This special issue expands our understanding of teaching and learning through video game play, with specific attention to culture. The issue gives insight into the ways educators, researchers, and developers should be discussing and designing for impactful learner-centered game-based learning experiences. The issue features forward-thinking…

Educational videogames support productive learning by organizing content in relation to meaningful contexts and roles. Videogames can also create new opportunities for understanding and supporting learning when the game ends. This presents formative transitions as a strategy for revealing what players learn through videogames, while also…

This article discusses video games as "attractors" to "affinity spaces." It argues that affinity spaces are key sites today where people teach and learn 21st Century skills. While affinity spaces are proliferating on the Internet as interest-and-passion-driven sites devoted to a common set of endeavors, they are not new, just…

Digital gaming communities are nuanced and developing. The eSports community has advanced in noticeable ways and represents the highest form of online competitive play for digital gaming environments. Due to the high stakes nature of eSports, its participants sit on the very edge of strategic planning boundaries and push the ceiling of…

Video games are an oft-cited reason for young learners getting interested in programming and computer science. As such, many learning opportunities build on this interest by having kids program their own video games. This approach, while sometimes successful, has its drawbacks stemming from the fact that the challenge of programming and game…

Games, play, and learning have a long and embedded history that outdates digital games by many years. However, video games, computing, and technology have significant and historically documented diversity issues, which privilege whites and males as content producers, computing and gaming experts, and STEM learners and employees. Many aspects of…

The authors extend the theory of "disciplinary integration" of games for science education beyond the virtual world of games, and identify two key themes of a practice-based theoretical commitment to science learning: (1) materiality in the classroom, and (2) iterative design of multiple, complementary, symbolic inscriptions (e.g.,…

This article explores the critical need to articulate computing as a creative discipline and the potential for gender and ethnic diversity that such efforts enable. By embracing a culture shift within the discipline and using games as a medium of discourse, we can engage students and faculty in a broader definition of computing. The transformative…

This article reviews the design and implementation of a game as an instrument for dialogue, both as a social tool and a shared interface for music performance. Beyond describing the design of "Game Remains," the article shares the details of an impact story of how an installation in Guelph's Musagetes Boarding House Arts in Canada has…

Sigmund Tobias came to the United States in 1948, after his family had fled to China from the Holocaust in Europe. His Memoir ("Strange Haven: A Jewish Childhood in Wartime Shanghai") describes that part of his life. He settled in New York, where he completed his B.A. and M.S. in School Psychology from the City College of New York, and a…

The technologies underlying virtual environments like videogames and the methodologies of the learning sciences create an important intersection for work in educational technology. Coupling these fields enables us to consider participatory learning in terms of the ways that "context" shapes a process of making meaning. In this article,…

The authors describe the steps in the ethical decision-making process and show how employers and educators are addressing ethical gray areas using innovative simulations in order to better prepare employees and other personnel to face ethical challenges head-on. The model outlined in this article can be used as a teaching and training tool to…

This article is a guide for researchers interested in assessing the effectiveness of serious computer-based games (or video games, digital games, or electronic games) intended to improve health and health care. It presents a definition of health games, a rationale for their use, an overview of the current state of research, and recommendations for…

Video games are explored as a means of reviving dying indigenous languages. The design and production of the place-based United Sugpiaq Alutiiq (USA) video game prototype involved work across generations and across cultures. The video game is one part of a proposed digital environment where Sugcestun speakers in traditional Alaskan villages could…

Computer and video games have recently attracted significant attention from educators as a medium for learning. Clark's (2007) critique of the "Serious Games" movement provides a set of useful guidelines for moving that particular industry forward. This article argues for another way of framing the emerging field, as "Games, Learning, and…