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Facilitating dialog in the game-based learning classroom: Teacher challenges reconstructing professional identity
Citation
Chee, Y. S., Mehrotra, S., & Ong, J. C. (2014). Facilitating dialog in the game-based learning classroom: Teacher challenges reconstructing professional identity. Digital Culture & Education, 6(4), 298-316. https://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/s/Chee-December-2014.pdf
Author
Chee, Yam San
•
Mehrotra, Swati
•
Ong, Jing Chuan
Abstract
Despite widespread interest in the use of digital games to engage students and enhance the quality of
student learning, the teacher’s perspective has been less extensively studied. The challenges that teachers
face when enacting authentic game-based learning predicated on dialogic pedagogy in the classroom offer
powerful opportunities for professional learning despite potentially engendering stressful experiences. In
this paper, we draw on the conceptual frame of dilemmatic spaces to theorise and document challenges
teachers encounter when learning to enact dialogic facilitation in a game-based learning curriculum.
Based on coded interview data drawn from nine teachers, our findings suggest that teachers wrestle with
tensions engendered by habituated modes of classroom teaching and the need to redefine power relations
with students. They experience a gap between their existing professional practice when they embark on
the curriculum—their being—and striving to perform the role of an effective dialogic teacher—their
becoming. The (re)construction of teacher identity that emerges is contingent on how teachers respond to
continuing professional development as well as how they deal with challenges they face in the classroom.
Date Issued
2014