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Wednesday 9th April 2008 7:00 am
David Hatfield: Games, Diversity, and Democracy
Can games play a role in preparing young people to participate in our democracy? A researcher from the University of Wisconsin continues our series of reflections from the AERA conference held in New York last month.
In the frequently rancorous debates of high-stakes politics, it’s easy to think - why shouldn’t they just shut up? - and to forget just how important discussion with people who disagree can be. At AERA last month Diana Hess, an associate professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provided a useful reminder, sharing her latest work studying high school students engaged in ‘deliberative democracy.’ As Mansbridge argues, “Democracy involves public discussion of common problems, not just a silent counting of individual hands. And ..., the discussion can some times lead the participants to see their own stake in the broader interests of the community. ... Thus a ‘deliberative democracy’ does not simply register preferences that individuals already have; it encourages citizens to think about their interests differently.”
To be successful like this, young people learning to engage with different perspectives need the right kind of context and guidance. Hess’s observations confirm this for high school social studies classes, but it is also an important aspect of games designed for civic engagement. In epistemic games, for example, the framework of working as a professional on important community issues can provide just this kind of guidance for young players. Professional journalists, for example, are trained to seek out and understand opposing viewpoints to responsibly inform the public (e.g., science.net). Professional urban planners are trained to seek out and understand the diverse and typically conflicting desires of community stakeholders to recommend compromises that best reflect that community (e.g., Urban Science). And in all of the epistemic games based on these professions, players are encouraged to see themselves as important members of the community and to develop new ways of thinking about community issues.
As Hess’s and Mansbridge’s work so powerfully points out, learning to engage with, rather than avoid, different perspectives is what Democracy is all about.
Put another way, debate is good. It is rancor that is bad. And good games-like good civic curricula of any kind-help young people learn the skills they need to engage in the former and avoid the latter.
Editor’s Note: This post is part of a series of reflections on the AERA conference from members of the Epistemic Games Group at the University of Wisconsin. See the series index post here.
Category: Civic-Engagement, Credibility, Ecology-of-Games, Identity, Race-Ethnicity, Unexpected
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Blair
Posted on October 3 2008 11:15 AM
I am a graduate student at East Stroudsburg University and I am extremely excited about your research. I was just wondering if you could send me a copy or email a copy of your research study done on “Epistemic Games.” I am interested in completing some studies on my own of the relationships between video games and student achievement. Thank you for your time.