A gaming frame of mind: digital contexts and academic implications

When considering the interdisciplinary nature of education, researchers need to acknowledge students' traditional and multimodal literacies and learning environments. Technological changes have brought about new learning spaces and what students learn through their video gaming experiences seems to have important academic implications and applications. This article presents data from three case studies of academically struggling 11th-grade male video gamers, revealing the academic affordances of the participants' video game playing; the students developed a schema for academic material from their video game playing, fostering meaningful connections to classroom material. Overall, this paper reveals how the virtual gaming environment enabled three gamers to contextualize academic information, thereby making the material personally relevant.