The Classroom of Popular Culture by James Paul Gee - Harvard Education Letter - November/December 2005

01 Jul 09

Anthony Armstrong

Research shows that students learn best when they learn in context—that is, when they can relate words, concepts, skills, or strategies to prior experience. In fact, many students are alienated from what they learn in school because those connections and experiences are absent.
To maintain their competitive advantage, workers in industrialized countries will need to go beyond a mastery of standardized skills to become flexible, adaptive, lifelong learners of new skills. Yet U.S. schools are focused more than ever on the “basics,” measuring their success with standard-ized tests that assess standardized skills.
To maintain their competitive advantage, workers in industrialized countries will need to go beyond a mastery of standardized skills to become flexible, adaptive, lifelong learners of new skills.
It is ironic that young people today are often exposed to more creative and challenging learning experiences in popular culture than they are in school.
Let’s ask ourselves how we can make learning in or out of school more “game-like”—not in the sense of playing games in class, but by making the experience of learning as motivating, stimulating, collaborative, and rewarding as the experience of playing a well-designed video game.