The Jekyll And Hyde Effect

The Jekyll and Hyde Effect
Play, Games, and Learning in the classroom
Professional identities torn asunder?
Brock Dubbels
Brock@vgAlt.com

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Outline
This presentation explores the Jekyll and Hyde Effect and themes elicited from themes coded through discourse analysis on artifacts and outcomes from a graduate course in literacy.
The Jekyll and Hyde Effect calls into question approaches to accountability and implementation of research and assessment in classroom instruction.
This is then connected to reviews on intelligence and recent research on comprehension and new views that connect embodiment and motor resonance as important parts of recall and mental simulation (some times called imagination) validating active learning as a necessary part of building subject area comprehension.
This is then connected to current thinking on play and implementation with games and play in the classroom.

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The Jekyll and Hyde effect
New models of comprehension and memory validate the value of active and playful learning for cognitive enhancement and generative transfer. Data on academic performance and engagement measures from five years of games, play, and virtual space learning in k-20 classrooms will be presented in the context of assessment measures using a model for assessing cognitive growth. This is contrasted with educator beliefs the efficacy of play and the limitations of models of teacher professionalism creating aJekyll and Hyde Effect.
Through interviews, artifacts, and surveys, k-20 educators have expressed a willingness to embrace games, but have been reluctant to do so publicly for fear of professional reputation, as well as the ability to implement such pedagogical change.

Introduction
Professional identity in a school can have a profound effect on engagement and performance by teachers—especially in a time of reform. Of significance is the role of trust and the way this single factor in a school community can shape teacher interactions with other staff, students, administrators, and community.
What happens when a teacher’s core beliefs about learning and student instruction are contrary to mandates and policy?
What if there is research to support that active learning involving movement, emotion , and play may be the basis for building reading comprehension?

Teachers have expressed that they feel tension as professional educators in that their beliefs about student learning contrast with the current beliefs related to the culture of accountability;
That what may look good on a spreadsheet, may not be helping kids in the bigger picture.
Many teachers have unknowingly found themselves in a situation where they have begun creating two different classrooms,
and two different sets of grade books . . . and two different teaching identities – culminating in

the Jekyll and Hyde Effect.

Jekyll --
standards, benchmarks, traditional curriculum to not be singled out: by the book, proper, professional, dignified, and ready to do whatever they are told.
Hyde --
I know what works for my kids, modification of mandates to fit students engaging; developmentally appropriate, and fits the teachers MOJO.
The classroom
we show
The classroom
we grow

Methods
Over the course of five years documents and teacher artifacts were collected with permission through courses, surveys, and policy documents for teaching standards and quality instruction. Teacher responses to questions related to standardized assessment and curriculum were elicited through survey, interview, and course assignments in a graduate course for teachers at the University of Minnesota. These artifacts and responses to research literature on play and standardized curriculum were analyzed from the perspectives of work and play, reform, and professional teaching identities. Where work was often associated with rigor, teaching to the standards and tests, and scripted curriculum; play was often seen as differentiated, student-centered instruction with teacher influenced discovery activities, open-ended criteria driven projects, and inquiry. These two categories were coded analyzed for influence or reaction to education policy mandates, standards, and quality indicators from TAP, INTASC, and the Minneapolis Public Schools Standards for Effective Instruction in the form of genre chains (Fairclough, 2007).

Genre chain of quality & mandate
What I began to see was more that researched methods, mandates, policy, and assessments were lost in translation – in that they were seen as replacing traditional curriculum rather than to enhance and extend instruction and curriculum that teachers felt passion for and have developed over time. This was probably due to a lack of imagination, lack of experience, and the purpose and outcomes, lost in translation, and teachers feeling disconnected and disrespected.

Meet you to death?
What else can we do?
It can be overwhelming.

support administration of assessments;
be familiar with assessment tools and their purposes;
allocate and prioritize time for data based teacher collaboration;
build school schedules that enable teachers to respond to assessment information; and
create school cultures focused on the use of assessment information and teachers as learners.
Leader Roles:

On being told about changes that needed to be made for data collection.
Teacher Roles:
administer assessments where appropriate;
collect and organize assessment information;
engage in collaborative data analysis, review and sharing;
collaborate with colleagues in response to assessment information;
implement instruction responsive to assessment identified student needs;
track student progress over time;
provide feedback to students on their work and progress;
engage in reflective practice;
engage students in identifying criteria for quality work; and
align assessments to standards and instruction
"doing my job is getting in the way of doing my job“

Why have Learning Walks?
Reinforces attention to an instructional focus on teaching and learning.
Gather data about instructional practice and students’ learning to supplement other data about school and student performance.
Stimulate collegial conversation about teaching and learning through asking questions about what evidence is and isn’t observed.
Learn from other participants through their observations, questions, experiences, and perspectives.
Deepen understanding and practices by continuous feedback and monitoring of school growth.
Deepen understandings and practices related to continuous improvement.
Focuses the school’s work on school learning goals, instructional practices, and students’ learning.
Provides feedback to the school’s stakeholders and helps maintain momentum and focus on teaching and learning.

On Learning Walks and Observation
I had all the things on the overhead that an observer would want to see—not that I don’t use the projector for kids--but I usually do not include teacher stuff like benchmarks and standards; that just turns them off (the kids). . . And when we are working in class, we have projects and structured group work that does not look like what they (observers) are coming to see.
So I told my kids that we were going to have a visitor tomorrow who wneeded to be a better teacher, and that is why they did not have a classroom of their own. So the kids sat patiently and let me explain everything on the overhead and did the worksheet. The kids were all very worried about her and really wanted to help!

Two sets of books

On the use of reading software for data collection
from using reading software, where I shared that this software had no real research behind the outcomes. She said:
“it doesn’t matter if it works, as long as I have these scores to give to parents and administrators I can do what I know works. The district and parents like to have numbers that level the kids scores. I just don’t want to be the nail sticking up.”

Special Ed

Regarding Special Ed
Schools fudge, parents fudge, teachers fudge and the federal paperwork almost encourages this to happen as there are loopholes in place to make sure the system keeps taking its chunk regardless of testing. There are thousands of stories of this online and there is enough paperwork and documentation to show what happens to intent when good policy is unfunded and often unfounded.
Every new little change that comes and the implementation of it is colored by the precedent of how one is permitted to implement policy.
The premier example of how that is done is with special education. I am no sp.ed. basher, don't get me wrong, it's just very easy to see where policy and intent do not come close to matching what actually happens. Sp.Ed. teachers often have to fight to get things like good inclusion in schools where the school actually touts it.

Read what we tell you

About limitations in books
I believe that the literacy gap can be closed, children just have to be enthusiastic about reading and be able to explore the genres they enjoy so that reading is fun. My mother is a writer and we've always had books in the house but I am the only one (out of 7) who likes to read and actually has bookcases with books. I think it is about access to books and children being allowed to read what they want, not the books the teacher has chosen for them or the ones that the curriculum says is mandatory.

Rejected
Inappropriate
Too hard

Play is suspect
Maybe everyone is?

On the role of play
As a teacher I like to have everything under control. I want to have things planned out and orderly. Play is a very difficult thing to have control of. So when it comes to the classroom, is play the right thing to do? I think it is important to let kids play. . . play is very important for kids in the learning process. I feel play is essential for learning, but educators need to be cautious of how they use it in the classroom.

When translation is included
I was struck with several examples of things my school IS doing right (according to the checklist on pages 30-44). (I will put Gee’s terms in parenthesis or otherwise note them). For example, my principal encourages me to incorporate choice (#1 Co-design) into my teaching because she recognizes and reminds me, as Gee states, that this encourages “ownership, buy in, engaged participation” (p.31).
I believe the math curriculum our district uses is in alignment with Gee’s cycles of Expertise (#7) because skills and concepts are taught cyclically, allowing students multiple exposures and practices times to develop, deepen and master the given academic content over the 5+ years of the program. In science we use the FOSS kits, which allow learners to “play around” (#10 Sandbox) before they dive in and learn and are assessed on the content.
When I was a young student my father used to do science experiments with me, and I remember learning all about the Praying Mantis in a hands-on experience with a live praying mantis. This is deep learning. It was a meaningful experience where I was able to internalize the information I was taught and now can pass on to other students.

Creating a second classroom
Professor Dubbels could have written this exercise down and asked us what problems we thought would arise. Certainly we would have come up with a list and could have discussed it. However, having us actively participate in the simulation, “playing the game”, created a longer lasting and more meaningful experience. Notice I used the term “game”. I believe that as teachers we sometimes shy away from that term due to fear of what other teachers, administrators, or parents will say.

Mandates and translation
From my experience of teaching, teaching reading is one of the hardest things for me to do. I have a wide range of learners and readers, from newcomers with no concept of phonics and letters to struggling readers who benefit most from small group work to high readers who need to be challenged. I struggle with my own focus on what I need to be teaching. What skills will all students benefit from? What skills need to be reintroduced? I have gone through the week long trainings where we are told what we can do but I want to know how we can do it.

Rigor and early grades
We have talked about rigor so much and how it looks different to different people depending on where they are in the learning continuum, their position in the school (teacher/ principal, assistant principal, EA, or even parents), teaching experience, and also their educational philosophy on how to teach/how students learn.
In primary grades the play is part of the students work and learning. When someone walks into the classroom and doesn't understand it, they may preserve that the students are not working on the state/district standards. Kindergarten (I taught Kindergarten for about 20 years and for summer school) now has 3 tests given by the district. The district sends a tester out to each site to administer the tests in Sept, Jan., and April. They test different items on the tests and it's hard to do anaccurate correlation. In April they do a CBM/curriculum based measurement which is how many words that they can read in one minute accurately...(You know that part). If you know that your students are going to be tested and compared with other teachers at your site and other schools; teachers do feel a need to teach what will be on the test. This is also something that the administrators would want teachers to do so that it reflects good on the school. Allowing the play/exploration time can take away from some of the test preparation time and conflict with what we know is better for early childhood learning (play/exploration) .
This can be a dilemma for teachers. The first grade has a district tester come out fall and spring to individually administer anoral reading test. Second grade has had the CALT computer test in the spring (our schedule for next year list the MAT test for second grade 3X in the year.
There are school walk through observations by district staff and other teachers. They are looking to see rigor and differentiated instruction. Their idea can be different from the teacher that they are observing.

So what does all this mean?Are teachers creating two different identities to get by?Isn’t this institutionally reinforced falsehood?What if the teacher must modify the curriculum to make it work – are we still measuring the same mandates then?What if the measures are wrong?

There is a battle of perception
Child convenience design
Adult convenience design

Perceived Importance of Play
Play is for young kids
Middle school means work
So as we grow older, we are expected to be ready to work.
This may be how words like “rigor”
and statements like
"it's your job” , and
“you don’t have to like it”
come in to play.

Our emphasis for students is different
Teachers may need support to implement authentic ways to integrate this new emphasis on assessment , and perhaps we are not connecting with the difficulty of this task.

Discipline
Do we have this all wrong?
Consider the word: Discipline
What is it to be someone’s disciple?
Is that out of love and respect, or fear?
Are we losing good quality instruction through poor translation of research for implementation?
Is there a reason there are not more disciples?

Will standardizing teaching lead to standardized minds?
Is there a right way?
A wrong way?
What is good teaching?

We understand the importance of tests, but . . .
What will tests offer to students’ education? Really?
Should what we do in the classroom, provide the basis for success on tests?
Or is testing a new genre that needs to be accounted for across content areas?
Is there a general intelligence that can be nurtured for testing?
Is there more than one intelligence?

Measuring Intelligence, a Brief History
Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwin, was into measuring humans in every way possible … including measuring their ability to make sensory discriminations which he assumed was linked to intellectual prowess.
However, the measure of intelligence really took off with the work of Binet who thought that intelligence was not reflected in abilities to make sensory discriminations but, instead, was reflected by performance on a variety of paper-and-pencil tests targeting such things as imagery, attention, comprehension, imagination, judgments of visual space, memory, etc…).
The Binet-Simon test (1905) was the first such test.

So, is there one intelligence, or several?
Spearman (1927) was one of the first Psychologists to theorize about human intelligence.
He thought that there was one basic factor, termed the g factor (g for general) that he thought was underlying all cognitive behavior.
In addition to this g factor, he also thought that there were a variety of s factors (s for specific) that also contributed to a subject’s performance on some specific task.
Thus, performance on any given task we assumed to reflect the subject’s general intelligence, plus specific intelligence relevant to the task.

Factor Analytic Approaches
Some studies using the factor analytic approach ended up finding many different factors related to intelligence.
Thurstone (1938) found 7 factors:
verbal comprehension,
verbal fluency,
number,
spatial visualization,
memory,
reasoning,
and perceptual speed.
However, when a factor analysis was performed on Thurstone’s factors, Cattell found that two factors underlie the 7 factors. He labeled these two factors fluid intelligence (Gf) and crystal intelligence (Gc), concepts which are still discussed quite frequently in current intelligence research.

General Intelligence
Cattell thought fluid intelligence (Gf) was a non-learned characteristic that was revealed through performance on culture-free tasks tapping such things as the ability to see relations in patterns.
Conversely, crystal intelligence (Gc) is learned knowledge such as that revealed by vocabulary or mathematics tasks … anything that taps the kinds of things you might learn in school.
Cattell also thought that fluid intelligence was necessary for good crystal intelligence … basically, if one had a high fluid intelligence then, given the opportunity, they could achieve a high crystal intelligence … however, if the fluid intelligence is low, then the person will not benefit much from the learning opportunity.

An Information Processing Theory of Intelligence
Sternberg (1985) has come up with a different theoretical viewpoint concerning intelligence that is based on the information processing framework used by most cognitive psychologists.
His view assumes three factors:
Componential Intelligence consists of the mental mechanisms that people use to plan and carry out tasks.
Experiential Intelligence refers to our ability to apply past learning in novel situations to solve problems more easily.
Contextual Intelligence refers to an ability to perform behaviours that are adaptive in an evolutionary sense.

A Neuropsychological Theory of Intelligence
Gardiner’s (1983) neuropsychological approach posits that if certain abilities are located in separate parts of the brain such that one ability can be damaged while the others are retained, these abilities must be the basic building blocks of intelligent behavior.
Gardiner claims there are seven such categories of intelligence:
linguistic,
musical,
spatial,
logical-mathematical,
bodily-kinesthetic,
intrapersonal awareness,
and interpersonal awareness.

Plasticity, and Metamodality
Research in cognitive neuroscience has made a case for meaning making as a distributed network of diverse cognitive connections with redundant functions that can respond to trauma with plasticity—allowing one area to compensate for loss or mishap in another. Research on plasticity shows that “the experience in one sensory modality influences the experience of another.” (Pascual-Leone & Hamilton, 2001, pg. 1).

Embodiment and Motor Resonance
The brain is for action
the brain is for creating action with the body and responding to activity in the environment – that the majority of the brains function and work consists of controlling the body, and that there is an intimate connection between action and language comprehension . . . the meaning of a situation to an individual (human or nonhuman animal) consists of the set of actions the individual can undertake in that situation. That when we read, we are imagining the actions described through the symbolic representations from the medium. In effect, a mimetic or representational mental simulation is created based upon description from the text. The text then queues memory from world experience and connects the multimodal memory that supports the referents and descriptors through predicate and nominal input and the qualities that contextualize them as well as provide the ability to project patterns of experience from gained prior experience. We see a mental image of what is described by words.
Sensory Organs

Indexical Hypothesis
Schema of an egg
Mapping Perception to schema
The Indexical Hypothesis suggests young readers may not consistently “index,” or map, words to the objects the words represent because of a lack of experience with physical objects and action. Consequently, these readers fail to derive much meaning from the text.

According to Glenberg, Jaworski, Rischal, and Levin (2007, p. 231)
the point of reading is to convey meaning. But what is meaning?
According to the IH, meaning arises from creating or simulating
the perceptual/action situation described by sentences. These
simulations are determined by the properties of the objects referred
to, that is, the affordances of the objects, not the properties of the
words. Physical and imagined manipulations help children to index
words to objects so that affordances can be derived and meaning achieved.
Manipulation recalled more, and more successfully answered the inference questions, than children who read and reread the critical sentences. The effect size (Cohen’s d) for recall was 1.39, and for answering the inference question it was 0.81.
In other words, the effects were substantial.
After applying physical manipulation, the children were taught to imagine manipulating the objects; that is, they were told to figure out how they would move the objects, but instead of actually moving them, they were to imagine moving them. In the reread condition, the children were taught to read the text once out loud and once silently. Columns 2 and 3 in Table 9.1 show that the
benefits of manipulation extend to imagined manipulation.
That is, children do not have to always physically manipulate; once they learn how to index, the indexing can be done in imagination, much the way we suppose that competent adults read. The effect sizes for imagined manipulation compared to reread were 1.87 and 1.50 for the recall and question answering, respectively.

Glenberg, Gutierrez, Levin, Japuntich, and Kaschak (2004)
brains evolved to control action, and, as suggested by M. Montessori (1967), a successful theory of cognition and its application will require recognition of that fact. The indexical hypothesis, an embodied account of language comprehension, posits that language is
understood by simulating the actions that underlie sentence meaning and
that reading comprehension can be improved by ensuring that this simulation
occurs.

What can we do?
Play
Are we going to lose play-like learningbased upon a lack of imagination in understanding implementation of research-based instruction and assessment for data-based decision-making?
Perhaps embedding and synthesizing these measures in purposeful learning aligned with student interest and choice is important for engagement.
Maybe play is the engine for deeper learning and comprehension?
So why are we so caught up on worlds like work, rigor, effort, and discipline?

Where are we now?
I don’t want to be the teacher no one respects. I am a professional and know my content area.
It’s okay for little kids and Montessori, but this is a public school.
Play, what about rigor and standards!
These kids have tests to take!
We have taken away play in school?

When is an activity not play?
Play is an activity where there are NO significant consequences.
No is significant here.
When you here the words
Don’t play with that . . . No honey, no. ..
My coffee .. …
Computer . . . .
No!
Ohhhhnoooo!
Then you know it is not play
Mostly, it is not play when an activity has consequences – but that is relative to who is cleaning it up!

The Right Way to Teach
So many demands, directions, and different students
Which way do go?
What road do we follow?
Should we wait until they go away?
Which way?

Building comprehension process
Age/ time
Learning to Read
Basic reading skills
Comprehension Skills
Decoding
Reading Comprehension
Grade 4
Reading to Learn
Figure 1. Kintsch & Kintsch in Paris & Stahl (2006)

It takes a week to make a jelly bean.

Interaction seems essential in learning, the more feedback the learner receives on a behavior, attitude, or performance, the more likely they are to become aware of it and either refine or change the behavior with the information provided in the feedback (Ferster & Skinner, 1957; Baer & Wolf, 1970; Vygotsky, 1976).
Taken side by side, games are designed in much the same way we conceptualize learning through as we view Vygostky’s zone of proximal development (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988, p. 35) next to game designer Daniel Cook ( last visited 6/10/09, http://is.gd/1kQ0r).
Learning and schema building are iterative

Learning Acceleration
Stanovich (2000) called this compensation, where the comprehender may try to utilize more highly developed skills and knowledge in order to make sense of what may be new or unfamiliar by utilizing knowledge and experience from other content areas.
Once upon a time . . .
Happily ever after

Enter the labyrinth – a new experience, perhaps a story.

It is when we gain top-sight, a systemic awareness of the landscape, that we can become strategic and move on from trial and error, and simple tactics for exercising agency. In a galaxy far, far away . . .

Towards top sight

That is no moon, that is a space station!
Stories and media have become much more complex, but also more interactive and helpful by adapting to the needs of the learner. Games are structured forms of play that create interaction and thus, learning.
Learning is about feedback and the next act to modify the last behavior.

Just think about reading
Pattern recognition
Expression
Decoding
Mental representation
Mental Simulation
Motor resonance
Affective catalyst
Embodied

Elements of comprehension
Attention
Prior Knowledge
Content, Structure, Genre, Categories, Concepts
Situation Model
spatial locations, time frames,people, objects, ideas, color, emotions, goals, shape, spatial, temporal, causal, ownership, kinship, social, etc.
Composition of Comprehension
Perceptual, action, and affective areas contribute
Glenberg, Gutierrez, Levin, Japunitch, Kaschak (2004)

Recall and fluency

How do we build a comprehension model?
Comprehension Model
Literary Elements
Character/ Characterization
diction
Plot
Setting
Point of View
Theme
Tone
Voice
Word choice
A spatial-temporal framework
spatial locations, time frames
Entities
people, objects, ideas,
Properties of entities
color, emotions, goals, shape, etc.
Relational information
spatial, temporal, causal, ownership, kinship, social, etc.

Play is the factory of learning and Comprehension
The Event Indexing Model
Zwann, Langston, & Graesser, 1995; Zwann & Radavansky, 1998

Situation model
When a reader has well-developed comprehension skills, they can recruit prior knowledge to bootstrap lower level processes (Stanovich, 2000) and this is an important idea for making a case for using more accessible texts that are relevant and interesting to the learner. Once again, the reader can use higher-level process in order to support lower level process (Stanovich, 2000).

Characteristics of readers
High comp
High fluency
Low Comp
High Fluency
Low comp
Low fluency
High Comp
Low Fluency
In separating readers into two of these categories, which will remediate faster?
L
E
V
E
L
of
F
L
U
E
N
C
Y
ability to comprehend in dialogic method /create a model
These categories were derived from texts experienced through different sensory modalities read aloud, visual and listening comprehension

So what’s the problem
You guessed it, the low fluency high comprehension group.
Comprehension comes from experience and high order cognition and problem solving.
Games and play can provide this.
Yes, games can deliver content just like a lecture.
This new schema and learning diversity can be leveraged from a well developed competency and to warm up a cognitive cold spot.
If there is a strength of experience, build from it.
No, problem!

Well, maybe . . .
Except for the issue of that lack of imagination in implementation of standards, benchmarks, and assessments in the classroom.
Turning our teachers into outlaws, brigands, renegades, and iconoclasts – one school at a time!
Or worse, positioning them as resistant and incompetent.
Helping kids tell the difference between learning and an education—then blaming them for poor effort.

Lost in translation
Nobody came here with anything but good intentions.
You can teach probability by selling penny candy, ask the folks who studied Brazilian orphans!
How about descriptive stats and averages with basketball? Baseball? Dungeons and Dragons?
Video games?
Play!

Current dominantclassroom practice
Single text use predominates
Learning facts is a dominant goal
Little preteaching of concepts and vocabulary
Teacher control and order is of paramount interest
Accountability, testing, and time constraints limits teacher efforts to implement content reading strategies
Alvermann & Moore (1991)

There is no consensus on which practices are most likely to produce understanding of content area materials
We have only a partial knowledge base substantiating what is effective comprehension instruction and which classroom factors best promote comprehension.
We have not adequately synthesized research in a coherent national research agenda with comprehensive enough theoretical frameworks.
(RAND Study Group, 2002; Sweet & Snow, 2003)

Adolescents who struggle to read in subject area classrooms are positioned as unmotivated, and lacking in requisite skills and strategies needed to succeed in their content classrooms. They could benefit from instruction that is developmentally, culturally, and linguistically responsive to their needs. Yet. . .
Such instruction is seldom embedded in the regular curriculum.
Instruction is seldom tailored to their range of abilities with a range of texts and tasks.
(Moore & Hinchman, 2003; Moje & O’Brien, 2001)

Adolescents respond best to complex demands of reading across the disciplines when they are interested, have appropriate strategies, and can use multiple forms of print text and media to engage with content—i.e., they are engaged-- yet. . .
Most instruction in school is still traditionally organized around single print texts, such as textbooks, with little student choice
(e.g. RAND Reading Study Group, 2002)
Most students don’t expect to learn important concepts from reading, and teachers, who also don’t expect students to engage with texts, talk around the texts (20 years of research, using a range of research methods: e.g.,
Alvermann & Moore, 1991; Wade & Moje, 2000; O’Brien, Moje, & Stewart, 2001)
The era of cognitive strategies instruction which has dominated secondary level classrooms has yielded to social constructivist approaches, yet classroom instruction is remarkably similar to the climate described in five themes discussed by Alvermann and Moore in 1991
(discussed in Bean, 2000)

Current State of Adolescent Literacy: Focus on Reading
We have focused almost exclusively on skills and strategies instruction, yet . . .
Adolescents’ perceptions of their competence may be a more important predictor of whether they will engage with difficult texts across the disciplines than their past reading performance
(Alvermann, 2001; Anderman et al., 2001; Bean, 2000; Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000)
Struggling adolescent readers have disengaged from reading and choosing to read early in their academic careers and are unlikely to re-engage with strategies instruction alone
(Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000; Alvermann, 2001)
Strategies instruction has rarely provided enough intensive instruction with guided practice, and independent practice with monitoring, to ensure that students can read strategically
(Dole, 2003; Duffy, 2003, Palincsar, 2003)

Tools given to educators
Blooms Taxonomy
Readability
Well intentioned, but not reliable—and not meant for instructional use and leveling
Readability is usually sentence length and word frequency.
Blooms T was not meant to be a mandate, but a framework for teacher consideration.

The trouble with bloom
context
Synthesize yellow and blue
Recall the process of photosynthesis

Readability
Mark Twain piloted a riverboat and later wrote several novels.
Vince offered to help cook dinner, so Janet asked him to make the salad.
After we reached our motel that night, we called our children.
Quiet and peaceful, the library is open until 9:00 pm on Fridays, but closes at noon on Thursdays.
The air, our faces, all cool, moist, and dark, and the ghostly sky.
The writer attacked the king and admitted the mistake at the meeting.
The writer that the king attacked admitted the mistake at the meeting.
The pundit that the regent attacked admitted the gaffe at the conclave.
To be, or not to be.
Lets not forget shifts in time, format, character, voice, and all of the variables that create narrative like cohesion.
Simple, complex, and compound sentence variations

So much more to a text
For hundreds of years, writers and teachers have used and taught the cognitive and structural factors in text such as organization and coherence. Researchers in readability also addressed the effects of these factors on comprehension:
• Image words, abstraction, predication, direct and indirect discourse, types of narration, and types of sentences, phrases, and clauses (Gray and Leary 1935).
• Difficult concepts (Morriss and Holverson 1938, Chall 1958).
• Idea density (Dolch 1939).
• Human interest (Flesch 1949, Gunning 1952)
• Organization (Gunning 1952, Klare and Buck 1954, Chall 1958).
• Nominalization (Coleman and Blumenfeld 1963; Coleman, 1964)
• Active and passive voice (Gough 1965, Coleman 1966, Clark and Haviland 1977, Hornby 1974).
• Embeddedness (Coleman 1966).
The cognitive theorists and linguists, beginning in the 1970s, promoted the idea that reading was largely an act of thinking. Among the ideas they promoted were:
1. Meaning is not in the words on the page. The reader constructs meaning by making inferences and interpretations.
2. Information is stored in long-term memory in organized "knowledge structures." The essence of learning is linking new information to prior knowledge about the topic, the text structure or genre, and strategies for learning.
3. A reader constructs meaning using metacognition, the ability to think about and control the learning process (i.e., to plan, monitor comprehension, and revise the use of strategies and comprehension); and attribution, beliefs about the relationship among performance

Cohesion – lost in translationin another way!

Remember “rejected”
Well, when kids are given little choice in what they read, and the choice happens to be a book lacking cohesion because it is leveled and sterilized, it tends to represent reading for readings sake.
It also tends to infantilize older students who are developing as readers.

Cause you could just be reading stuff and you don’t necessarily learn nothing from it. Like the books we read in class…

The books we read in class, we just be reading them. We don’t really learn nothing about um. Half of the time people don’t even read them because she be like read chapters one through ten, all in a day and people don’t even be reading them. We have to tell the questions, girl what happened in chapter fourteen, what. Half the time we don’t even read them before we do quizzes, we guess.

a book isn’t interesting then you don’t remember what it says and you just don’t care

They will read
Funny though, kids will develop complex subject registers of schema and vocabulary on topics they know and are interested in – like pop culture, video games, and life-like struggles that excite and relate.
Look at kids who read game guides and fan fiction.
We need to open our perceptions regarding choice , games, and play.
This will free our students to learn, and our teachers to teach – with passion.

But maybe not what we expect!
The unexpected can be a blessing if we are open to it

Is it important to bring one’s passions to teaching and content?
Teachers have professional lives as well as personal lives
It may be important to an educator to allow themselves to be authentic in the classroom, and share parts of their personal lives to make connections to kids and show they care and may have had similar experiences and explain how they handled the situation. Or should the professional remain detached?

Ethos of Activity

We seem to have forgotten that children have voices
The Nature of childhood and development is different for each child—And then there is nurture.
Teachers cannot forget this, because they see these children every day and have relationships with them.
Often teachers are put into situations where children are behind, and many children are at different levels of development, and have different endurance for focused work and attention.
Sometimes a teacher is the one positive role model in a child’s life, and school is where the child is fed regularly, feels safe from aggression, and can let down their guard from uncertainty.

A Life Without Play
Whitman had been raised in a tyrannical, abusive household. From birth through age 18, Whitman’s natural playfulness had been systematically and dramatically suppressed by an overbearing father.
A lifelong lack of play deprived him of opportunities to view life with optimism, test alternatives, or learn the social skills that, as part of spontaneous play, prepare individuals to cope with life stress. The committee concluded that lack of play was a key factor in Whitman's homicidal actions – if he had experienced regular moments of spontaneous play during his life, they believed he would have developed the skill, flexibility, and strength to cope with the stressful situations without violence.
Dr. Brown’s subsequent research of other violent individuals concludes that play can act as a powerful deterrent, even an antidote to prevent violence. Play is a powerful catalyst for positive socialization.

What is the opposite of play?
Depression

What can we do?
Implement play and game like assessments
Games assess, measure, and evaluate by their very nature!
Alignment of the assignment
Interaction
Grouping
Autonomy supporting spaces
Thresholds /liminality
Play as the subjunctive mood

So what do you call theanswer to our curricular conundrum?
Hybridity

Play is a portal to Self-Determination and Work
Working hard at play?

What this means for schools
Maybe we need to motivate and engage through recruiting play for developing work-like competencies. You can go to:
http//:5th-teacher.blogspot.com
www.vgalt.com/blog
www.vgalt.com/moodle
www.videogamesaslearningtools.com

Invoking play
By design
Dubbels (2008) Reading, games, and transmedial comprehension. Handbook of Games in Education.

Thresholds
Formerly, communities created rites of passage – where community status and identity were earned and bestowed.

Sustained Engagement
When looking to measure growth or change, or even to understand whether a learner has truly engaged, an educator should also look for evidence of commitment and positive attitudes related to the activity and subject matter.
Engagement is not just doing the work, it is a connection and an affinity to an activity supported from the affective domains (Chapman, 2003).
Skinner & Belmont (1993, p.572) report that engaged learners show sustained behavioral involvement in learning activities accompanied by a positive emotional tone and select tasks at the border of their competencies, initiate action when given the opportunity, and exert intense effort and concentration.
Pintrich and & De Groot (1990, in Chapman) see engagement as having observable cognitive components that can be seen or elicited through exploring the learner’s use of strategy, metacognition, and self-regulatory behavior to monitor and guide the learning processes.

Dubbels (Accepted) Learning engagement, student 2.0, and the role of play in convergence culture in the digital age. JISE

Extrinsic Motivation Continuum
External regulation
Introjected regulation
Identified regulation
Identity informs motivation and engagement
External regulation: doing something for the sake of achieving a reward or avoiding a punishment.
Introjected regulation: partial internalization of extrinsic motives.
Identified regulation: doing an activity because the individual identifies with the values and accepts it as his own.
Dubbels (2009) Dance Dance Education and Rites of Passage ---Lessons learned about the importance of play in sustaining engagement from a high school “girl gamer” based upon socio- and cultural-cognitive analysis for designing instructional environments to elicit and sustain engagement through identity construction. IJGCMS.

Four Principles for Engagement by Design
Desirable Activities
Play as a Subjunctive Mood
Desirable Groups
Spaces
Dubbels (2009) Dance Dance Education and Rites of Passage. IJGCMS.

“More than eight in ten (83%) young people have a video game console at home, and 56% have two or more."
--Gen M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds (Executive Summary, p. 36)

9 ways that games and play can be used in an instructional context:
As cultural artifacts for study and evaluation
Games as new fiction and non-fiction narratives
As models and simulations for developing scientific habits of mind
As tools for multimedia production such as Machinima
The role and construction of virtual worlds for student learning and the modern diorama
Video games as tools for delivering content -- serious games
Video games as a model for structuring classroom learning
Games and play as research methodology for portals to gaining insight and understanding for organizational change
Connecting to secondary competency development and supporting mediums and technologies for learning acceleration

Better Living
Production

Gigaheart
Problem:
Many doctors are not effective in detecting heart sounds
Built to deliver and quiz
Heart sounds play
Learner is guided to identify heart sounds and what they might indicate
Artifacts

How about Math and Science?
Scientific Habits of mind
Applied curriculum
Modeling
Simulation
STEM
Modeling
3rSTEM

Clapping Academy
Design

Games Unit
Inquiry
Reading comprehension
Composition
Sustained engagement
Behavioral management
Planning
Cooperative learning
Classroom as game
Outcomes
Artifacts
Dubbels, B.R. (in press) Video games, reading, and transmedial comprehension. In R. E. Ferdig (Ed.), Handbook of research on effective electronic gaming in education. Information Science Reference.

Rhythm & Flow
High interest
Role Playing
Performance
Technology
RFOL
Writing
Video
Music
Design

Educate me
Participants design a board game to identify outcomes and the context, route, and obstacles to getting there.
Artifacts
Data collection

Design
Data collection
Dance Dance Education
Because kids won’t let an education get in the way of their learning
Dubbels (2009) Dance Dance Education and Rites of Passage ---Lessons learned about the importance of play in sustaining engagement from a high school “girl gamer” based upon socio- and cultural-cognitive analysis for designing instructional environments to elicit and sustain engagement through identity construction. IJGCMS.

What it looked like and what we did

Gains in standardized tests

Discussion
Based upon these concepts in game design and the literacies and habits of mind supported by them, how can we use these design elements to construct curriculum for our classroom?
Do we need computers to do this?

Literacy 2.0 Fallout?

The Jekyll and Hyde Effect
Play, Games, and Learning in the classroom
Professional identities torn asunder?
Brock Dubbels
Brock@vgAlt.com

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The Jekyll And Hyde Effect

by Brock Dubbels on Aug 04, 2009

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The Jekyll And Hyde Effect — Presentation Transcript