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SIMULATION Brougre / CHILDRENS & GAMING PLAY / June AND 1999 ADULT GAMING
Childrens play and adult gaming, each of which are present in the world of education and training, too often refer to different explanatory paradigms. Is this distinction a legitimate one? In what way? This special issue of S&G and this introduction endeavor to provide some answers to these questions, based both on theoretical reflections and on examples given by the authors. The author attempts to demonstrate that these two fields of reflection have everything to gain through mutual enrichment. KEYWORDS: adult education; child development; childrens play; game and learning; play and learning.
Play in its various forms is a human activity found among children as well as adults. Sociologists and anthropologists (Caillois, 1961; Henriot, 1989; Huizinga, 1955) have tended to treat play in a general manner, as a human activity in which they analyze the principal characteristics observed in the age of the player. More recently, Norbert Elias has revived this sociological viewpoint by highlighting the common factors between a child thrown into the air by his father and the adult practicing a sport or watching a sports event (Elias & Dunning, 1986). It is therefore possible to consider play and gaming as an activity that, beyond the various forms linked to age and social strata, translates into the same manner of behaving, the combination of emotion, excitement, fiction, and conviviality that Elias points out in his theory on leisure. However, the fact remains that sociologists are more prone to the study of adults than of children. If their play and gaming theory is a general one, it is most often illustrated through adult-oriented activities. Child sociology, which can take into account play activity by analyzing it within the same perspective, although underscoring the particularity of the childhood situation, is still recent (Corsaro, 1997). It does, however, suggest that childrens play perhaps responds to the same needs for entertainment, compensation, or escape from reality and for the construction of friendly relationships with peers.
SIMULATION & GAMING, Vol. 30 No. 2, June 1999 134-146 1999 Sage Publications, Inc.
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However, where children are concerned, the emphasis is most often put on the childs future as an adult. This leads to play becoming a privileged field of investment for developmental psychology, an approach that is interested in the particularity of the child as a developing being, for example, from the standpoint of his intelligence (Piaget, 1951). Under these conditions, the emphasis is put on that which differentiates the child from the adult. It is within this framework that childrens play has been studied (Brougre, 1995), on the basis of a psychological paradigm. The genesis and development of childrens play are analyzed in a specific manner, and an entire school of thought, relayed by instructors specialized in preschool education (Beatty, 1995; Varga, 1991), put forth the idea that while playing (and this concerns all forms of play, from the freest to the most organized, from pretend play to games), the child learns.
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according to an idealized perspective but to their contribution to learning, a contribution that is controlled and evaluated almost more than it is theoretically justified. Whatever the links existing between practices and theoretical conceptions, they remain two fields that are unaware of one another, particularly because they are founded on entirely different basic disciplines. On one side are psychologists and specialists in the education of young children fed by psychology. On the other are gaming/simulation practitioners presenting and analyzing their practices. On both sides, we find pedagogical practitioners. But some intervene from a preconceived notion of learning play based on psychological theories (such as todays use of Vygotskys theses), where- as others analyze the practice of gaming and simulation that is taking root in diverse disciplines. These others appear to have few theoretical preconceptions but rather a pedagogical culture linked to the use of active methods whose existence and results legitimize the desire to pursue this direction. If we take a look at the justifications most often given, they usually refer more to practical instruction than what we could call pedagogical pragmatics (Guide Edilude, 1995):
Some concern motivation and the necessity to propose other methods than those used in the school system, an argument put forth most particularly in cases of reintegration of young adults with scholastic difficulties. Others concern communication and interactivity between trainees, between trainees and trainers, whether gaming/simulation should be used to construct the group or to put the accent on communication as such. It can also be a way of valorizing team spirit. Gaming/simulation is presented as being able to translate the complexity of situations by highlighting the interdependence of factors and actions. Gaming/simulation is also evoked for its concrete dimension, the construction of an experience in which general and abstract knowledge may be put into play. We can also put the emphasis on the necessity for the player to solve problems, act, decide, and be creative.
Contrary to the preschool sector, here practice and its demands precede theory. It indeed appears that in both sectors, boundaries are rapidly traced around the relationship between play and learning according to the childhood/adulthood opposition and the relationship thought out in two different manners. On one side, a more or less well-founded psychological theory authorizes the use of play without necessarily inquiring as to the effectiveness of such implementation. On the other, the consideration of an immediate
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effectiveness of pedagogical practices leads to little questioning of the theoretical dimension of such use of gaming/simulation. Through a number of themes, we propose not to reduce this difference but to ask the questions that will open the way to travel from one field to the other.
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It results in an opening of parentheses with respect to daily life, and it has a specific space and time. It has rules, whether they result from external regulation accepted by the players, a convention between players, or a point-by-point negotiation as the game develops. The two criteria mentioned above lead to the construction of an internal decision-making system that constitutes the game itself, the game in its singularity composed of a series of events. The situation only produces effects within the game and is, therefore, without consequence to daily life. This is a relative criteria taken from Bruner (1983b) that characterizes play by the fact that it minimizes consequences for the player, but the situation involves the specific aspect of being constructed so as not to have the same consequences as a real activity, which we find in simulation. The consequences in terms of learning are another question. It is uncertain in the sense that its result is not predetermined (among other reasons, because of a space in which several decisions intervene).
The period of childhood is one of progressive learning of situations that implement these criteria. The child, particularly in collective situations, progresses in his or her mastery of a game, and therefore, by playing, learns to play better and better. We could have pointed out the progression of the relationship to rules. For us, any play implies a form of rules (Vygotsky, 1967), but there are several types of rules, from rules that are built as the game progresses, to rules negotiated before the game, to those that are preexistent to it as an inarguable corpus. The child (Corbeil, 1999) will increasingly better understand the logic behind rules and the role of the player in the convention he or she expresses. If we are able to participate in games and simulation, it is because as children we learned to master rules. We can even ask ourselves if play does not prepare for a number of learning situations characterized by a more or less explicit dimension of simulation, which supposes mastery of the second degree and rules specific to certain situations. This is probably why the Romans had the same word ludus for play and for school and why the teacher was called magister ludi. Childhood, therefore, appears as the period during which a situation linked to an attitude is set into place, the capacity of internalizing that specific relationship to the world that play supposes: distance, pretending, involvement in an activity whose stakes are internal, the management of uncertainty; and we know that for a child, it is not easy to learn to lose and to understand and obey the rules. This learning will subsequently pervade the adults leisure time but will also enable the use of simulation/gaming for learning situations without having to learn to play. The activity will develop on the basis of all of the acquired knowledge that only appears evident because we do not wonder about its emergence.
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being implemented through a specific activity, whose relationship to artistic or creative activities has been pointed out by some. Childhood would, therefore, be the time when a certain relationship to the world is constructed that we call play and that is employed in subsequent pedagogical practices relative to gaming. There is thus continuity with the setting in place of this type of construction during childhood and its use from kindergarten through adult education. If early childhood already witnesses the use of these situations for educational purposes, it is also the time for building this structure, this time for entertainment purposes. Older children and adults will continue to use this structure to entertain themselves. This sends us back to the dual logic of play, entertainment/education from early childhood (Myers, 1999 [this issue]). Entertainment will put the accent on the emotional dimension of the activity, experience, that could be translated through its repetition. Anything that contributes to the increase of emotion (the quality of the design of video games, for example) reinforces the attraction of the game but not necessarily its educational interest. We perceive here a tension between the various tendencies of play activity. Its educational use lies in a more rational approach, implying novelty rather than repetition. But this is less true of young children for whom we believe that play, even in its entertaining aspect, can be a medium for learning. Is this the reality, or is it an idealization of play? As we have seen, there is some debate on this today. Can we learn through experience directly or through work that appears, among other things, during its debriefing? If Wheatley (1999 [this issue]) employs childrens games and is supported by a pleasant experience, he proposes a debriefing for each game to enable the construction of learning. But this childhood of play also constructs a social image of play linked to childhood (Corbeil, 1999), a representation that can be negative or simply childish due to the great importance of play in a childs activity. What lies at the very origin of the possibility of using games paradoxically becomes an obstacle to its use. So, it is important to keep in mind that play is the result of a social construction in relation to what childhood is today.
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contribution of developmental psychology, providing us with a table of the means available for play according to age. Here, Piaget (1951) is an essential reference through his analyses of the development of intelligence that enables the classification of games according to whether they are sensorialmotor, symbolic games or games with rules. We also owe him for a fundamental analysis of the progression of the childs relationship to rules (Piaget, 1965). Other authors as well have and continue to contribute to this knowledge of childrens capacities. The forms that games take are therefore closely linked to mobility skills. For this, games cannot be identical for all ages (Corbeil, 1999; Millians, 1999 [this issue]; Wheatley, 1999). Starting at a certain age during adolescence, childrens activities oriented toward games with rules begin to resemble those of adults, or rather new forms of play activity are put into place (sports, parlor games, video games) that will continue to be practiced by the adult the adolescent is becoming. We witness the domination of the game and the apparition of new forms of simulation that replace the pretend play of the young child. The characteristics remain the same but are expressed in different forms and content. Psychology alone cannot explain this evolution of play if it relies on the acquisition of new skills. It also refers to the social definition of practices according to age: the necessity of signaling growth by changing activities when we feel we are no longer a child or the role of leisure in ones life. Thus, student life, by its rhythms and forms of conviviality, creates possibilities for play that other social strata may not experience. It was a motor behind the recent appearance of new game practices (computer games, role games, Magic cards) that enriched its world in available forms of play. Gaming is a social construction that varies heavily according to culture, gender (girls and women play less), social strata, and the various representations. It is not the same thing to have male students play, for whom gaming is very present, and other populations who have other views and other practices. Mobilizing the game in training is to rely on an entertaining social activity represented and practiced according to age and social environment.
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essential contribution to what could be a veritable pedagogical reflection on play and gaming. The advantage of literature on games in adult education is that it avoids addressing the principle of the prior educational value of gaming. The dominating pragmatism implies an interest for the procedures implemented, the parity of the objective/results ratio, not taken in an absolute manner but within the framework of a specific training that is rarely reduced to the game only. The game no longer appears as an intrinsically educational activity but as a moment whose educational interest is evaluated in relation to its role in the training, a role that may be very indirect (even constituting a team or facilitating communication between trainees) or more direct according to precise objectives. The most interesting contribution to reflection on gaming in adult education is the accent put on what follows the game stricto-senso, the after-game, that we usually call debriefing. Debriefing is a theme familiar to readers of this journal, so it is not necessary to develop it here, but it is particularly nonexistent when it comes to the young child. The importance given to this phase, even if it is sometimes short in terms of time, reveals that, at least within the context of formal education, the game cannot be designed to directly provide learning. A moment of reflexivity is required to make transfer and learning possible. We can mention Thiagarajans (1993) proposal that, with respect to gaming, points out the presence of three phases: experience reflection learning. Experience may be of various natures (simulation, role-playing, more emotional or cognitive). Reflection would involve the transfer to generalization, to analysis of action, to alternatives, feelings, invested knowledge, and so forth. Learning concerns, depending on the case, attitudes, skills, concepts, paradigms, and so forth. The critical point is indeed that reflection enables the passage from play to learning; therefore, the importance of the debriefing that appears as an essential contribution to research on play and gaming in education. The game thus designed is thought of as the construction of a specific experience in that it is constructed through fiction, which distinguishes it from real experience, and that it enables reflection, the key to learning. The fictitious dimension enables the enrichment of the experience with possible outcomes, trial and error, and distance from the obligation of results that confrontation with reality may make impossible.
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idea of a childhood specificity that is incommensurable with the adult. We can question this vision of childhood, which is what todays critical sociologists are doing (James & Prout, 1990). But behind this lies another more fundamental opposition that concerns the nature of types of learning and that we could formulate as formal learning versus informal learning. This leads us to consider play from two, sometimes combined, points of view:
Play as a leisure activity, as entertainment, may be the place of informal learning, that is to say, unintentional and haphazard, with children as well as with adults. But this dimension of play has only led to an educational concept for young children due to the characteristics of very general early learning (concerning communication, for example). We are then forgetting that adults also learn informally (Pain, 1990) in many situations including leisure gaming. Play as a constructed or reconstructed situation within the framework of formal learning, whether scholastic or not. It could be an activity that more or less corresponds to play criteria such as that mentioned above but that we choose and develop according to educational objectives. This is what is generally referred to by the use of simulation/gaming in adult or adolescent education. The instruction of small children sometimes uses it somewhat ambiguously by maintaining confusion with the other usual modality of play.
This division is a distinction solely aimed at a better analysis of the relationship between play and education. In reality, the use of play may find situations that are not clearly situated on one side or on the other. Behind the question of play, which implies a reflection on the specificity of this activity and its diverse forms depending on ages and environments, we find two questions that are too often neglected: that of the potential of informal education and that of the transformation of a social activity, such as play, into a moment within an educational sequence. It is for this reason that the question of play leads to an association of pedagogical questions and theoretical questionswithout forgetting the fact that these questions can only exist if childhood has taught us to play!
References
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Wheatley, W. J. (1999). Enhancing the effectiveness and excitement of management education: A collection of experiential exercises derived from childrens games. Simulation & Gaming: An International Journal, 30(2), 181-198.
Gilles Brougre is a professor of educational sciences in Paris. His interests and teaching topics include play and toys, preschool education, sociology of childhood, and adult education (particularly material resources like games and informal learning). He is responsible for two postgraduate programs, one on play and toys and the other on the research in the field of adult education. He is the director of a research center (GREC, group on research about educational and cultural resources) that conducts research into play, games, and toys for children and adults. He has written a book published in French and Portuguese, titled Play and Education. ADDRESS: Gilles Brougre, Dpartement des sciences de lducation, Universit Paris Nord, av. J.B. Clment, 93430 Villetaneuse, France; e-mail brougere@lshs. univ-paris13.fr.