Critical Engagement

In the School Environment
The school curriculum is about more than teaching content; it aims to facilitate the development of critical thinking skills. These thinking challenges include, but are not limited to: problem solving, decision making, issue analysis and inquiry. Each of these examples focus on students' quality of thinking and the process used to reach conclusions or answers.

In the Gaming Environment
Gaming provides a forum for sound learning practices for critical engagement. We can look to playing video games for examples of good learning. In order to be engaged, learners must have active and put forth critical connections to the content. This can only occur when students are able to:

1. Change their surroundings in a different way by using what they see, feel and command
2. Collaborate with and benefit from social groups
3. Build and be able to transfer resources of knowledge to future learning
4. Learn how the different signs and literacies can regulate individuals' participation (Gee, 2003, p. 45-46).

Combining School and Gaming Methods
These methods will allow for learning to occur in the classroom as a result of video game interaction. One of the ways teachers can make sure this happens is combining the tried and true Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (1956) in the cognitive domain while keeping in mind how students learn best. Two activities which fall within this realm are the scientific method and jigsaw learning. Both use higher orders of thinking and provide students with motivation and engagement in learning content. By using best practices, students are taught in an environment which facilitates learning much like conditions offer in video games.

Photo by Valsilvae
(2007)