Open Collections

Perry, Nora

University of British Columbia

This study examines early elementary participants’ reported experiences playing video games at home, and how that may impact their gameplay in a school setting. While there is much research regarding the use of video games in the classroom for various ages of students and in an array of subjects, none of the research identified in this thesis account for the participants’ prior at-home experience with video games. This qualitative research study used short paired interviews with six-year-olds to provide prior, outside of school gameplay understandings for a larger research project on in school gameplay. Seventeen participants were interviewed on their at-home play experiences, and all but two had previous experience playing video games at home. Key findings from this research include: fourteen out of fifteen participants who play video games have played multiplayer party video games, participants are playing with male family members 2.5 times more than with female family members, and male participants talked 2 times more than female participants when interviewed in mixed gender pairs. These insights demonstrate the substantial proportion of young school age children who are playing games at home, which then influences their ability to learn new games in school with minimal guidance, and teach each others play tactics and strategies. This also demonstrates ongoing stereotypes with respect to gender roles and video gameplay, and that children are both understanding and are adopting these roles at an early age.

Text

2023-09-28

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/86041

Literacy Education

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/