Replaying history: learning world history through playing

Cordova and Lepper’s (1996) framework of “motivation,” while useful in helping psychologists distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, offers little help for educators trying to develop endogenous educational games, games where the fantasy game context and game goals overlap directly with educational practices. Recall Rieber’s (1996) distinction between exogenous games, in which the fantasy context is largely separated from the problem of the game space and is essentially interchangeable, and endogenous games, in which the gaming context is inextricably linked to the game play. Cordova and Lepper’s research was conducted on the exogenous game “How the West was Won”; Civilization III, on the other hand, is an endogenous game: The academic “content” is inextricably linked to game play.² That the “content” of the game and the game play itself is mutually constitutive is important: As I have argued previously (e.g. Squire, 2002), the biggest potential of games as an educational medium lies in using games to create a rich context for thinking and activity – one where the game induces contextuality for the learner so that the learner is solving authentic, complex problems in the game space.

Underlying this notion of endogenous games as a motivating context for solving complex problems is a socio-cultural model of motivation, one that views motivation not as a static variable but rather as an emergent property between learner and context. From this situated view, all learners are motivated; they just may not be motivated in the ways that educators want them to be. Learners are active, goal-driven constructors of meaning. This socio-cultural perspective ecologizes the learner. The problem of motivation is not framed as a matter of high / low, intrinsic / extrinsic, but rather as a social-psychological problem of engaging learners in activity when there are competing or differing goals and intentions (e.g. Barab Cherkes-Julkowski, Swenson., et al., 1999). Problems of extrinsic motivation might be reframed as issues with authority or differing agendas, of developing differing goals, or of failing to detect paths toward meeting their goals in the environment. From a cultural view, learning goals may not be compelling to learners or may be at odds with their identities as learners (e.g. Scollen, 1981). Learners’ goals and intentions are socially and culturally situated, and understanding learners’ goals and intentions is a complex process that is fruitfully studied by examining relationships among identities, communities, learning culture and practice (Wenger, 1998).

Within gaming discourse, a number of massively multiplayer designers have begun adopting Bartle’s (1996) framework for understanding what motivates people to game by characterizing game play as a social practice (Figure 2.2). Through qualitative observation of gamers, Bartle finds that players can be divided along two axes: (a) acting vs. interacting, on (b) the world vs. other players. Bartle labels these four roles “killers” (acting on players), “socializers” (interacting with players), “achievers” (acting on the world) and “explorers” (interacting with the world). Walking the reader through the behavior of each player type, he argues that these four ways of playing are states that players adopt while in game that are based on their current motivations. For Bartle, it is the interactions among these differing players that give game world’s their life. Other game designers seem to agree: Raph Koster, creative designer of Ultima Online and the newly released Star Wars Galaxies, remarked that Bartle’s modes of play also hold up in single-player games with “explorers” more motivated to play role-playing games and “achievers” more motivated to play hyper-competitive games, particularly first-person shooters (Kim, Koster, & Vogel, 2001). By foregrounding the fact that gaming is thoroughly a social practice, Bartle’s framework is insightful for educators because it helps specify the particular reasons that participants game in the particular ways they do. Returning to Wright’s notion of different game genres, there are often large distinctions between game types and it may not even be sensible to talk about the practice of playing Quake, for example, in the same way that we talk about the practice of playing Civilization III. Educators hoping to use games in education need to understand different game genres, game practices, and modes of game play in order to effectively leverage the unique affordances of specific games to situate learners in academically valuable contexts (Holland, Jenkins, & Squire, 2003; Squire, 2002).

Figure 2.2 Bartle’s (1996) taxonomy of motivation in multiplayer gaming.

Digital games such as Civilization III open new opportunities to support learning as players manipulate complex systems, test their assumptions about geography by building virtual empires, and compare the unfolding of their Civilization with the historical record. While such experiences may seem unprecedented to some (e.g. Prensky, 2001), there is a long tradition of games and simulations in educational technology and social studies specifically that provides some guidance for how a game such as Civilization III might be used to support learning.

In his review of research on games and simulations in social studies, Clegg (1991) makes the following observation:

Students using computer simulations demonstrated increases in affective outcomes such as interest, motivation, enjoyment, sense of personal control, and willingness to persevere in completing learning tasks. Cooperative strategies with computer games increased both lower and higher order learning and tended to benefit female students more than males (p. 527).

Instructional games and simulations in social studies may have hit their zenith in the 1970s when dozens of studies were conducted examining the impact of most pen and paper educational game playing on learning. In the majority of these studies, games fared no better nor worse than other learning experiences in terms of their effect on student achievement (i.e. paper and pencil scores)” (Wentworth & Lewis, 1973, p. 435). Six studies were the exception: Monroe (1968, cited in Wentworth & Lewis, 1973) found that students playing a history game performed worse on content scores than those in control groups. Wentworth (1972) found similar results with students playing a game called Marketplace, although the game-playing students did perform better than the control in understanding system dynamics. Duke (1964), Monroe (1968), Baker (1966) and Allen, Allen, and Miller (1966) found conclusive evidence in support of using games; however, as Fletcher (1971) and Wentworth and Lewis (1973) argue, the methodological issues and lack of quality controls in each studies raise serious questions about the validity of the assertions generated from the data. Within this generation of research, Boocock (1968) is the only study that generated statistically significant differences between games and simulations and other instructional exercises.

In a few studies where researchers have examined how game-playing experiences shape attitudes toward or within a subject area (e.g. attitudes toward economics or political science), they have again failed to find any changes in attitudes among students (Clarke, 1970; Lloyd, 1970; Wentworth, 1972). The difficulties and problems with this line of research might best be illuminated through a brief consideration of a set of studies Livingston (1970a; 1970b) conducted using the game Ghetto to teach about urban poverty. Ghetto is a turn-based board game where players role-play as participants in a “ghetto" community. They make decisions about whether or not to attend high school, pursue employment, or engage in illegal activities. The game is weighted so that it is very difficult to succeed. Players toil in low-income jobs and are then enticed into high risk, high reward criminal activities. Other players become the victims of this crime, leading to chaos. The typical game lasts about two hours. The game designers recommend a standard briefing process and include reflection questions with the game. The game’s potential to offend goes without saying.

On the surface, Ghetto may seem like a promising educational tool: Players learn about the difficulties and hopelessness of poverty firsthand as they make choices in the game. In my own experiences, I have found that players quickly realize that the game is biased against them and that there is very little chance of succeeding. This experience can give rise to conflicting emotions that can provide the fuel for fruitful discussion; yet, in each of Livingston’s studies, he failed to find compelling evidence that playing Ghetto shifted participants’ attitudes toward the poor, even with solid debriefing exercises. For example, Livingston and Stoll (1973) found that low-ability students had much more difficulty making connections between their gaming experiences and urban poverty than high ability students. Livingston and Stoll argued that low-achievers learn to play the game rather than learn from the game.

This series of studies illuminates the difficulties in using one-shot gaming experiences to change students’ attitudes through game playing. To think that a two-hour gaming session would cause a dramatic shift in players’ attitudes – attitudes built over a lifetime of experience – toward a topic as emotionally and politically charged as poverty is naïve if not impudent. The game world of Ghetto is clearly an artificial, constructed world designed to elicit emotions. The game is not modeled on any particular community or setting, so, without any clear grounding in particular historical contexts, players are asked to make connections between the game and reality on a leap of faith. With topics as emotionally charged as urban poverty, most instructional designers would devote considerable time to its consideration, combining several methods of instruction in order to make overt connections between concepts of poverty and how poverty is experienced in specific historical situations. Good teachers might also use videos, case studies, interviews with urban dwellers, or field trips to flesh out students’ own experiences with urban poverty. Most research studies on games, however, isolate game play as a variable in its own right in order to compare it directly to other instructional approaches rather than examining intact activity systems involving game play. Despite instructional designers’ acknowledgement that the use, context, and activity surrounding gaming is critical to learning, none of the research on games and simulations investigates how different activities can be used in concert with gaming exercises to produce a robust learning environment.

Digital Games in Social Studies Education in Particular

Although most of these early studies on game-based learning employed paper-based or face-to-face role-playing games, a few studies did examine computer-mediated games (e.g. Hetzner, 1972, cited in Clegg, 1991). As might be predicted by Clark (1983), thus far there has been no real distinguishable differences between computer-mediated and non-computer mediated games research. As Clegg (1991) notes, “Although the advent of the microcomputer in the 1980s markedly changed the potential of games and simulations as classroom tools (Patterson & Smith, 1986), there has been little research on their use” (p. 524). The paucity of research on computer games continues today. As mentioned earlier, many educators, political pundits, and marketers extol the virtues of a game like SimCity to help students learn, for example, city planning, but there has yet to be a single published study examining how learning unfolds through playing edutainment games such as these. The little research that does exist is inconclusive but cautions against over-enthusiasm for the potentials of gaming to transform social studies education.

In one of the first studies of games and simulations in social studies classrooms, Hetzner (1972), cited in Downey & Levstick, (1991), found that secondary school students who played a political computer simulation had statistically significant higher mean scores on tests of interest, goal-directed behavior, and application of principles related to career development than students in a conventional class in career information. More recently, Vincent (1986) used the computer-based simulation Foreign Policy: the Burdens of World Power with sixth grade classes in Massachusetts. Vincent reported greater increase in motivation and intellectual curiosity when using game-based instruction than when using other instructional models. However, the study was published in a practitioner journal without data, evidence for validity of the assertions, or peer review. More recently, Sawyer and colleagues have begun using the game Virtual University with college administrators (Prensky, 2001); they have yet to publish any research on this work, however.

The most compelling research to date on learning through digital gaming has focused on the social interactions that occur in the context of game play. Johnson, Johnson, and Stanne (1985), (cited in Ehman and Glenn, 1987) argue for the importance of cooperative learning strategies over competitive and individual ones in using computer simulations, locating much of the learning experience in social interactions and in off-line learning activities. Consistent with standard instructional practice, Johnson et al. argue that collaborative and cooperative exercises allow learners opportunities to reflect on their understandings, articulate their ideas, and refine them through discussion exercises.

Despite the usefulness of studies such as Johnson et al. (1985), taken altogether as a coherent body of work, the current research on digital games and simulations, like earlier research on paper-and-pencil games and simulations, is sporadic, questionably designed, and inconclusive. Reflecting on the lack of research in this area, Ehman and Glenn (1991) write “There are so few studies that bear on the question of the impact of interactive technologies on the social studies teacher’s role that it would be presumptuous to conclude that we understand this area. More naturalistic studies utilizing in-depth classroom observations, open-ended interviews with teachers and students, and survey and test data are needed” (p. 515).

Implications for Future Research

I find three themes from past research on game-based learning social studies education that can guide future research:

Of course, the importance of the activity structure in which a given tool for learning is embedded has long been recognized in the field of instructional technology. For example, for decades, instructional designers have recognized the crucial role of debriefing exercises following game play; perhaps educational researchers would be well advised to forgo attempts to isolate the effects of gaming and instead focus on researching the outcomes of intact pedagogies for learning through game play. Educational designers need not start from scratch; goal-based scenarios (Schank, 1994), problem-based learning (Savery & Duffy, 1995), cognitive apprenticeships (Brown, Collins & Newman, 1991), and modeling (Barab, Barnett, & Hay, 2001) all provide pedagogical models in which student-directed activity is the focus of the activity system and instructional supports are folded into the context of student-directed activity.

Along these lines, Ehman and Glenn (1991) argue for more in-depth naturalistic cases of how interactive technologies can be used to support learning in social studies. Design experiments (Brown, 1992) and teaching experiments (e.g. Cobb et al., 2001) are two models for how educators might create pedagogical models for game-based learning that are grounded in theory, practice, and empirical research. In both methodologies, researchers collaborate with practitioners to create instructional contexts and then study how learning unfolds within them. Using a variety of techniques including ongoing, dynamic assessments, researchers are then able to gain a better understandings of how students are learning in the environment and therefore can suggest specific changes to the environment in order to improve its impact on learning. Such experiments frequently lead to what Robert Stake calls “petite generalizations” (1995). Petite generalizations do not hold true for all people in all contexts but can be taken up by others and applied to their own contexts as they deem appropriate. Certainly controlled comparison studies would have some value in highlighting the different affordances of various learning environments; however, until social studies educators have a compelling rationale for using games and a sound pedagogical model for implementing them, such comparisons make little sense. Until the details of how such learning environments might be designed are better articulated, there is little rationale for presuming one variable more important than another.

There has been virtually no research on such intervening variables as interpersonal relations, leadership, team membership, and the decision-making process. Although there has been much theory and research in psychology and organizational development on these topics, there has been no carry over into the studies on simulation in social studies classrooms. Too often debriefing at the end of the game only gets scant attention … (Brooker, 1988) suggested that careful discussion and analysis of the issues during debriefing are as important as playing the game itself (p. 528).

Over the past ten years, a new generation of edutainment games like SimCity and Civilization has become available for social studies educators, redoubling interest in using these applications in formal learning environments (Berson, 1996; Hope, 1996; Kolson, 1996; Lee, 1994; Teague & Teague, 1995). The increased graphical, communication, and computational power of desktop computers, combined with the increased design sophistication of computer games and simulations, creates new affordances for supporting learning. Digital games and simulations allow the player to examine the development of social systems in four dimensions (across three-dimensional space plus time) and to participate in such systems from otherwise unattainable perspectives – for example, from the perspective of an all-powerful emperor or the czar of a small island country in Tropico (Squire, 2002). Studies of how such simulation games remediate learners’ understanding of social studies phenomena are now more necessary than ever.

Despite the intuitive appeal and growing grassroots popularity of using complex, information-laden, and robust simulation games such as Civilization III in social studies classrooms, little work has been done to connect the affordances of such games to contemporary issues in the learning sciences, particularly issues in the emerging field of world history education (e.g. Stearns, Seixas, & Wineburg, 2000). This section highlights several central concepts in history education, providing readers not familiar with the current discourse within the domain some sense of what issues and ideas have recently emerged. The main argument I make in this section is that historical simulation games such as Civilization III have the potential to address many of these issues. This is not to argue, however, that Civilization III – or any game for that matter – holds all the answers for history education. There are important concerns that social studies educators ought to consider about the properties of games as instructional media. The discussion advanced here is intended to pose questions and open debate informed by world history-specific pedagogical issues central to contemporary theory and practice, not to offer some panacea for history education in contemporary classrooms.

Engaging the Identities of Learners in the Study of History

In the past, history has been presumed to be an apolitical enterprise and learning history a linear developmental process whereby students enter the classroom as naïve thinkers and gradually acquire facts in order to eventually become skilled (Downey & Levstick, 1991). After reviewing the literature, Downey and Levstick (1991) suggest that the shallow “cultural literacy” approach to teaching history leads to misconceptions about the nature of the domain and drives students away from its study (see also Barnett, Barab, Schatz, & Warren, 2000; Goodlad, 1984; Greene, 1994; Loewen, 1995; Perkins, 1992; Seixas, 2000). Wineburg (2001) echoes these sentiments, arguing that most psychologically-inspired research in social studies has not been grounded in any recognizable model of expert practice or domain-specific reasoning and problem-solving. Seixas (2000), goes one step further, arguing that what passes as history – the memorization of a collection of facts, causal explanations and sanctioned narratives – might better be described as the construction of myth or heritage than doing history in any real sense.

Indeed, critics of the "best story" approach have noted how little this process of “learning history” reflects how actual historians engage in historical inquiry (e.g. Stearns, Seixas, & Wineburg, 2000). Whereas students read textbooks, memorize facts, and recite “ready-made” knowledge, academics, curators, journalists, and social activists consider research topics of theoretical and/or practical importance, consult original sources, produce arguments, interpret data in dialogue with existing theory, and negotiate findings within social contexts (Counsell, 2000; Greene, 1994; VanSledright, 1998). Wineburg (1992; 1999) argues that American students are presented the results of historical inquiry without any appreciation for the tentativeness of contemporary historical claims or the contentiousness of current debates in the field. As a result, the majority of students perceive history as the meaningless recitation of names, dates, and facts established by authorities and fail to understand the methods and practices through which historians construct and judge historical arguments (Seixas, 2000). Not surprisingly, most students dislike studying history, frequently listing history as "the most boring" of all 21 subjects studied in school (Loewen, 1995).

Providing Marginalized Students Pathways into World History

The most damning implication of this approach can be found where scholars have explored how marginalized or oppressed peoples negotiate these officially sanctioned histories with their lived experiences, family histories, and own interpretations of social conditions. Jim Wertsch and others have found that, even when students “learn” officially sanctioned school histories, they do not necessarily believe it. In the 1990s, Wertsch (2000) did a series of studies interviewing Estonian citizens about their understanding of the USSR’s annexation of Estonia in 1940. Surprisingly, Estonians knew both official and unofficial histories of how Estonia became a part of the Soviet Union, with most citizens knowing far more of the “official” historical account taught in Soviet schools. At the same time, most citizens disregarded this history as false, and instead subscribed to an alternative history that challenged official historical narratives – one that developed through families, folklore, and underground channels. American educators from the critical pedagogy tradition have made similar claims about the teaching of race in American schools, noting that many American students learn officially sanctioned school history but retain their pre-existing beliefs about American history or contemporary culture (Ehman, 1980; Loewen, 1995; McLaren, 1994; Spring, 1991). Drawing on socio-cultural theory of learning outlined in Mind as Action (1998), Wertsch distinguishes between students learning history and students appropriating historical texts, arguing that texts serve as “identity resources” that are mastered and employed according to situational demands. Noting Seixas’ (2000) work in Native American schools, Wertsch argues that people in less politically charged environments are frequently less aware of their duplicitous views of history and often call on a variety of historical narratives as needed when interpreting situations.

As Wertsch’s study of Estonians would suggest, students come to history with lived histories and social and political identities. Loewen (1995) argues that, when presented with government-sanctioned history, students react in complex ways: On the one hand, many students reject school histories; on the other hand, students also incorporate parts of the received history into their identities. For example, Loewen describes how African-American students in rural Mississippi frequently adopted beliefs (which were reinforced in popular myth and media) that African-Americans were wholly responsible for their relatively impoverished living conditions in the rural South due to laziness, immorality, or stupidity. Critical theorists call this process of adopting the oppressive beliefs of a dominant culture hegemony, and argue that hegemonic histories are one of the ways that social order is maintained. Schools, then, are one of the main social institutions that reify hegemonic structures.

A challenge to history educators, then, is how to provide spaces where students can work through these issues of race, power, class, and identity. If Loewen (1995) is correct, then history educators cannot simply ignore prevailing stereotypes, myths, and historical accounts. Students need opportunities for exploring and confronting them, negotiating their lived identities with those promulgated in schools. How to go about this process is not exactly clear: If students come to school disinterested in, skeptical of, or even rejecting school-sanctioned histories, how do we engage students in the hard and painful work of engaging in identity politics – the processes of seeking out and engaging with multiple histories, practicing introspection, and exploring one’s own (multiple) identities? Within a world history context, how do we honor students’ desire to affiliate themselves with cultural traditions (whether European, Native American, Asian, or African) with the very real politics of colonial history? How do we help American students who identify themselves as of European descent understand historical events in a way that enables them to confront their historical and social position in a constructive manner? How do we engage students who identify themselves as having descended from colonized populations in the painful processes of confronting their social and historical positions while in dialogue with school-sanctioned narratives?

An emerging body of research in social studies education shows that students frequently lack the background knowledge necessary to understand even the most basic history texts (Beck & McKeown, 1989). In an important study of how elementary students encounter texts, Beck and McKeown found that concepts that teachers and text-book writers might take for granted, such as the fact that 1765 was about 250 years ago or that the colonists descended mostly from England (or even the fact of where England is, for that matter), were often confusing to students in the most basic ways. Students frequently lack knowledge of basic geographic facts, broad timescales, or familiarity with precise vocabulary (VanSledright, 1998). That students might not know specific names and dates might seem obvious, but Levstik and Barton describe how elementary and middle school world history students might not understand common terms such as cargo, voyage, exploration, encounter, or exchange – terms that litter social studies texts throughout. In reviewing studies of students’ pre-existing understandings of history, VanSledright (1998) concludes that the way in which students’ particular, experiences and unique socio-cultural factors mediate their understandings of history may very well render predicting students’ prior knowledge impossible. VanSledright writes,

“these studies demonstrate the vastness of the range of understanding and the broadness of possible influences. To be sure, deriving generalizations from the data these studies produce might one day be possible if this research continues. But for the present anyway, the eccentricities of students’ prior knowledge appear to be the rule; that is, the ideas and images students bring to the learning context vary more than they are similar.” (1998, p. no page)
A challenge for history educators, then, is finding ways to acknowledge the differing identities, backgrounds, and experiences that students bring to studying history while also designing learning experiences that meet students on their own terms.

Levstik and Barton’s (2001) Doing History describes several approaches to engaging students in the study of history, including personal histories, family histories, using popular media as the basis for investigating history, examining current events in historical contexts, creating history museums, or examining historical artworks. Levstik and Barton expand notions of history education to include modes of inquiry that cut across several fields, including material history, architectural history, cultural history, social history, and political history. One key feature of this approach to history education is respecting both the positionality of students and the activity of historical inquiry itself as socially-mediated intellectual enterprises (VanSledright, 1998). Historians do not ask questions or conduct history in a vacuum: History is always temporally situated through the perceiver’s questions, modes of inquiry, social purposes, and encompassing discursive communities. Levstik and Barton (2001) go one step further, reminding educators that there is no one “field” of history, and that documentarians, military historians, academic historians, preservationist historians etc. each approach their work differently. Depending on the purposes of the historical investigation and the communities of inquiry in which the history is framed, what counts as history might wildly differ. Thus, a challenge for world history educators is how to scaffold students in ways that allow students genuine inquiry.

Models and simulations are commonly used as methods of inquiry in the physical sciences but are only recently being used in the social sciences (Wolfram, 2002). Most often, advocates of modeling and simulation in education emphasize the importance of having students build their own models and simulations rather than use pre-packaged models or simulations (Feurzig & Roberts, 1999). Creating models (and simulations) engages students in iterative cycles of inquiry whereby they ask questions, observe phenomena, construct representations of those phenomena, compare these representations with observed data, construct arguments, and negotiate them within a community of inquiry (e.g. Barnett, Barab, & Hay, 2001). For many science educators, the value of modeling and simulation is not in the content per se but in the modeling-building process itself. As constructed models, digital games such as Civilization III contain representations of phenomena, embedded language, relationships, and ideas that students can explore. As a result, playing model-building and simulation games are a practical way to provide students opportunities to engage in more complex inquiry-based activities than traditional curricula materials provide (Klopfer & Squire, 2003).

Simulation games allow players to participate in virtual social systems and to adopt perspectives that they normally may never have access to. In the role-playing simulations Hidden Agenda or Tropico, for example, learners can assume the position of a political leader in a Central American country, learning about economics, history, politics, sociology, and culture in the process. Getting students to adopt such alternative perspectives is a core facet of learning to think historically (Downey & Levstick, 1991; Wineburg, 1992), yet is often difficult to achieve in traditional learning environments. In contrast, games like Civilization III allow students to explore unfolding geographical processes, to investigate the interplay of factors causing social phenomena, and even to view global social systems over thousands of years of time by simply altering the model’s time scale – something not easily accomplished by other means.

Simulation games like Civilization III are dynamic visualization and hypothesis-testing tools that provide students windows into various causal sequences that are typically obscured. The user can dramatically shifts time scales, for example, speeding up processes that are normally spread out over thousands of years so that long-term consequences of decisions can be not only predicted and also, and crucially, inspected as well. Because Civilization III also serves as an interactive map, players can also examine the interactions of physical features (e.g., waterways, mountains, natural resources) with cultural factors (e.g., trade routes, colonization patterns, war and peace). Their interplay is dramatically highlighted in such games: Cultural boundaries emerge in response to physical boundaries and, in turn, physical geography is shaped by cultural and political forces. In effect, players can experience the interactions of broad factors such as geography, culture, and politics at both the local- and systemic-level, rendering discernible relationship among factors such as natural resource scarcity, international trade, and local politics.

Simulation games such as Civilization III, and SimCity allow players to explore the behavior of complex systems that emerges from simple local rules (Resnick, 1994). In Civilization III, players are encouraged to find links between economic, political, geographical, and historical structures as they construct viable strategies for their civilization to flourish by manipulating variables such as tax rates, luxury spending, form of government, or scientific research and observing the results. In SimCity, players learn that there is no one thing that they can do to drive down crime rates, revive an economically struggling system, or raise the standard living of a city as such variables are the product of many complex systemic interactions. Understanding social phenomena from such deep, systemic perspectives in these ways might help students see beyond common stereotypes, scripts, or simplifications of complex historical phenomena.

This kind of approach to studying history suggests that games could remediate students’ experience of history in fundamental ways. History is presented not as a body of facts to be memorized but as one unfolding of events among many possibilities. Certainly, game playing is not the only such technique: local histories, family histories, and interpretation of primary documents are techniques that can be used toward similar ends. However, Civilization III may be unique in opening up the annals of history for players to replay history from different angles. As players build a test civilization of their own, developing theories about how their civilization should grow and change. Each choice a player makes for their civilization represents a road not taken, raising questions about how and why historical events may have played out differently. Other strategy games – for example, Antietam or Gettysburg – attempt to simulate historical events with greater fidelity and derive their fun in part through encouraging players to pose hypothetical questions to the game system: Is there some way to lead General Lee to victory at Gettysburg? What might have the impact been on the war had Lee won? In such cases, games provide students opportunities to develop insights about the constructed nature of historical narratives, especially when the retelling happens to be of the history of player’s own real-world civilization.

All games and simulations are authored texts and, as such, all games and simulations make assumptions and contain biases. As Thiagarajan (1998) reminds us, simulations never can represent reality in an impartial way: they reflect their designer’s conception of reality. Most players become aware of these biases very quickly since they can be manipulated to win the game. For example, SimCity is biased toward public transportation over roadways, reflecting author Will Wright’s fondness for public transportation (Herz, 1997). Of course, all social studies artifacts are texts authored from some particular cultural-historical perspectives. Games, however, unlike textbooks or films, encourage players to identify these biases in order to exploit them. Encouraging players to compare game simulations with their own personal understanding of the phenomena that the game system purportedly represents is one way to encourage reflection on their own life experiences in a framework of alternatives. In such ways, educators can capitalize on a simulation’s bias and inaccuracies in order to foster critical reflection. How students encounter games as authored texts is still largely unknown, yet, regardless of whether an educator embraces world history simulation games or ignores them, they will, in all likelihood, continue to teach students already influenced by such texts.

As Gredler (1996) points out, there has been a noticeable lack of any clear connection between educational games and disciplinary theories of knowing – between game design and some coherent underlying theory of learning. The earliest educational games research were mostly based on behaviorist models of learning left implicit or on no underlying theory of learning at all (Gredler, 1996). More recently, Rieber (1996) drawing heavily from Pelligrini’s notions of play (1995), suggests that games might be understood within a constructivist frameworks of learning. Briefly, Rieber describes four lenses for how play might be construed as tools for learning: (a) Play as progress, (b) Play as power, (c) Play as fantasy, and (d) Play as self. While these lenses are useful for thinking about play in terms of different social and psychological aspects, what play “is: remains highly ambiguous. As Brian Sutton-Smith’s (1979) edited interdisciplinary volume on play illustrates, anthropologists, developmental psychologists, and sociologists all define play in terms of their own fields. Even within fields, definitions of play tend to flow from the encompassing theoretical system from which they spring: To a Vygotskian, play may look like a culturally-mediated activity that functions as a tool for mediating childrens’ appropriation of “objectives, motives, and norms of the relations in adult activity” (El’konin, 1971). To a Piagetian, on the other hand, play might look like a cognitive challenge whereby the child is playing through developmental stages, testing out possible new understandings of the world around them much. Consistent with an activity theory approach, I treat play as a cultural-historical activity, grounded in particular historical trajectories of activity and embedded in specific cultural contexts (Hakkarainen, 1999). Drawing from Rieber’s (1996) discussion of play and examining digital gaming as cultural-historical activity, I argue that there are two defining aspects of digital game play activity worth explicitly addressing: (1) transgressive play and (2) liminal spaces.

Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen (2003) describe one of the primary satisfactions of game play as its transgressive nature – that is, the way that games allow us to temporarily adopt a fantastical set of rules, some of which may be contrary to the rules of every day life. In Civilization III, I can experiment with imperialistic strategies in a socially sanctioned manner since my activity is bounded within the social space of gaming and it is understood that I might experiment with different ideas (or even identities, e.g. Turkle, 1995). Given known issues with marginalized students resisting dominant historical narratives (e.g. Loewen, 1995), it seems quite possible that digital games could provide intriguing learning opportunities for engaging learners otherwise left outside the predominating narrative and pedagogy. As simulations, games allow learners to ask hypothetical historical questions, such as “Under what conditions might Native Americans have colonized Europe?” or “Under what conditions might the Americas have been ‘Africanized?”. As such, perhaps it is important to look at Civilization III as a culturally-mediated object (or medium) and not merely another technology (Games-to-Teach Team, 2003).

This notion of transgressive play suggests that the proper way to think about game spaces is not as information conduit spaces but as experimental spaces, spaces where learners can take on new identities. These spaces might be described as liminal spaces, drawing from anthropologist Victor Turner’s (1969) notion of liminality, which are chaotic, ritual spaces such as pilgrimages, walk-abouts, or retreats that exist between reality and other-worlds and where social norms are suspended. The suspension of conventional mores creates a hybrid social space where participants can reflect on society and themselves within it. As such, liminal spaces are sites for learning; they are cultural spaces where identities may be formed and transformed. Game designers such as Warren Spector (cited in Au, 2001) have already recognized this potential.

The preceding discussion of issues in world history education and how they intersect with the affordances of digital games is meant to be provocative rather than conclusive: Research on how such games align (or misalign) with students’ development of a historical understanding is, in truth, largely absent. Until such work is successfully underway, there is no justifiable basis on which to claim that digital games are or could be a solution to challenges history educators face. Historical simulation games such as Civilization III have the potential to support learning in social studies. Like all educational technologies, however, they also have their limitations and drawbacks.

Limitations of Games as Learning Tools

Despite their potential to support learning, game-based environments also have pose serious limitations. As the preceding review highlights, the research on games in social studies, though largely inconclusive, does suggest that game playing can be less effective than more traditional pedagogies in particular ways and in particular contexts. For example, students sometimes fail to build meaningful connections between simulation game activity and the real-world phenomena the simulation is meant to represent. Games can also sometimes foster ruggedly competitive cultures among players, thereby stifling cooperation and collaborative peer learning. And for learners adverse to that kind of rivalry, such competitive contexts can be downright alienating. In the following section, I examine some of these drawbacks and limitations.

In the introduction to this chapter, I argued that computer games such as Civilization III are a powerful but untapped resource for supporting learning in social studies. Already, millions of players are exploring digital representations of social phenomena through games like Pirates!, Sim City, and Civilization III. Despite a lack of interest in games from current educational researchers, numerous other varied interest groups – teachers, students, community leaders, journalists, and even political leaders – are very intrigued by the possibility of using games to support learning. The research on games and simulations in the 1960s and 1970s, however, suggests that some social studies educators’ trepidation toward games is well founded. Studies conducted throughout this era fail to show any significant learning gains from gaming and, likewise, fail to produce any compelling rationale or theoretical framework for using them in the first place. However, contemporary educational research appears to be revitalizing this area of research, suggesting new theoretical motivations for using games, more robust pedagogical models for supporting learning through game play, and new research models for developing and evaluating these models.