Arts / Education

Education policy in Australia has accelerated its aim to increase participation of under-represented groups in tertiary education including students who are culturally and linguistically diverse and have low socio-economic status. These students generally have not had prior access to privileged academic discourse, which can further disadvantage them in their participation and progress in tertiary education. In this article, we outline a cross-discipline curriculum initiative and pedagogy that draws on critical literacy and the metaphor of discourse community to integrate language and academic skills into community services qualifications. We argue that this – supports the genuine participation of under-represented (non-traditional) students. It aspires to not only support students’ entry into the new academic terrain, but to enable students to adopt a critical stance to the discourses in which they are learning to participate. This we argue is crucial, when expertise is not just a way of meeting its ostensible purposes, but is also a way of exercising power. Although we report on the application of this initiative to entry level curricula (Diploma), we suggest that it has relevance and application to Bachelor levels in a range of disciplines, both in supporting pedagogy and for transition to Bachelor level study.

In order to build upon, further and contest text-based paradigms of students’ video gameplay, this research utilises an ethnographic approach that presents a nuanced and multifarious framework.  This study, part of a larger project, combines, and then draws upon both quantitative and qualitative methods; a large longitudinal survey sample, narrative analysis of popular games, interviews and participant observation over three years.  In this article we suggest strategies for researching and teaching about these digital spaces through collaboration with high school teachers and cultural and educational institutions.  This presents a play and player centred approach to researching gaming capital in educational contexts that posits researching video games be grounded in the practices of game players.

This paper reports on the project design and research developed to expand HIV/AIDS prevention programmes at Mplus+, a grass roots community-based organisation formed to improve the sexual health of men that have sex with men (MSM), including transgenders, Thai male sex workers (MSW) and migrant male sex workers, using mobile phones and Bluetooth technology. The project produced four animations aimed at increasing understandings of safe sex practices and addressing low perceptions of personal risk to HIV/AIDS. The project, an international collaboration, was undertaken because MSM and MSW were not adequately reached through HIV prevention programmes in Thailand because little was known about their particular situations, contexts and practices. To address this, the project first researched the sexual practices MSM, transgenders and Thai and migrant male sex workers (MSW) to focus on understanding their sexual practices as they are socially produced. The second phase of the project was devoted to using the data generated from the sociological research to produce animations, making use of powerful—context specific—narratives with the MSM and MSW with whom the research was carried out. This kind of collaborative researchbuilt stronger alliances between MSM and MSW (of all genders) and is improving advocacy efforts around sexual health and rights, particularly in relation to HIV/AIDS prevention in Chiang Mai. The animations are being incorporated into Mplus+’s already established and trusted HIV prevention programme via mobile phones, Ipods and mobile–based portable devices and distributed to different social and sex venues frequented by MSM and MSW.

The need for literacy and the English curriculum to attend to digital literacies in the twenty-first century is well established. Although studies in digital literacies have examined the inclusion of computer games in schools, there has not been an extended study of English teachers
incorporating computer games into their teaching and learning through action research projects. This paper outlines the structure and progress of a research project exploring the uses of computer games in English classrooms. We argue that much can be learned about the teaching of both print and digital literacies from examining computer games and young people’s engagement in online digital culture in the world beyond school.

Literacy remains one of the central goals of schooling, but the ways in which it is understood are changing. The growth of the networked society, and the spread of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), has brought about significant changes to traditional forms of literacy. Older, print based forms now take their place alongside a mix of newer multi-modal forms, where a wide range of elements such as image, sound, movement, light, colour and interactivity often supplant the printed word and contribute to the ways in which meaning is made. For young people to be fully literate in the twenty-first century, they need to have clear understandings about the ways in which these forms of literacy combine to persuade, present a point of view, argue a case or win the viewers’ sympathies. They need to know how to use them themselves, and to be aware of the ways in which others use them. They need to understand how digital texts organise and prioritise knowledge and information, and to recognise and be critically informed about the global context in which this occurs. That is, to be effective members of society, students need to become critical and capable users of both print and multimodal literacy, and be able to bring informed and analytic perspectives to bear on all texts, both print and digital, that they encounter in everyday life. This is part of schools’ larger challenge to build robust connections between school and the world beyond, to meet the needs of all students, and to counter problems of alienation and marginalisation, particularly amongst students in the middle years. This means finding ways to be relevant and useful for all students, and to provide them with the skills and knowledge they will need in the ICT-based world of the Twentyfirst century. With respect to literacy education, engagement and technology, we urgently need more information as to how this might be best achieved.

In rethinking literacy education in light of unprecedented technological change, this paper reports on adolescent gamers and their accumulation of gaming capital. This is in opposition to more pervasive assumptions about gaming as mindless entertainment, learning simulations, ideological tools and interactive mediums for the masses. We see the need to research the medium of games in their entirety, exploring their uniqueness as a medium—while at the same time—making connections to a wider media ecology (Fuller, 2005) that includes more than the games themselves. This media ecology of videogames is demonstrated in part by the ‘paratextual’ (Consalvo, 2007) industries that support game play, production and design. The ‘paratext’ is central to gaming capital in creating individual and group systems of distinction within gaming culture. Because we understand videogames as actions across social fields enacted through the actions of players or ‘operators’ on software, we also deem it necessary to understand both the operator and machines’ diegetic and non-diegetic actions (Galloway, 2006). This distinction allows us to think about games as more than texts, literacy practices and narratives, which highlights games’ significance in technoclture as systems (Salen, 2008), procedures (Bogost, 2007), algorithms (Galloway, 2006; Wark, 2007), configurations and code (Lessig, 1999; Manovich, 2001). In conclusion we provide a series of interview questions developed to uncover adolescents’ gaming capital. We also propose a heuristic to map a players’ total volume of gaming capital to better understand how gaming capital establishes trajectories of exchange between cultural and economic capitals and its implications for literacy education.