View source for '''Production 3'''

In Beyond Gamification, the authors identify rhetorics of power, progress, and identity as allowable or sanctioned in play because they “fall under the purview of the explicit and hidden curricula, which are arguably most compatible with the hegemonic structures of competition, winning and achievement” (Nolan and McBride, 2014) The authors question the role of these rhetorics in meaningful learning because, due to their hegemonic adaptability, they tend to gamify existing structure and expectations, and eclipse consideration of what engenders meaningful play: namely the play rhetorics of self, fate, frivolity, and the imaginary. These “null curriculum” rhetorics are seldom considered in game-based learning in schools, because as the authors point out, “they are less purposive and more difficult to operationalize.”

Educators have great difficulty in reconciling DGBL and other exploratory teaching with “institutional preoccupations with data and accountability [that are] primarily focused on operational, skills-based technology use rather than its meaning-making potential” (Nolan and McBride, 2014). It’s true that in neoliberal education meaning making is realized when students achieve in measurable testing. It doesn't mean, however, that meaning meaning cannot exist within the play rhetorics of power, progress and identity. In fact, divorced from their hegemonic coupling, can’t play as power be empowerment, play as progress be skill-acquisition and self-mastery, and identity be the self at ease in interaction and collaboration with others? The hidden curriculum in this case is far more positive.. It then begs the question: How can the overt motivating play aspects of frivolity, self, fate and the imaginary be the vehicle through which the more nuanced definitions of power, progress and identity are realized? 

Game-hacking is illustrative as one such example. Through game-hacking, an empowered outcome is realized when the learning actor is able to make administrative choices about what rules should exist allowing engaged creativity with the game, but also allowing her to experientially understand the function of rules, and see if rules are good ones or bad ones, based on their purpose, and how effective they are at meeting that purpose. This allows her to envision meaningful outcomes for the game as determined the actor herself, and to put in place the ingredients that will help realize those outcomes. Progress in this regard is skill development and self-mastery. It can be metacognitive: becoming better at seeing cause and effect, how ideas are linked, becoming better at conceiving goals and making accordant choices that lead to realizing them, the gradual increase in ability to recognize what works and what doesn’t, and through play-testing and redesign, the development of flexibility and goal directed persistence - executive skills that can create all kinds of “behavioural” issues when a student lacks them. Identity as the self at ease in social contexts is realized through the process of hacking with others. It takes a high degree of social skills to play a competitive game, but agree on rules for the sake of better gameplay and fun. Deep learning happens when it is “contingent on negotiations with the social and cognitive resources available and the interests and dispositions of those whom they wish to play with, where they wish to play and how” (Thumlert, Jensen and de Castell, 2018). Game-hacking provides such  authentic social skill practice and development. 

Game-hacking promotes affinity. Affinity, which in school would be a student's emotional orientation to a given task, is seldom considered. There is very little room for a child's real feelings towards what they are learning. In fact, when a child expresses a dislike towards the explicit curriculum, they are confronted with the hidden curriculum: obey -  play by the “rules”, if you want to have a functional experience at school/life. If meaningful learning “occurs when learners are active, constructive, intentional, cooperative, and working on authentic task, (Nolan and McBride, 2014) lack of affinity provides excellent feedback that you are not going to get the best out of that child by going down this particular road. However, lack of affinity, when expressed, tends to be pathologized, and if a child expresses a lack of affinity towards the actual educational structures that are imposed on them, they tend to get classified as “non-compliant” and “oppositional”, put in behavioural classrooms or expelled. (It’s ironic how little affinity the education system has for students who have a lack of affinity for the way they are schooled.)  As Thumlert, Jensen and de Castell assert, we are in a “crisis of student disengagement in schools or (more troubling) a quiescent acceptance of alienated learning as education’s “natural condition” (2014).  Game-hacking allows a student to challenge these alienating conventions while expressing real joy in a task. Perhaps more importantly, it allows a teacher to realize what intrinsically-motivated engagement looks like and strive to create pedagogy that encourages it. 


Works cited

Nolan, J., & McBride, M. (2014). "Beyond gamification: Reconceptualizing game-based learning in early childhood environments". Information, Communication & Society.
Jenson, J., Thumlert, K., and de Castell, S. (2018). "Learning through game design: A production pedagogy", The 2018 European Conference on Games Based Learning Book: ACPI Press.