Abstract:
This aim of this paper is to outline the theoretical perspectives that will shape my upcoming research into the critical study of video games in the English classroom. It will begin by highlighting the changing textual world in which young people now interact, focussing in particular on digital and electronic practices such as videogames. Secondly, videogames are explored as a means to build schooling on better principals of learning and teaching. Thirdly, the way in which videogames encourage identity work, both reinforcing and challenging dispositions is discussed, with specific reference to the work of Bourdieu and Foucault. Their work is used to highlight the way that videogames are as implicated in normalising particular constructions of gender. Fourthly, critical pedagogies are introduced as a means to open up classrooms to new and resistant practices which encourage the problematising of knowledge. Finally, the relationship between game-playing and story-building is developed with Bakhtin’s ideas on the chronotype used to address the new ways in which young people construct narratives. The paper concludes with an identification of numerous methodological issues associated with my research, all of which typify the challenges of a Doctoral student new to the field of educational research.