Boys are no more engaged in literacy learning; educational games are no more successful in engaging their intended audiences in meaningful learning experiences. The anticipated findings of this research would be to point the way to development of learning experiences that do both, by eliciting responses from the very people that are in need of support – adolescent males. It is anticipated that the findings would inform further research and educational development related to both educational materials and new technologies, and that these findings would be of great interest to educators, videogame designers, and governmental agencies such as Ministries of Education and Advanced Education. As the way of the future is to rely more and more on computer-assisted learning models, it is critical that these are effective in reaching a diverse range of learners and also satisfy educational requirements. It is anticipated that this research project would develop a way for both groups to work collaboratively to create effective materials and approaches to learning operational and critical literacy skills.

e) Audience for the research findings

These research results will be shared using local, national and international forums such as peer-reviewed journals that examine research (Research in the Teaching of English; Reading Research Quarterly) and that focus on teaching practices (Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literacy, Voices from the Middle), as well as local, national, and international conferences (Canadian Society for the Study of Education/CACS; American Educational Research Association; International Federation of Teachers of English; International Reading Association, Digital Games Research Association). A manuscript will be prepared for a special edition of Canadian Journal of Education – Boys and Literacy – in the 2007. In addition to academic forums, community and school-based presentations will be offered, through local school districts and educational councils as well as in conjunction with The Game Academy community. Dissemination of results will be posted to my website (), which is continually accessed by academic, local, and media communities.

Resources for school-based approaches, created in collaboration with the participants of the study will also be available on my website. The results of the research study will be presented as both text-based and DVD formats, in order to provide ready access and visual accessibility to educators, pre-service teachers, and parents. An audio/visual presentation will enable preservation of the integrity of participants’ voices. An eventual project is an edited book directed at teacher educators and academics in diverse fields.

Additionally these resources will be demonstrated for educational materials developers and for government agencies (Ministry of Education, B.C.; Alberta Learning), so as to suggest new ways to develop materials and engage learners.

References

Alloway, N., and Gilbert, P. (1997). Boys and literacy: Lessons from Australia. Gender and Education, 9(1), pp. 49-58.

Blair, H. & Sanford, K. (2004). Morphing Literacy: Boys Reshaping their School-based Literacy Practices. Language Arts, 81(6).

Connell, R.W. (1995). Masculinities. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press.

Davies, B. (1992). Women’s subjectivity and feminist stories, in C. Ellis and M.Flaherty (Eds.). Investigating subjectivity: Research on lived experience. London: Sage Publications.

De Castell, S. (1996). On finding one’s place in the text: Literacy as a technology of self-formation. In W.F. Pinar (Ed.), Contemporary curriculum discourses: Twenty years of JCT, pp. 398-411. New York: Peter Lang.

Friedman, T. (1995). Making sense of software: Computer games and interactive textuality. In S. Jones (Ed.). Cybersociety. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc.

Gee, J. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.Gee, J. (1992).

Gilbert, R. & Gilbert, P. (1998). Masculinity goes to school. London: Routledge.

Government of Canada. (2004). Reading Achievement in Canada and the United States: Findings from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment - May 2004. Available at: .

Green, B. (1997). Literacy, information and the learning society. Keynote address to the Joint Conference of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English, the Australian Literacy Educators’ Association, and the Australian School Library Association, Darwin High School, Northern Territory, Australia, 8-11, July.

Hagood, M. (2000). New times, new millennium, new literacies. Reading Research and Instruction, 39(4), pp. 311-328.

International Reading Association (IRA). (2005). Finland still tops in PISA study, Reading Today, 22(4), 1, 18.

Johnson, S. (2005). Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. Riverhead, USA: Penguin Group.

Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. London: Routledge.

Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M. (2003). New literacies: Changing knowledge and classroom learning. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Lyotard, J.-F. (1984). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge, translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Madill, L. (2005). Adolescent boys deconstructing gender. Unpublished Masters’ Project, University of Victoria.

Marshall, J. (1998). Performativity: Lyotard, Foucault and Austin. Paper presented to the American Educational Research Association’s Annual Meeting, San Diego, 11-17, April.

PISA, Programme for International Student Assessment. Available at:

Rowan, L., Knobel, M., Bigum, C., & Lankshear, C. (2002). Boys, literacies and schooling: The dangerous territories of gender-based literacy reform. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. p.59.

Sanford, K. (in press). Gendered Literacy Experiences: The Effects of expectation and opportunity for boys’ and girls’ learning. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.

Smith, M., & Wilhelm, J. (2002). Reading don’t fix no Chevys: Literacy in the lives of young men. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.Street, B. (1984).

Sparkes, A. (2002). Telling tales in sport and physical activity: A qualitative journey. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Wolf, M. & Perron, B. (2003). The video game theory reader. New York: Routledge.

2. Knowledge mobilization plan

Community and school-based presentations will be offered, through local school districts and educational councils as well as in conjunction with The Game Academy community. Dissemination of results will be posted to my website (), which is continually accessed by academic, local, and media communities. As the project progresses, a new website dedicated to knowledge of videogame learning and educational opportunities will be developed.

These resources will be shared with ministries of education, initially in B.C. and Alberta, and eventually across the country as the informal knowledge networks continue to grow. Presentations will be provided for educators, community agencies, and parent groups.

Resources for school-based approaches, created in collaboration with the participants of the study will also be available on this website. The results of the research study will be presented as both text-based and DVD formats, in order to provide ready access and visual accessibility to educators, pre-service teachers, and parents. An audio/visual presentation will enable preservation of the integrity of participants’ voices.

These research results will be shared in academic forums using local, national and international forums such as peer-reviewed journals that examine research (Research in the Teaching of English; Reading Research Quarterly) and that focus on teaching practices (Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literacy, Voices from the Middle), as well as local, national, and international conferences (Canadian Society for the Study of Education/CACS; American Educational Research Association; International Federation of Teachers of English; International Reading Association, Digital Games Research Association). A manuscript will be prepared for a special 2007 edition of Canadian Journal of Education – Boys and Literacy. An eventual project is an edited book directed at teacher educators and academics in diverse literacy-related fields.

3. PROJECT TEAM

Kathy Sanford is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria, and Director of Teacher Education. Dr. Sanford has been an educator for over twenty-five years, working with adolescents and more recently with adult learners. She teaches graduate courses in gender and pedagogy, has completed research examining boys’ literacies and has published articles relating to gender, new literacies, and popular culture (“Morphing Literacy: Boys Reshaping their School-based Literacy Practices”, “Resistance through Video Game Play: It’s a Boy Thing”, “Popular media and school literacies: Adolescent expressions”, “Gendered Literacy Experiences: The Effects of expectation and opportunity for boys’ and girls’ learning”, and “Teachers as products of their schooling: Disrupting gendered positions”). Her role in this project would be to co-ordinate with co-investigators, organize team up-dates, and keep the team on schedule. She will also be responsible for training graduate students to do project research, as well as coordinating and ensuring that findings are presented and published accordingly. She is currently working with two doctoral students, Leanna Madill and Michelle Yeo, who have been working with her on the initial pilot project with adolescent participants at the Game Academy and who have provided links with school-based communities and a liaison with the University of Calgary team members.

Jason Scriven, owner of The Game Academy, has recently opened this site for both adolescents and adults, creating a space for both educational and recreational videogame play. This site has provided opportunities for focused examination of adolescents both playing and creating videogames, giving an in-depth insight into the thinking processes of adolescent gameplayers/creators. Mr. Scriven provides a link between educational sites and community-based sites, enabling this research project to drawn on understanding from various perspectives.

Dr. Richard Levy is a Professor of Planning and Urban Design at The University of Calgary, where he serves as the Planning Director (Chairman) for the Planning Program. Since 1996, Dr. Levy has also served as Director of Computing for the Faculty of EVDS. Dr. Levy is a founding member of the Virtual Reality Lab. Dr. Levy speaks at international and national conferences in the fields of virtual reality, 3D imaging, education, archaeology and planning. His published work appears in journals such as Internet Archaeology, Journal of Visual Studies, Environment and Planning and Plan Canada. Dr. Levy has directed projects with faculty from Archaeology, Geomatics Engineering, Industrial Design and Kinesiology. Using the advanced capabilities provided by MACI and support from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Dr. Levy has built a computer reconstruction of the temple site at Phimai, Thailand. The temple complex that was built during the 11th and 12th centuries is one of several UN World Heritage sites in Thailand. Working with Dr. Larry Katz, Kinnesiology, a virtual speed skating simulator for the Schumberger CAVE in I-Centre has been developed under a CFI grant. As a result of our success with speed skating, a prototype for a Virtual Luge Run is being created with the assistance of coaching staff of the Olympic bobsled, Luge and skeleton. More recently, in collaboration with Dr. Mary O’Brien under grants from Canarie and CFI, Dr. Levy is developing a virtual environment for teaching German and other foreign languages. Testing of the first module of this application will begin at the end of 2005. He is working with graduate student Mike Magee to investigate meaningful educational possibilities for these technology initiatives.

4. BUDGET PLAN

Labour and Benefits

Graduate Student Salaries and Benefits for 3 years

UVic Graduate Student $873/mo x 10 months (12 hours/ week) year 1, 2 and 3

- includes 4% benefits Total = $8730 X 3

U Calgary Graduate Student $436.50/mo x 10 months (6 hours/ week) year 1, 2 and 3 - includes 4% benefits Total = $8730 X 3

Total = $39258

One graduate student would be hired to manage the project, to arrange bi-weekly meetings, and organize the data collected. Along with a second graduate student, they would observe the participants, take field notes, and collect artifacts, such as photos, video, and audio during weekly and sometimes daily visits (in school term time, once a week; in summer, daily visits). As part of the research team, these graduate students would attend bi-weekly meetings to share findings. They would also be responsible for conducting individual interviews and focus group interviews. A major responsibility of the second graduate student will be to assist with creation of a website for ongoing dissemination of findings, providing the content for the web designer. At Phase 3, this website will be used to share teaching strategies, materials, and possible workshop content. In addition, these two students would be involved in initial and secondary analysis using NVivo analysis software. At U. of C., the doctoral student would provide assistance to the videogame designers, and provide liaison between the two sites.

The Graduate students would also be responsible for transcribing interviews and managing data organization and initial analysis using NVivo data analysis software. Additionally, theses students would create the literature review using EndNote software.

Knowledge Mobilization

Set-up and development of website to reflect findings of the research, using interactive media.

To create user friendly access to curricular resources created in the project. Summarize findings and make resources user ready

Total = $2500

Travel

- Maximum of one researcher and one graduate students would be funded to attend each of the conferences identified, on a rotational and availability basis

- CSSE 2006 (York); CSSE 2007 (USask); CSSE 2008 (UBC)

@ $1500/person per conference $9000

- DiGRA 2007 (International)

@ $2500/person $5000

- AERA 2006 (San Francisco); AERA 2007 (Chicago); AERA 2008 (New York)

@ $1500/person per conference $4500

Travel between sites

From Victoria to Calgary (twice annually):(1 person x 2 visits x $300/flight + $600/meals & accommodation (3 nights)) $1800

Total = $19300

Direct Materials

One-time costs:

1. Nvivo software Version 2 @ $600 $600

2. Endnote 9.0 bibliographic referencing software $150

3. Lap-top computer (Dell Inspiron 9300 with Intel Pentium Processor 740.

Reputation for multimedia capabilities) for use with digital still and video

images, process data at school, at group meetings, on research site, and at

Conference presentations $2600

4. Colour printer – (Canon Pixma All-in-1 MP760) Photo quality, for reproducing

digital images to analyze and to disseminate at presentations. ($341)

Plus cartridges $45 X 5 - $257 $598

5. Digital Camera (Fuji FinePix F10 6.3 MP) X 2 @ $535 each.

- for researcher and graduate students to use in recording images of

videogame play $1070

6. Playstation 3 Console X 2 $450 each plus Xbox 2 X 2 $450 each

- Consoles needed for students to play videogames while researcher and

graduate students record data

- consoles to be released in 2006 – (prices approximate) $1800

Total = $6818

Special Purpose Equipment

Other Expenses

Materials, Supplies and Services

1. Photocopying – journals, questionnaires, research data $250/ year $750

2. Photo Developing – approx. 1200 pictures x $0.25 $300

Total = $1050

TOTAL BUDGET/3 YEARS $69,926

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