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Fall 2003
Class: CEP 911 Intellectual History of Educational Psychology
Instructor: David Wong, PhD
College of Education, Michigan State University, Lansing, Michigan, USA
Lev S. Vygotsky articulated many intriguing ideas about educational and developmental psychology. Some of his ideas are valuable to researchers who want to understand computer games, including teaching using games. I'm interested in using multiplayer, online, role-playing games to teach leadership and group dynamics. I'm especially interested in team skills and structures that foster divergent, creative thinking, while staying focused on a convergent task. Vygotsky offers a lot of inspiration and guidance for my work.
I begin by examining Vygotsky's heritage for game studies, including his Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and his insights into play. The legacy of his ideas includes Activity Theory, which researchers are applying to game studies with promising results. I then juxtapose Vygotsky's theory of play with similar theories to explicate role-playing games, including "identity fluidity" and educational possibilities. I finish by combining Vygotsky's theory of play with Marcia's theory of identity development.
The Zone of Proximal Development is a powerful metaphor. The ZPD is the distance between what a student can achieve alone, and what he can achieve with help from peers or a teacher. (Vygotsky, 1978) Direct instruction or collaboration can support a student's trial-and-error movement through the zone. Such scaffolding guides the student's efforts, so that the student's mastery is (hopefully) accurate, efficient, broad, and flexible.
A teacher doesn't need to directly interact with a student to scaffold. Computers can be an effective intermediary. Computer-mediated instruction (CMI) has unique advantages over traditional classroom instruction. For example, a game can be installed on any number of computers, making the same learning experience accessible to many students.
Learning is a central part of gaming. Popular games often illustrate good instructional design, using a variety of technologies and conventions to scaffold a player through his ZPD. A game's "curriculum" is the skills and knowledge necessary to advance through the game and eventually master it. The player is initially unskilled in and ignorant of the game's curriculum, although many games share a similar curriculum. Many games include in-game tutorials, and most games ramp up difficulty over time. Such scaffolding is an appropriate approach to guiding a student through his ZPD. Commercial game designers aren't deliberate Vygotskians. Rather, game players value games that foster "playing in the zone," a state of Platonic ecstasy in which challenges are just barely surmountable, building in difficulty without halting the flow of gameplay and success. Vygotsky believed that optimal instruction keeps a learner challenged and successful, and he'd probably agree that the zone of "playing in the zone" is the ZPD in a different hat.
People who don't play games typically don't understand the complex challenges of the most sophisticated games. Researchers have been pleasantly surprised by players' skills, beyond just reflexive, "twitch" gaming. (Gee, 2003) Games can teach experimentation, problem-solving, metacognition, and other "high-level" skills. Perhaps the most complex games are multiplayer, online, role-playing games (MORPGs), and the curriculum of these games is suitably impressive. MORPGs typically simulate detailed nations and cultures, including player-lead organizations or "clans." Clans are widely considered an essential element of good MORPGs. Membership in a clan can significantly influence a player's gaming experience, both personal and interpersonal. For example, a clan is a source of safety, guidance, and belonging, but may demand certain customs or duties from the player. (Such duties might include defending the clan's in-game real estate from enemies.)
Vygotsky would probably share my enthusiasm for using MORPGs for teaching, because he believed that "individual learning and social interactions are different aspects of the same phenomenon." (Kaptelinin and Cole, n.d.) In other words, learning occurs in a social context, always and only. Kaptelinin and Cole describe the ZPD an "interpsychological" space, in which students learn from experts through social interaction. (n.d.) Computer-mediated instruction doesn't exclude experts. CMI simply separates the learner and the expert by one degree. The expert's explicit and tacit beliefs about the curriculum are transmitted through the computer, as well as the expert's expectations for the student.
Membership in a clan can be an interpsychological learning experience. MORPGs present complicated ideas and problems, and players work together and through the game to understand and master these challenges. Most MORPGs simply cleave a narrow, well-defined curriculum in a semi-unique way. (This curriculum generally draws on stereotypical fantasy or science fiction. Players must develop a character and overcome challenges by exploring and fighting.) Because the game's curriculum is often shallow, the greater challenges and fun typically come from interacting with other players. Advanced players may scaffold novice players, to strengthen their clan, or simply for the fun of interpersonal interaction.
With or without direct interpersonal interaction, Vygotsky believed that play was a valuable experience for children. Play can be especially powerful when it fosters symbolic or abstract thinking. Vygotsky wrote that "in play, things lose their determining force." (1978, p. 96) He described a substitution of symbolic meaning. "Action according to rules begins to be determined by ideas and not by objects themselves." (p. 97) Computer games make extensive use of symbols and other abstractions, and players master the symbolic lexicon and grammar to master the game. For example, in some games players must collect and combine esoteric items to solve puzzles (e.g. Resident Evil). (Capcom, 2002) Through this lexicon of items and puzzles, the game offers a grammar of actions (e.g., attach the handle to the mechanism and crank it, to open a new area). The player learns this curriculum of symbols and actions by forming hypotheses and experimenting. Such curriculum combines specific cases with general abstract thinking. For example, specific puzzles yield to general strategies. This combination is considered a powerful approach to teaching and learning. (e.g., Spiro, 1987) For educational games, more meaningful content can be swapped in, while preserving compelling gameplay.
Vygotsky was fascinated with play partly because it illustrates his general idea that tools and social norms shape development. For example, consider a child who has access to a stick horse and has heard stories about heroic cowboys. Toys like the stick horse are a special class of tools, designed for children's recreation and (sometimes) their education. The child can explore a role by pretending to be a cowboy riding a horse. The toy increases the child's capacity to pretend. The heroic cowboys are an iconic idea perpetuated by society (e.g., through stories), and the child can "invest" his capacity in exploring that role. By pretending to be a cowboy, the child may discover new ideas and skills, and incorporate the social norms of heroism and horsemanship into his enduring identity. This transmission from the interpersonal to the intrapersonal is central to Vygotsky's theory of learning. Tools (including language) dictate the specific encounters with social norms, so tools mediate the learning experience. Toys are especially powerful mediators, because children voluntarily seek play.
Games can be powerful aids for pretending and learning. Vygotsky's forbidden colors game is a prototype of playful educational technology. The game probes children's ability to use tools in a thinking task. (1978, p. 42) The color cards are a primitive technology for increasing the child's capacity to manage information. The child will excel at the game if he learns to use the cards. Games can teach students how to use technology to enhance their capacity for thinking and problem solving. For example, a sophisticated computer simulation affords multiple strategies and solutions, and can scaffold the student's learning with information management tools. A game like Trash.SimCity can use dynamic graphics to represent successful or failed city management. (Maxis, 1987) (e.g., Thriving neighborhoods are populated with clean buildings, while decaying neighborhoods are dirty and crumbling.) Students master simulations by exploring and experimenting, and thus learn the simulation's curriculum of ideas, connections, and effective strategies. Games can be tools for thinking. In general, Vygotsky wrote that, "If one changes the tools of thinking available to a child, his mind will have a radically different structure." (1978, p. 126)
A child playing an educational game is an ideal case for applying Activity Theory. This theory was articulated by Aleksey Leontiev, a disciple of Vygotsky, and it's Vygotsky's most significant legacy in game studies. "For an Activity Theorist, the minimal meaningful context is the dialectical relations between human agents (subjects) and that which they act upon (objects) as they are mediated by tools, language, and socio-cultural contexts." (Squire, 2002) Activity Theory is popular with game researchers (e.g., Squire, 2002, Kaptelinin and Cole, n.d.), because it emphasizes the simultaneous inter- and intrapersonal nature of gaming. As in the Trash.SimCity example above, good games transmit a curriculum from the designers to the players. At the same time, each player's experience is unique, and a player learns by exploring and experimenting. The frisson between a player's hypotheses and the contingencies of the game foster intrapersonal reflection. The player must mindfully adapt to new challenges by inventing and testing new strategies.
Such adaptation is a dialectical interaction between a subject (the player) and an object (the game). Activity Theory emphasizes the power and complexity of dialectic, as part of Vygotsky's assertion that it's necessary to study how psychological functions change in order to understand their nature. In other words, the development of a psychological function like pattern recognition can only be understood by studying it in context. The context must be as authentic as possible, while still affording a researcher's probes. Computer games are very amenable to probing. A researcher can monitor and evaluate a player's performance without interfering with the player's moment-to-moment experience. A game is a rich-but-finite domain for learning, so the curriculum is generally well-defined. But the act of gaming is complex, especially as a recreation and a social activity. Activity Theory tries to capture all these factors: the game, playing the game, social interaction through and around the game, the game as a cultural artifact, etc. "However, for Activity Theorists, it is not the presence of these components in isolation that make for meaningful analysis, but rather, the interactions within and among these components." (Squire, 2002) The intersection of most of those interactions is the act of playing the game.
Unfortunately, the nature of play is controversial. In order to explicate the educational possibilities of role-playing games, I juxtapose Vygotsky's beliefs about play with other researchers.
Vygotsky believed that play was the most significant "leading" activity of childhood, because "the most significant psychological achievements of early childhood age occur when children engage in play." (Verenikina et al., 2003) Vygotsky believed play allows children to mitigate a tension between desires and possibilities. Children want excitement, responsibility, challenge, and growth. Children (and adults) want to live interesting stories. They are hemmed in by reality, which prevents them from flying like a superhero or driving in car chase. Vygotsky explained that through play, a child "enters an imaginary, illusory world in which the unrealizable desires can be realized." (1978, p. 93) Computer games offer such illusory worlds. The best computer games are symbiotic with the player's imagination, inviting the player to customize her character and engage in a somewhat-unique story of adventures and triumphs beyond everyday limits.
Vygotsky shared my conviction that engagement is the critical advantage of play and games. Vygotskians recognize that "normally children have an internal desire and interest to engage in play." (Verenikina et al., 2003) The main reason to teach using games is the remarkable engagement students demonstrate with games. "A child's greatest self-control occurs in play." (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 99) By playing pretend, children demonstrate greater ability for "deliberate behavior and self-regulation." (Verenikina et al., 2003) Vygotsky saw play as a catalyst for developing such ability beyond play. (Miller, 1993) "Play prepares children for adulthood." (Verenikina et al., 2003) Adults are hemmed in by social structures and norms, and succeed by creatively working within those limits. For example, an adult may need to work during the day to support his family, but can still advance professionally by taking night classes. Yet the stress of those classes may interfere with work, family, or other obligations. Adults succeed by mitigating such tensions, in a dialectic between internal desires and external constraints.
Vygotsky believed that rules dictate the dialectic in play, especially in games. Rules make play appealing. "Simply running around without purpose or rules is boring and does not appeal to children." (1978, p. 103) Rules have definite but limited value. Rules give players a grammar of action, which often includes conditions for success and failure. For example, in many games a character's health is measured in "Hit Points" (HP). Enemy attacks reduce HP, while healing increases HP. If HP reaches zero, the character dies. Thus, through rules players can expect certain consequences for certain actions. Rules give a grammar of action, but must be implemented with a continual, critical eye to gameplay and flow. The flow of gameplay reflects the vitality of a dialectic. Ideally, there is a continuous, evolving tension between the player and the game, keeping the player in the zone.
Several researchers have offered different theories of play. According to Lazarus, play is energizing. (1883, in Verenikina et al., 2003) This "Recreation" or "Relaxation" play theory suggests people spend energy in work, and regain energy through play. In contrast, Schiller suggested a "surplus energy theory," in which play is enervating (i.e., energy draining). (1875, in Verenikina et al., 2003) People spend energy in work, children don't work as much, and so children spend surplus energy in play. Freud believed that play is cathartic. Through play, people "express negative emotions that relate to situations in which they have no control in their everyday lives. ... [Play provides] a safe context for expressing these emotions and gaining a sense of control." (1959, in Verenikina et al., 2003) Finally, Mead believed that play helps children develop their identities. Mead saw "children's role play as an important vehicle for developing their sense of self." (1934, in Verenikina et al., 2003)
Clearly, play is a complex phenomena that affords several interpretations. Vygotsky's theory of play may be too narrow, and may reflect a bias toward reasoning and control. Vygotsky didn't believe children were consciously mitigating tensions between their desires and their limits, but he did argue that play is a catalyst for developing such rational control. He believed that as we grow older, "imagination... is play without action." (1978, p. 93) Yet imagination may not be a strictly rational phenomenon. Games and other imaginative experiences may control us as much as we control them. (D. Wong, personal communication, October 24, 2003) Play may actually be a dialectic among the player, the designers, the game-as-designed, and the game-as-experienced. A MORPG offers great potential for studying a game-as-experienced, because players and their characters often act and evolve in unexpected directions, and because such games are often in continual development. The designers continue changing and improving the game after it has started. The resulting interpsychological and intrapsychological experiences are suitably complex and intriguing. For example, a player may decide to act in a way the designers didn't anticipate, thus stimulating a dialog about the intended and actual gameplay experience. In such a dialog, intuitive insights can be as valuable as rational arguments. Much of good game design is tacit knowledge, which implies that play may be less rational than Vygotsky believed.
Vygotsky believed that new tools change how we think. He may have revisited his theories if he had played some computer games.
Vygotsky believed that higher psychological functions develop through social interaction. He also believed that children come to recognize and appreciate social norms, especially adult roles, by playing. When a child plays, he's in a state of "identity fluidity." (Vygotsky doesn't use the term "identity fluidity" but I believe he would approve of it.) This fluidity is the child's capacity to pretend, to temporarily play a new role. His identity is not limited by everyday constraints, like his age or education. A child can pretend to be a cowboy, and thus becomes a cowboy, in a limited way. When actors talk about "getting into character," they are deliberately making their identity fluid.
Tools can increase a child's identity fluidity, especially toys modeled on the real tools of the role. For example, a baby doll facilitates playing the role of a mother. Vygotsky saw language as a special kind of tool, and language increases a child's identity fluidity. For example, a child who mimics "how cowboys talk" can play the role more expressively, and hence more intimately. (e.g., Countless children grew up mimicking "Hi ho Silver! Away!") Collaborative play may also increase the intimacy of the new identity, since the child becomes socially identified with the role (for a limited time, at least). Vygotsky described two sisters who decide to "play sisters," and how they use play to explore and experiment with that role. (1978, p. 95) Vygotsky believes such role-play has intimate effects on children, because they have to acquire the appropriate rules of behavior for a role. The acquisition of these rules is somewhat temporary, but can also effect a child's enduring identity.
Vygotsky saw play, especially role-playing, as a mechanism of development. While identity fluidity generally means a child sheds the role when he's done playing, if the child plays the role intimately and regularly, his enduring identity will be changed. He uses play to mitigate tensions between desires and limits, and this dialectic causes higher psychological functions to develop. For example, a child who regularly plays authority figures (e.g., parents, teachers, police officers) may be developing the real rules and skills of authority (e.g., a commanding tone). In this way, identity fluidity may be the basis for leadership, empathy, and other higher psychological functions.
Role-playing games are an especially intimate form of play, because they seldom include general victory conditions. The game continues as long as the players want it to. A player must define his character and goals, and thus imposes certain rules on himself. For example, a player may want to play a hero, and thus has to adhere to his own conception of heroic behavior. Some games make these rules explicit. For example, a character may have an ethical statistic that varies based on heroic or villainous actions (e.g., killing innocent computer-controlled characters). Ernest Adams and other game researchers believe that every game has ethical rules, even if they're not explicitly programmed. In a specific game, certain strategies will be more successful than others. By discovering and favoring these strategies, a player uses his identity fluidity to learn the role the rules represent, including its ethical superstructure.
Vygotsky believed play is a dialectical process, that children play to mitigate tensions. While Vygotsky didn't explicitly discuss identity development through play, the development made possible by identity fluidity is a powerful idea in identity research. Specifically, I see a powerful possible synthesis between Vygotsky's theory of play and James Marcia's theory of identity development.
Marcia uses dialectic and identity fluidity in his theory of identity development in adolescents. Building on Erik Erikson's theories, Marcia believes that identity is formed through crises. A crisis is "a period of identity development during which the adolescent is choosing among meaningful alternatives." (Santrock, 1988, p. 325) Such a choice mitigates tension between desires and limits, making this a very Vygotskian perspective. Marcia defined four identity statuses in adolescents:
In this model, crises are seen as desirable, if they compel and inform mindful investments in identity. From a Marcian perspective, playing a role-playing game involves two levels of identity development. A player is developing a character identity, and the player is also developing his own identity. A good game uses crises to compel identity development. For example, role-playing games often use levels to measure a character's achievements. Each time a character reaches a new level, the player is offered a choice of abilities to increase. Each choice contributes to the identity of the character, making the character better at fighting, hiding, persuasion, etc. The player can experiment with different strategies at each level, or with different characters. The game becomes a Vygotskian tool for increasing the player's ability to explore and experiment. If the player keeps his character in identity diffusion, foreclosure, or moratorium, he is far less likely to succeed at the game. Every game offers a fresh start at identity development. And games afford identity exploration beyond everyday experience. For example, a management position in a company may take years to earn. But players may rise to leadership roles in a MORPG in a matter of weeks.
Players generally have very different identities than the characters in a game. Most people don't slay monsters, commit felonies, or explore new worlds. Yet the social dynamics of a MORPG are often similar to players' everyday experiences. The characters in a game have desires and fears, dreams and plans, loyalties and jealousies. Sometimes a character's traits are transparently those of the player (e.g., egotism). But role-playing games allow players to juxtapose their own enduring identities with those of artificial characters. Such juxtaposition can be extreme (e.g., playing the opposite sex), and any tension between character and player identities can be educational. From the combined perspective of Vygotsky and Marcia, a game can compel and inform a player's identity development if it challenges his character with crises. More sophisticated crises will foster more identity development, for both the character and the player. The context of play keeps the crises one degree distant from the player, but a Vygotskian would argue that reacting to such crises recruits a dialectic that has lasting effects on the player. For example, if a player decides his character will remain loyal to a flawed leader, he may also be confronting his own beliefs about loyalty and leadership.
Kevin Ruess has explored the potential of games to compel and inform identity development. He was inspired by the book Black Like Me, in which a white man dyes his skin to experience life as a black man. Ruess experimented with "a cultural role-play simulation" in a text-based, multi-user, game-like space. His subjects participated in mock interviews while playing "a different ethnic identity than their own." The game-like space made this role-play possible, because "there is no physical representation of your identity." Some subjects said "this really opened a window, on what it was like to have a different cultural identity and how that might affect your daily life." (Personal communication, July 9, 2003) (See Buchanan, 2003)
Few games challenge players this intimately. In the absence of crises, Marcia would predict little identity development, for either the character or the player. Vygotsky might suggest designing a game to include frequent, varied crises, beyond just the choices of equipment and abilities. Clans, as social organizations, could be a powerful tool for introducing and resolving crises. Kaptelinin and Cole are studying collaboration and conflict in computer games. They believe "conflicts can result in a revision of individual values, goals, and strategies at the same time that it creates new forms of joint activity." (n.d.) Everyday society values new forms of joint activity. I believe MORPGs are an excellent context for teaching the skills of divergent, creative thinking, as well as working together on convergent tasks. In the absence of designs that explicitly teach such skills, players have imported and invented such skills to form clans. Better designs could co-op spontaneous phenomena like clans for more deliberate learning. Some commercial games are already experimenting with more sophisticated designs for joint activity.
Kaptelinin and Cole suggest that crises can be arranged for learning. Specifically, they suggest that "collective activities should be arranged so that learners can attain goals which are difficult or impossible to reach alone." (n.d.) Verenikina et al. (2003) suggest some guidelines for evaluating educational computer games from a Vygotskian perspective. These guidelines neatly summarize my main arguments, especially if these are used as design objectives:
Computer games combine the appetizing thrill of play with the general hypnotic power of interactive technology. They are not necessarily effective learning tools, if educators want to teach more meaningful curriculums. Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development is a useful metaphor for elucidating the potential of teaching using games (e.g., games scaffold players by ramping up difficulty). His theory of play is built on the productive tension of dialectic, and nicely complements Marcia's model of identity development. In order to inform and compel identity achievement, games must present crises. The crises, and the appropriate rules, should be derived from the game's intended curriculum. For example, to teach leadership and group dynamics, a game should use collective crises. Such crises should only be solvable through leadership and teamwork.
Vygotsky would probably agree that his ignorance of MORPGs limits the suitability of his theories for deconstructing them. In particular, Vygotsky's play theory seems inadequate for examining the possible non-rational elements of gaming. As games continue to grow in sophistication, they should have the same multidimensional impact of other forms of art (e.g., film). We may know games through rational control, but they may also be capable of fostering other experiences (e.g., spiritual).
Vygotsky's ZPD is widely known in education. It's easy to invoke his name, but much harder to understand his perspective. However, when combined with similar theories, game researchers have a perspective both Vygotskian and prescriptive. As we experiment with games for learning, our dialectic with them should continue to teach us new and better approaches.
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