Youth Designing Socio-Ecological Futures: Reworlding Game Ecologies

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 11:45 am - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Digital and Media Spaces of Critical Connection

Abstract

This case study examines how youth in a virtual after-school lab engaged in transformative world-making through speculative (re)design challenges using Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V). We define transformative world-making as a structural and epistemic creative process in which individuals collaboratively critique, tinker with, and redesign the systems that shape sociotechnical and material worlds. Through qualitative analysis, we explored how students developed these literacies by designing alternative social and ecological futures in response to societal dilemmas. Drawing on sociocultural theory and Bateson’s (1972) learning framework, we propose a model for supporting transformative world-making. Findings show that youth’s transformative world-making involved experimenting with speculative tools, critiquing dominant ideologies, creating manifestors, and redesigning infrastructures within a game-based learning ecology.

Authors

• Edward Rivero, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Arturo Cortez, University of California - Davis