Reading Notes: Gee--Learning Models

In Chapter Six, “Cultural Models,” Gee writes about the difference between the cultural models of learning most of us carry with us, and how those models differ from learning models in video games. The following passage haunted me for several days: 

“If the player [of the game Metal Gear] is inclined to move as straightforwardly and efficiently as possible toward the goal, this game, and almost all video games, will punish this inclination. The player needs to take the time to explore, even if this means moving off the main line toward the goal and delaying getting there,” (172)

As I read this passage I knew that the “straightforwardly and efficiently” model was the one I gave allegiance to, even as I knew it was the one I should not give allegiance to. The more I thought about the “explore” model, the more I realized that this is the model I’d prefer students use, not simply in freewriting, but in every aspect of learning.

How might that change the way students write, the way they study, if they researched the way they played video games? If they didn’t give up until they found every crumb of information, then went on to what that suggested, then dug deeper, even if that meant they went way past what was necessary to find that quotation they needed? Every one of us would love a student like that.

Yet, we do not to reward a desire for learning that works like that. It doesn’t fit our rubrics or SLOs. As to say, we’ve reached a point where if it isn’t measurable it isn’t learning, even if the end goals of learning are all unmeasurable. 

Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy. New York: Macmillan, 2007.