Demystifying
the challenges of GBL:

Teacher professional learning needs

Introduction

Recent articles report that digital game based learning (GBL) has been embraced as a welcome solution to low levels of student engagement, and also as a new way to realise transformative learning experiences within the everyday classroom. (Beavis, Rowan, Dezuanni, McGillivray, O’Mara, Prestridge, & Zagami, 2014; Meredith, 2016; Molin, 2017).

Whilst there has been particular focus on the benefits for students (Ketelhut & Schifter, 2010; Lei, 2009) the role of the teacher in the integration processes of (GBL) has received only minimal attention (Beavis et al; 2014; Hanghoj & Brund, 2010; Meredith, 2016; Molin; 2017).

The purpose of this paper is to firstly investigate the advent of (GBL) into educational settings and its impact on teacher roles. This includes insights put forward regarding technology adoption and first and second tier resistance to technological interventions in teaching practices (Ertmer, Ottenbreit-Leftwich, Sadik & Sendurur, 2012), and the complexities to teaching and learning that the integration of (GBL) into the classroom brings (Hanghoj & Brund, 2010; Cuendet, Bonnard & Dillenbourg, 2013).

Secondly suggestions will be made with regard to the professional development (PD) needs of teachers. With reference to Chee and Mehrotra (2012) and their discussion of the value of reiterative narrative sense making processes for teachers when working with unfamiliar technologies, and Jong (2016) and notion of the need to implement precise and specific interventions at (GBL) problem junctures this discussion aims to summarise some key and practical approaches to addressing the barriers and complexities of teaching with technologies via (PD).

Barriers

The problematic nature of technology implementation

The findings of several studies suggest that the successful integration of (GBL) becomes problematic when teachers preconceived and often negative perceptions of the value of technologies to an existing curriculum come into play (Beavis et al., 2014; Ertmer et al., 2012; Ketelhut and Schifter, 2010; Meredith, 2016). Ketelhut and Schifter (2010) help to clarify this explaining that simply put, if a teacher can’t see a clear connection between a technology and the curriculum, if it appears too complex, impractical, or lacks clarity it will not be used.

With this in mind the causes of barriers to teacher take up of digital games within the classroom it is suggested needs some detailed thought. By this it is further proposed approaches to meaningful professional learning design that targets more precisely the complex and multifaceted needs of teachers (Jong, 2016) can then begin to be formulated.

First and second order barriers

Ertmer et al., (2012) refer to what they term first and second order barriers (p.424) as a useful lens through which to understand technology adoption by teachers. In a practical sense this is a method of categorising the many variables that play through teaching practices, and an approach to gaining a clearer understanding of how a teacher’s ability to effectively work technologies such as (GBL) into the curriculum can be impeded.

First order barriers are those external to the teacher, for example, software and hardware speed and capability (Ertmer et al., 2012) classroom space, time, budgets, workload and training provided to teachers (Cuendet et al., 2013 ) lack of tech support and support materials (Becker, 2007) or complicated technologies ( Kenny & McDaniel, 2011).

Whilst to an extent outside of the control of the teacher, Becker (2007) contends, seemingly practical issues such as these extrinsic type constraints often feed deeper concerns that teachers feel within their roles.

These are the second order barriers. Awan (2011) argues that much can be understood about teacher technology adoption by examining more closely these deeper types of teacher concerns. Concerns are from Awan’s perspective best understood as a series of psychological barriers that include, concerns about self, concerns about implementation and concerns about the impact of innovations in teaching practices on students. From Awan’s view these play through the processes of technology implementation and manifest at each stage of the implementation process in often underlying and complex ways.

Kenny and McDaniel’s (2011) description and examples assist also here. For example, they may manifest as perceptions that technology innovation is a waste of time and not worth exploring, or a proactive unwillingness and resistance to invest in (GBL), or at deeper levels still fears of job role obsolescence, lack of self-efficacy or a non-neutral mindset that proactively resists implementation of (GBL).

In rounding off this part of this papers discussion Mehrotra and Chee (2012) provide useful insights into how first and second tier barriers play through a teacher’s role.

Statecraft X and Teacher Y

They follow the trajectory of secondary school teacher ‘Teacher Y’ who seeks to learn how to enhance student questioning exercises by using the digital game Statecraft X as a support to teaching.

They report the following regarding Teacher Y’s beliefs, feelings and experiences;…a strong predetermined set of educational values and beliefs that education was the route to earning and survival, a refusal to let go of traditional educational approaches such as lesson plans and set timings within the classroom, feelings of satisfaction by teacher Y at her own ability to carry out the session despite the perceived limitations of  Statecraft X, the determination to carry on by sticking to her lesson plan, satisfaction with the integration of the digital game into teaching practices, and disappointment that she and the students got bored with the game.

Whilst only snippets from the larger study it is suggested the journey of Teacher Y highlights the complexities of barriers for teachers when faced with the challenges of introducing (GBL) into school contexts (Beavis et al., 2014). For example, Teacher Y’s refusal to let go of lesson plans, a teacher centeredness and self-satisfaction in her own teaching abilities, a skewed idea about the limitations and potential of digital games and an overall default to tried and true teaching methods in the face of the necessity to ‘shift’ approaches to teaching practices for the innovation to work.

Complexity

Complexity and new teaching practices

Broadly speaking, change within educational contexts is constant (Ketelhut & Schifter, 2011). Thus, teachers are also continuously under pressures to accept new innovations and reconfigure teaching approaches to accommodate these (Beavis et al., 2014; Becker, 2007; Molin, 2017).

Hanghoj and Brund (2010) contend that this highlights the intense complexity that technologies add to the teacher’s role. This complexity, they further discuss can be modelled as a composition or repertoire of four interchangeable sets of skills. These are; the role of instructor and the ability of the teacher to plan and communicate to students a game scenario in relation to curriculum and learning outcomes; the role of playmaker and the teachers ability to place themselves in a players position and clearly and concisely communicate goals, dynamics and tasks from the game; the role of guide and the ability to scaffold learning to include degrees of ease and difficulty within the game based pedagogy; and the role of explorer and the ability of teachers to be able to respond to students experiences and provide cues, answers and guidance as they move through the game play experience ( p. 117).

Cuendet et al., (2013) refer to this type of teaching environment as ‘complex and peculiar’ (p. 558). By this they parallel the unpredictable nature of everyday life with such complexities (Norman, 2011; cited in Cuendet et al., 2013). Working with the augmented reality tool Tinker Lamp Cuendet et al., (2013) report the need for teachers facilitating with the tool to constantly readjust teaching practices to deal with students, colleagues and also equipment idiosyncrasies and constantly reconfigure and reset instruction that morphed into complex often confusing questions and actions back to simple understandable steps and tasks.

Complexity from the perspective of Hanghoj and Brund (2010) and Cuendet et al., (2013) can be directly related to the ability of the teacher to draw on an array of often ‘in the moment’ and unfamiliar skills. These are multifaceted and may include the capabilities to teach in unpredictable situations, follow often unplanned learning pathways, and explore new insights that are also often student led (Ertmer et al., 2012, p.434).

Teaching in this way often occurs contrary to traditional lock step and lesson planned modes, thus challenging teachers to let go of control (Mehrotra & Chee, p.470) and place their trust in the flow of the lesson as opposed to concerns of timing and information coverage.

In short, pedagogical efficiency from the view of Cuendet et al., (2013) is not enough to cater for the nuanced occurrences that technologically evolving class room environments can produce.

Complexity and teacher identity

Chee and Mehrotra (2012) argue that these challenges are as much tied to notions of teacher identity as they are to the actual practices of teaching with technologies. That is, they suggest via examples that within a (GBL) context the teacher often becomes as much a learner as the students they are teaching (p.112). This challenges teachers to rethink and reconstruct their current pedagogical philosophies and (for the technology innovation to work) enact this pedagogical shift.

This shift Chee and Mehrotra (2012) suggest is evident in the case of the Statecraft X  innovation in which teachers grappled with existing core teaching values and their sense of who they were as teachers as they were challenged by their existing teaching habits, and the degrees to which these had become misaligned with the requirements of Statecraft X.

Allaying the intensity of concerns that teachers experience (Jong, 2016) and providing the necessary professional learning for teachers to be able to integrate their teaching values and skills within complex (GBL) environments is the next topic of discussion in this paper. Drawing from the above it is hoped that some useful ideas can be presented as possible solutions for these identified tensions.

Solutions

At the intersection of pedagogy and technology

Mishra and Koehler (2006) provide a lens through which to begin to consider the (PD) needs of teachers working with innovative technologies. TPCK (technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge) at its most basic level is a framework that helps us understand how the intersections of technology and pedagogy and content and knowledge overlap and interplay within the dimensions to teaching practices. Thus, Mishra and Koehler (2006) provide the following foundational points for consideration of useful (PD).

Firstly, they suggest that the tendency to view teaching practices as comprising separately learnt skills areas delimits the reach and range of the technologies being used including, delivery approaches, content development possibilities and importantly the learning experiences of the students. Secondly, they contend that (PD) needs to force teachers to re-think the traditional arrangements and acknowledge the positive effects that disruption via technologies can have in challenging the classroom equilibrium (p.1029). Thirdly Mishra and Koehler (2006) argue that effective (PD) must negate the danger of ‘context neutral’ (p. 1033) approaches that overemphasise the ‘how to use the technology’ and under emphasise the ‘how to teach with the technology’.

Reflective, Reflexive Guide Appropriation

With these foundational points in mind Chee and Mehrotra (2012) add to this discussion by emphasising the need for teacher professional learning to encompass what they term ‘shift’. This is a component of their teaching model titled ‘Reflective, Reflexive Guide Appropriation’ (RRGA) (p.109). As briefly touched on earlier at its core (RRGA) aims to support teachers in achieving a ‘shift’ in their identities as teachers. This occurs through immersion in digital games (in this case the game Statecraft X ) and subsequent iterative processes that require dialogic narrative questioning on the part of the facilitators as a method for opening teachers up to their teaching habits and in turn enabling them in redefining their teaching practices overtime, using their own past narratives as key points for reflection.

Based on Clarke and Dede’s model of educational scalability (Clarke and Dede, 2011, cited in Chee and Mehrotra, 2012, p.110) the (RRGA) model comprises a number of dimensions for teachers to be able to build capacity in (GBL). These include the notion of ownership and the building of teacher skills and self-efficacy to be able to take the role of central figure in the implementation of technologies, the notion of depth and understanding of the theoretical concepts that can assist in working as a teacher at the intersection of technologies and teaching practices, the notion of sustainability and the building of the skills to be able to maintain and administer technologies and align these with constantly change curriculum, the notion of design reconstruction and the ability to be able to confidently collaborate with colleagues and students in improving current teaching models, and the notion of identity and the capacity to shift ones pedagogical philosophies and preconceived beliefs to embrace contemporary teaching practices.

Figure (1) The reflective, reflexive guided appropriation model. Adapted from ” Reflective, reflexive guided appropriation: Facilitating teacher adoption of game based learning in classrooms,” by S. Chee and S. Mehrotra, 2012, In Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Games Based Learning.

Stages of Concern

In adding to Chee and Mehrotra’s (2012) RRGA model Jong’s (2016) recent study into educational innovation and teacher needs when working with digital games (in this case within the Virtual, Interactive Student Orientated Learning Environment and specifically the digital game Farmtasia ) argues that effective teacher learning must address explicitly identified teacher concerns.

Introducing the model titled Stages of Concern (SOC) we are presented with five tiered categories that pinpoint area’s most commonly known to trouble and worry teachers when tasked with new implementing technologies and innovative teaching approaches into their classroom practices. These are summarised briefly as follows; evaluation and teachers concerns about the worth of the digital game (in this case farmtasia); information & consequence and the teachers concerns about how they will gain support and who from when tackling the game, management and teachers concerns about the implementation processes such as curly questions from students, confidence in one’s ability to use the game effectively and so on, and refocusing and the teachers concerns about the scope for further work in farmtasia, how it will be facilitated, and what their role will be in relation to the further (GBL) interventions.

Figure (2) Teachers’ concerns about adopting constructivist online game-based learning in formal curriculum teaching: The VISOLE experience, by Jong.M. 2015, British Journal of Educational Technology.

Jong (2016) suggests that by targeting these concerns ‘precise interventions’ (p. 602) can be formulated that target the explicit learning needs of teachers. By further pinpointing these concerns Jong further contends offering opportunities for teachers to work in particular skills areas sharpens their focus regarding where their skills gaps are and strategies to address these.

Conclusion

This paper has sought to identify some of the complex issues that teachers face when working in the (GBL) space. By focussing on current discussions and approaches to teaching with technologies it has also aimed to locate some the concerns and areas of resistance regarding digital game adoption by teachers. From this, this paper has offered what is suggested are three useful perspectives regarding professional learning approaches that might enhance existing teacher skill sets and provide opportunities for the development of sound pedagogical practices when working in the (GBL) space.

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