CAREER: Projective Reflection: Learning as Identity Exploration within Games for Science

从倡导者到开发者，教育利益相关者越来越认识到科学游戏在提高学生对科学和科学职业的学习动机和兴趣方面的潜力。为了最大限度地发挥这一潜力，该项目将使用科学游戏（例如土地科学，河流城市和EcoMUVE），这些游戏对学生来说是愉快的，并被证明可以促进学生在中学阶段的科学学习。通过两个阶段的过程，游戏将被用作学习如何改变学生对科学和潜在STEM职业的看法的工具。干预的目标是探索科学游戏的哪些过程和设计特征将真正帮助学生超越作为科学家或工程师的临时身份（就像在玩游戏时所描绘的那样），让学生开始看到自己在真正的STEM职业中。学生的参与将由来自德雷塞尔大学和当地一所学校的教师、教职员工和研究生团队指导。所有在费城市内中学就读的理工科学生都将参加这次干预。采用探索性混合方法设计，项目的前两年将侧重于探索、描述、编码和分析来自三个大型游戏的数据集，这些游戏旨在帮助学生思考可能的科学职业。在第三年，该项目将把前两年的课程整合到现有的中学科学课程中，让学生参与为期一年的PCaRD（游戏课程活动反思讨论）干预。在干预期间，PI将与德雷塞尔大学和当地一所学校的专家合作，收集有关土地科学设计特征的数据，以捕捉参与学生科学身份的身份变化。在整个第三年的课程中，PI将观察，录像，采访，调查，并使用书面任务来发现土地科学游戏是否以任何方式影响学生的身份（从临时到长期的角度来看，成为一名科学家或工程师）。通过与哈佛大学和威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校的研究人员合作，将在干预期间的三个指定波中收集的数据与现有记录数据的分析进行比较。这些比较将集中在与本研究中使用相同游戏环境的中年理科生身上。然而，研究者会有意寻找与动机、科学知识和科学认同变化相关的特征。该项目将整合研究和教育，在围绕课程和学习活动的数字科学游戏环境背景下，将学习作为学生科学身份变化的过程进行调查。这种综合方法将使研究人员能够探索游戏如何与学生作为个体不可分割地联系在一起，同时参与科学领域特定内容的学习。主要大学和学校伙伴之间的合作；研究人员在教育心理学、教育技术和科学游戏方面的专业知识；该项目的顾问委员会为研究人员提供了一个真实的机会，利用游戏中自然存在的信息来推进有关游戏价值的领域知识，以改变学生的科学身份。它还回应了国家研究委员会关于科学学习和电脑游戏的报告，该委员会认为游戏具有催化科学学习新方法的潜力。

AbstractEducation stakeholders from advocates to developers are increasingly recognizing the potential of science games in advancing student academic motivation for and interest in science and science careers. To maximize this potential, the project will use science games (e.g. Land Science, River City, and EcoMUVE), shown to be enjoyable to students and proven to promote student learning in science at the middle school level. Through a two-phase process, games will be used as vehicles for learning about ways to change how students think about science and potentially STEM careers. The goal of the intervention is to explore which processes and design features of science games will actually help students move beyond a temporary identity of being a scientist or engineer (as portrayed while playing the game) to one where students began to see themselves in real STEM careers. Students' participation will be guided by teams of teachers, faculty members, and graduate students from Drexel University and a local school. All science students attending the local inner city middle school in Philadelphia, PA, will participate in the intervention.Using an exploratory mixed-method design, the first two years of the project will focus on exploring, characterizing, coding, and analyzing data sets from three large games designed to help students think about possible careers in science. During year 3, the project will integrate lessons learned from the first two years into the existing middle school science curriculum to engage students in a one-year intervention using PCaRD (Play Curricular activity Reflection Discussion). During the intervention, the PI will work with experts from Drexel University and a local school to collect data on the design features of Land Science to capture identity change in the science identity of the participating students. Throughout the course of year 3, the PI will observe, video, interview, survey, and use written tasks to uncover if the Land Science game is influencing students' identity in any way (from a temporary to a long-term perspective about being a scientist or engineer). Data collected during three specified waves during the intervention will be compared to analyses of existing logged data through collaborations with researchers at Harvard University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. These comparisons will focus on similar middle-aged science students who used the same gaming environments as the students involved in this study. However, the researcher will intentionally look for characteristics related to motivation, science knowledge, and science identity change. This project will integrate research and education to investigate learning as a process of change in student science identity within situated environmental contexts of digital science gameplay around curricular and learning activities. This integrated approach will allow the researcher to explore how gaming is inextricably linked to the student as an individual while involved in the learning of domain specific content in science. The collaboration among major university and school partners; the expertise of the researcher in educational psychology, educational technology, and science games; and the project's advisory board makes this a real-life opportunity for the researcher to use information that naturally exists in games to advance knowledge in the field about the value of gaming to changing students' science identities. It also responds to reports by the National Research Council committee on science learning and computer games, which identifies games as having the potential to catalyze new approaches to science learning.