Video games and civic learning

Educational scholars such as Biesta and Lawy (2006) have suggested that "young people learn at least as much about democracy and citizenship from their participation in the range of different practices that make up their lives, as they learn from that which is officially prescribed and formally taught" (p. 14). From this perspective, video games - an important aspect of youth culture - have received a lot of attention for their civic potential (Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006). This paper presents a summary of academic scholarship studying the relation between games and citizenship from different perspectives. Firstly, game mechanisms are analyzed from the perspective of learning, focusing both on classic and media learning theories. Secondly, the civic learning opportunities and experiences that come forth from the social context of gaming are explored. In addition, this paper presents the outlines of a Dutch research project on game-based learning in which secondary school students perform a rhetorical analysis of video games in order to improve their critical reflection skills as an important component of citizenship