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Fostering Peer Dialogic Engagement in Science Classrooms with an Educational Videogame

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Abstract

This study examines the design and enactment of a secondary physics unit on electromagnetism. The unit used an educational videogame to support peer dialogic engagement in a Singapore secondary school by engaging learners with qualitative physics phenomena. As an example of game-based learning, the unit includes activities and resources that organize a recurring progression of playing and interacting around science that we term play-centered cycles. We incorporate two complementary, qualitative analyses to consider how a recurring progression of playing with and talking about science-mediated peer dialogic engagement across two separate classes. Findings demonstrate that peer dialogic engagement occurred within each play-centered cycle for both classes but that the nature of such engagement varied across cycles and student teams. Additionally, comparative case analyses of focal teams’ peer dialogic engagement illuminate how the design of play-centered cycles productively supported play and learning while also highlighting emerging tensions for sustaining dialogic engagement. Findings underscore the plausibility of this approach to fostering science learning by articulating two principles for designing science learning environments that can guide ongoing efforts to enlist videogames and play in the service of talking about and learning science.

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Notes

  1. Singapore is a multiethnic city-state in Southeast Asia where English is the official language for education and business. The authors lived in Singapore for 4 years as expatriate faculty members at a government university during the time of the study.

  2. The unit is generally aligned to the topic of electromagnetism as specified by a national physics syllabus developed by the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board (SEAB) in concert with the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate. The SEAB website (www.seab.gov.sg) features current physics syllabi.

  3. The school is highly selective, serving high-performing students as determined by national placement examinations. Recruitment and participation adhered to institutional ethics requirements regarding human subjects and informed consent at the time of the study.

  4. The research team was developing EC7 for use and potential commercialization. They authors helped design this enactment and were present in both classrooms for all days of the unit.

  5. Pseudonyms parallel the ethnic origin of participants’ names. Singapore’s citizens traditionally identify with three main ethnic groups (Chinese, Malay, and Indian). Individuals’ names often match one of these ethnicities, and Christian Chinese Singaporeans often go by biblical or English names. Participants spoke a local variety of English called “Singlish.” Minor edits to speech elide certain varietal features to ensure that transcripts are easily understood by an international audience.

  6. The following transcription conventions apply to all episodes:

    text- indicates self-interruption

    text= indicates latched speech/interruption

    (.) indicates a brief pause

    (1.0) indicates timed pauses to tenths of a second

    {---} indicates unclear speech

    (text) indicates non-verbal interaction pertinent to understanding transaction

    [text] indicates researcher-inserted text to aid readability

    [TEXT] indicates emphatic speech

    … indicates omitted lines for brevity/focus

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Mr. Ong and his students who welcomed us into their classrooms; to Ahmed Hilmy and Liu Qiang for their game design, programming, and conceptual contributions; to Judy Lee for help with transcription and preliminary data transformations; and to various other members of the research team who helped make this paper possible.

Funding

This study was funded by the Singapore National Institute of Education’s Learning Sciences Lab.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Arizona State University, 1050 S. Forest Mall, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA

    Steven J. Zuiker & Kate T. Anderson

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  1. Steven J. Zuiker
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  2. Kate T. Anderson
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Correspondence to Steven J. Zuiker.

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Appendix

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Table 3 Description of gameplay elements and depicted field-particle relations in Escape from Centauri Levels
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Zuiker, S.J., Anderson, K.T. Fostering Peer Dialogic Engagement in Science Classrooms with an Educational Videogame. Res Sci Educ 51 (Suppl 2), 865–889 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-019-9842-z

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