Games/ Playing

ARTICLE
10.1177/1555412005281767
Kafai and Culture
and Making Games for Learning

Games and Culture

Volume 1 Number 1
January 2006 36-40
© 2006 Sage Publications

Playing and Making Games 10.1177/1555412005281767

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Instructionist and Constructionist

Perspectives for Game Studies
Yasmin B. Kafai
University of California, Los Angeles

This article presents an overview of what we know about two perspectives, coined
instructionist and constructionist, to games for learning. The instructionists, accustomed
to thinking in terms of making instructional educational materials, turn naturally to the
concept of designing instructional games. Far fewer people have sought to turn the tables:
by making games for learning instead of playing games for learning. Rather than embed-
ding “lessons” directly in games, constructionists have focused their efforts on providing
students with greater opportunities to construct their own games—and to construct new
relationships with knowledge in the process. Research has only begun to build a body of
experience that will make us believe in the value of playing and making games for learning.

Keywords: constructionism; learning; educational game; design

I f someone were to write the intellectual history of childhood—the ideas, the prac-
tices, and the activities that engage the minds of children—it is evident that the
chapter on the late 20th and early 21st centuries in America needs to give a prominent
place to the phenomenon of the video game. The number of hours spent in front of
these screens could surely reach the hundreds of billions. And what is remarkable
about this time spent is much more than just quantity. Psychologists, sociologists, and
parents are struck by a quality of engagement that stands in stark contrast to the half-
bored watching of many television programs and the bored performance exhibited
with school homework. Like it or not, the phenomenon of video games is clearly a
highly significant component of contemporary American children’s culture and a
highly significant indicator of something (though we may not fully understand what
this is) about its role in the energizing of behavior.

Author’s Note: The writing of this article was supported in part by a grant of the National Science Founda-
tion (ROLE-0411814). The ideas expressed in this article do not reflect those of the supporting agency. An
earlier version of this article was presented in October 2001 at the Cultural Policy and Video Games Confer-
ence at the University of Chicago.

36
 Kafai / Playing and Making Games for Learning 37

Most software designers and commercial companies have sought to capitalize on

this energizing of behavior by making games for learning. Building on the motivating
nature of games, they hope to make the learning of academic matters more fun, if not
easier. Far fewer people have sought to turn the tables: making games for learning
instead of playing games for learning. As one should expect, different educators think
of using games in different ways, reflecting their different philosophies of education.
The most relevant of these differences is the split between predominantly instruction-
ist philosophies and predominantly constructionist ones.1

Instructionist Perspectives

The instructionists, accustomed to thinking in terms of making instructional educa-

tional materials, turn naturally to the concept of designing instructional games. This
central idea has venerable antecedents. Teachers did not have to wait for the computer
to “make a game of” practicing the multiplication tables, the rules of grammar, or the
quirks of spelling. And when the computer did come, the advocates of using it in edu-
cation did not have to wait for the specific format of the video game to begin exploring
the advantages of embedding school-like exercises in a computer game. An elegant
and influential early example was How the West Was Won—a computer-based game
in which players “throw” dice, then perform various arithmetic operations on the num-
bers to determine how far to advance a token on a board.
With thousands of instructional computer games on the market, including popular
titles such as Math Blaster, we know little about which features make an educational
game good for learning. A survey of the past 20 years of educational publications
reveals a rather sparse bounty, in particular if one is interested in hard-core academic
benefits rather than motivational or social aspects of playing games for learning. A
common feature in nearly all those games is that they integrate the game idea with the
content to be learned. To date, this research conducted on two-color screens in the late
1970s is still one of the more systematic investigations of different features such as
sound, graphics, and combinations thereof in an educational game.2
What we learn from the few available studies is far from being comprehensive to
provide us with a list of successful design features for good educational games. This
rough summary is also plagued by customary concerns of research compilations: Too
few studies in one domain, with a focus on one concept, or on one age group are avail-
able to provide a substantial foundation for recommendations. There is a near absence
of commercial game evaluations, the exceptions being case studies on Where in the
World Is Carmen SanDiego and more recently, Civilizations. Moreover, a deeper
philosophical issue is hidden within the premise of instructional games: that we need
games to “sweeten” the learning of difficult ideas. There is no doubt that learning is a
demanding enterprise for students who strive hard to understand knowledge valued in
our society. But do we need instructional games to make difficult ideas easy and fun to
learn? One may wonder what messages about learning we are sending to students
playing these games. There is a definite need for game studies to develop a more com-
38 Games and Culture

prehensive research agenda that will provide instructional designers with better un-
derstanding of what works when, for what, and for whom.

Constructionist Perspectives

Without wanting to deny the value of instructional games, constructionists have

focused their efforts in a very different direction. Rather than embedding “lessons”
directly in games, their goal has been to provide students with greater opportunities to
construct their own games—and to construct new relationships with knowledge in the
process. In the world of educational games, such constructionist approaches have
received far less attention than their instructionist counterparts, but it is conceivable
that they hold equal if not more potential for engaging children’s enthusiasm for
games in the service of learning.
A series of studies in which 10-year-old children made their own educational video
games will serve as an example. Here children met every day to design their own
games, create all their own characters, storylines, game themes, and interactions over
a period of 6 months to teach fractions to a group of younger students in their school.
One prominent finding in these studies is persistent gender differences in virtually all
design aspects ranging from violent feedback in case of a wrong answer, the cast of
extended characters, the goals of the game, and fantasy context. Although there are no
significant gender differences in the proficiency of making games, it is obvious that
girls prefer to make very different fraction games from those designed by boys in their
class. Most interestingly, when asked to design science rather than fraction games,
these gender differences disappeared.
What we learn from these few available studies is that both boys and girls enjoy
making games for learning. Game making also does not require expensive technolo-
gies to provide learners with the opportunities to develop their programming skills and
to design rich and interesting game worlds and characters. It is only recently that other
researchers have pursued this constructionist direction with renewed vigor.3 They are
developing new programming environments that facilitate the media-rich manipu-
lations needed for game design, using game design activities to introduce girls to
programming and examining girls’ game designs. Many commercial video games
provide level and character editors—features virtually unheard of in previous genera-
tions of entertainment software—to extend the playability of the game. These various
design aspects could be further developed for educational purposes.

Final Thoughts

We have only begun to build a body of experience that will make us believe in the
value of playing and making games for learning. Obviously, the image of children
building their own games is as much a knee-jerk reflex for constructionists as making
instructional games is for instructionists.
 Kafai / Playing and Making Games for Learning 39

In the case of instructional games, a great deal of thought is spent by educational

designers on content matters, graphical representations, and instructional venues. The
greatest learning benefit remains reserved for those engaged in the design process,
the game designers, and not those at the receiving end, the game players. After all, the
game player is not partial to the discussions involved in developing valid instructional
game ideas, designs, and strategies. What finds its way into the final designs is only a
substrate of those discussions.
In the case of constructionist games, the learner is involved in all the design deci-
sions and begins to develop technological fluency. Just as fluency in language means
much more than knowing facts about the language, technological fluency involves not
only knowing how to use new technological tools but also knowing how to make
things of significance with those tools and most important, develop new ways of think-
ing based on use of those tools. Beyond that, game-making activities offer an entry
point for young gamers into the digital culture not just as consumers but also as
producers.
For the past 20 years, education has ignored the promises and challenges of games
for learning. The special role of games in contemporary children’s culture coupled
with the deep sense of engagement common in game-related activities creates a new
and promising context for games studies. We need to pursue all directions, whether it’s
about playing or making games for learning.

Notes
1. Seymour Papert (1993) coined the terms constructionist versus instructionist to highlight different
pedagogical approaches in educational technologies. A more detailed discussion can be found in a book
chapter of The Children’s Machine.
2. The seminal work “What Makes Computer Games Fun?” by Thomas Malone appeared first in the
December 1981 issue in BYTE magazine.
3. Different aspects of children designing educational fraction games were discussed by Kafai (1995),
whereas the follow-up research and comparison can be found in Kafai (1998). More recent developments are
directed by Ken Perlin and Mary Flanagan at New York University; Dorothy Bennett, Cornelia Brunner, and
Margaret Honey at the Education Development Center’s Children’s Technology Workshop in New York;
Punya Mishra and Carrie Heeter at Michigan State University; and Jill Denner and Lauren Werner at ETR
Associates in San Francisco.

References
Kafai, Y. B. (1995). Minds in play: Computer game design as a context for children’s learning. Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Kafai, Y. B. (1998). Video game designs by children: Consistency and variability of gender differences. In
J. Cassell & H. Jenkins (Eds.), From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and computer games (pp. 90-
114). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Malone, T. (1981). What makes computer games fun? BYTE, 6, 258-277.
Papert, S. (1993). The children’s machine: Rethinking school in the age of the computer. New York: Basic
Books.
40 Games and Culture

Yasmin B. Kafai is an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles Graduate School of
Education & Information Studies. Before coming to UCLA, she worked at the MIT Media Laboratory and
received her doctorate from Harvard University. She was one of the first researchers to establish the field of
game studies with her work on children’s learning as designers and players of educational software and
games. Her research has been published in Minds in Play: Computer Game Design as a Context for Chil-
dren’s Learning (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995) and Constructionism in Practice: Designing, Thinking and
Learning in a Digital World (coedited with Mitchel Resnick, Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996). She has also been
active in several national policy efforts, among them the American Association of University Women report
Tech-Savvy Girls (2000) and more recently, Under the Microscope: A Decade of Gender Equity Interven-
tions in the Sciences (2004). She lives, works, and plays in Los Angeles.