Examining the Role of Playful Games in Foundational English Literacy Instruction for Adolescent Refugee Girls

• In Event: Games as Dialogues Between Pasts and Futures: Playing Toward Educational Reimagination

Abstract

Purpose:
As the teaching of reading has become increasingly centralized in educational policy, science of reading paradigms have begun to promote phonics-only curricula. Sociocritical literacy scholars have pointed out that this narrow perspective of reading leaves little space for the play that characterizes actual literacy learning (Aukerman & Schultz, 2021; Compton-Lilly et al, 2023). This study builds upon these critiques by documenting a year of foundational English literacy instruction at a school for adolescent, refugee girls in a large southeastern city. In this paper, we focus specifically on the role of games in the reading classrooms of these students.

Framework: We conceptualize games through sociocultural theories of imagination and play (Vygotsky, 1978; Enciso, 2017; Holland et al, 1998). In play, players use what they know to assign novel meanings to objects and people, agentically putting their knowledge to use to, at least temporarily, shift how they move through their worlds. This opportunity for play is especially present in games, in which individuals collaboratively agree on new rules, roles, and goals.

Methods:
This paper draws from an ethnographic study of classes at this school, the World Community School (WCS). We attended school daily, took fieldnotes, and collected audio and video recordings. We also conducted interviews with all students and teachers at the beginning and end of the school year. Additionally WCS conducts formal literacy assessments as part of their internal data collection, and these are part of this data set. To analyze this data set for this paper, we identified instances of game play during students' literacy learning at WCS. These included both small scale games that happened in classes- like matching games, sound identification games, and “telephone,” drama-based games that occurred during daily morning meetings and whole school games, like the day students ran a school store. We then coded each game to identify what was socially accomplished in this game play. Finally, we grouped these codes into larger patterns.

Findings:
In my analysis of games in this context, we broadly found that games facilitated students' development as both English language users and caring and competent community members. At WCS, games allowed students to a) step into the role of experts who were capable of generating new and surprising knowledge b) develop relationships with their peers who also took on roles in this play c) (re)perform the language they were learning. Data from this study correlates students’ game play with their literacy learning by formal assessment measures, but perhaps more importantly it correlates game play with students' own self-reported confidence as an English speaker and WCS community member.

Implications:
This study has important implications for both how practitioners teach reading, and how scholars understand games in education broadly. Games at WCS cast students as creative and competent language users and they allowed students to develop this creativity and competency in and through peer relationships. This study underscores the role of play in foundational literacy learning and demonstrates how games can build upon the social dimensions of educational work.

Authors

• Beth Krone, Kennesaw State University

• Hannah Edber, The Global Village Project