How to be a “good” Anglo-Saxon : designing and using historical videogames in primary schools

Hiriart, JFV

Abstract

In the last decades, digital games based on historical themes or settings have become an important form of historical engagement, with a great potential to influence popular conceptions about the past (Uricchio, 2005; Chapman, 2012). In spite of the growing interest in harnessing this power for the teaching of history in formal educational contexts, still many questions in regard to the representational appropriateness, educational effectiveness, and practical implementation of historical computer games in school classrooms remain unclear. In this chapter, I would like to give an overview of a Ph.D. research set to analyse the potential of digital games for historical education. Adopting a practice-based approach, this research was led by the iterative development of a series of historical game prototypes, designed to explore everyday life in early Anglo-Saxon Britain. At different stages of design, the prototypes were evaluated by historians, archaeologists, and educators, moving at a later stage to their implementation and testing within the history curriculum of a Key stage 2 school classroom (8 - 11 years old). In this phase, qualitative and quantitative data were collected following a pre-post test methodology. This methodology provided valuable insights into children’s previous assumptions and naive theories about the past, which were interrogated and in many instances challenged by their experiences within the game. Drawing from this process, this research has contributed to gain a better understanding of the theoretical issues involved in the design and implementation of historical game based learning methodologies, making empirical connections between educational theory, historical learning, and game design.

Citation

Hiriart, J. How to be a “good” Anglo-Saxon : designing and using historical videogames in primary schools. Presented at Communicating the Past in the Digital Age Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Methods in Teaching and Learning in Archaeology (12th-13th October 2018), University of Cologne

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: Communicating the Past in the Digital Age Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Methods in Teaching and Learning in Archaeology (12th-13th October 2018)
• Conference Location: University of Cologne
• End Date: Oct 13, 2018
• Publication Date: Feb 6, 2020
• Deposit Date: Feb 7, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 7, 2020
• Publisher: Ubiquity Press
• Book Title: Communicating the Past in the Digital Age - Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Methods in Teaching and Learning in Archaeology (12-13 October 2018)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bch.k
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.5334/bch.k
• Related Public URLs: https://www.ubiquitypress.com/site/books/10.5334/bch/
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference