Exploring video games and learning in South Africa: An integrative review
- PDF / 705,387 Bytes
- 21 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 85 Downloads / 169 Views
Exploring video games and learning in South Africa: An integrative review Rebecca Y. Bayeck1
© Association for Educational Communications and Technology 2020
Abstract This study is a review of video games studies completed in South Africa. This paper looked at existing research on video games in South Africa in order to understand the research approaches used, and the learning outcomes found in respect to findings from studies in the western world. Interestingly, the study shows similarities in the learning outcomes, yet a great emphasis on educational games targeted to address issues relevant to South Africa. This research also reveals that context, as argued in sociocultural theory, shaped the content of the games designed, populations studied, type of game to associate with video games, and learning. Keywords Video games · South Africa · Educational games · Commercial games · Learning outcomes
Introduction Recent years have seen an increased number of studies discussing video games as alternative learning spaces that can give insights into learning, inform the design of learning, and enhance learning environments (Richard and Gray 2018) Interest in video games is not limited to a country, or a continent, and research on their effect on learning is growing not only in Europe, Asia, and North America (Segev et al. 2016), but in Africa. Yet, most reviews addressing the relationship between video games and learning focus on studies conducted in western settings (Clark et al. 2016). Hence, arguments on the learning potential of video games are in their majority informed by western-based research (Wouters et al. 2013). The prevalence of western studies in reviews overshadows work completed in non-western contexts such as Africa, and particularly South Africa where video game research is on the rise. For instance, Darabi et al. (2018) literature review did not include studies conducted in South Africa, neither did Clark et al.’s (2016) meta-analysis. Similarly, Young et al. (2012) review of serious games did omit studies from South Africa. Although these reviews argued that video games increased players’ knowledge acquisition (Young et al. * Rebecca Y. Bayeck [email protected] 1
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 515 Malcolm X Blvd, New York, NY 10037, USA
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
R. Y. Bayeck
2012), facilitated learning (Clark et al. 2016), and even learned from failure (Darabi et al. 2018), these results were limited to western-based settings. Consequently, the assumption about video games being learning spaces is mainly evidenced by extensive western-based empirical evidence. There is a paucity of reviews with a focus on Africa, and particularly South Africa. Therefore, it is important to examine video games and learning in a cultural context such as South Africa, especially because research has shown that learning and activities people engage in are context bound (Delahunty et al. 2014; Vartiainen and Enkenberg 2013). Given that sociocultural contexts inform learning, people’s actions,
Data Loading...
