Teachers as game designers: Using a game in formal learning in a Singapore primary school

Summary form only given. Researchers have offered, in recent years, compelling reasons for considering the potential of digital games to support learning (Klopfer et al., 2009; Pelletier, 2009; Mitchell & Savill-Smith, 2004; Gee, 2008), and in response policymakers and educators around the world have demonstrated a commitment to exploring their practical use in school (Ulicsak, 2010; Koh et al. 2009). There remain, however, many questions about how games can best support learning, particularly in formal education. For teachers, the use of games in a formal curriculum setting can present practical and operational issues, as well as surfacing more fundamental tensions: between generational expectations of games and technology, between home and school identities, and between pedagogies associated with accounts of games as learning tools and those more commonly embraced within the context of formal schooling (Sandford et al., 2011; Felicia, 2009; Ito̅ et al., 2009; Sandford et al. 2006). In managing these tensions, teachers are increasingly asked to construct themselves as `designers' (Towndrow, 2005; Foo, et al., 2006; Carlgren, 1999), mobilising their professional knowledge in the creation of new strategies and practices that enable them to negotiate these practical and pedagogical challenges. This paper examines the implications of formal game-based learning for teachers developing their own digital learning games, exploring two guiding overarching research questions. What strategies are employed by teachers to manage intergenerational, technological, operational and pedagogic tensions in the classroom? And to what extent is the notion of being a `designer' visible in their professional practice? The paper suggests that there are multiple ways of `being a designer' for teachers, and that the notion of `designer' may be a more problematic representation of teacher agency and identity than currently visible in the literature.