[Commlist] CfP Special Issue "Revisiting Teaching and Games" journal gamevironments

CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue GAMEVIRONMENTS

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Revisiting Teaching and Games: mapping out ecosystems of learning

edited by Björn Berg Marklund, Jordan Brady Loewen and Maria Saridaki

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Deadline for 300-word abstracts 1. April 2021
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Games educate us, challenge us, and generate novelty in how we relate to 
ourselves and each other. They help us learn that failure can be fun and 
encourage us to explore. Yet, it is worth asking ourselves: when we 
think about the potential of gameplay for teaching, how can we better 
consider the ecosystem of unique relationships between players, 
creators, and those who try to facilitate spaces for meaningful play? If 
we hope for games to reach their most meaningful potential in - and as - 
educational environments, starting an authentic and open dialogue of 
intentionality and failure is crucial. As a community, we need stories, 
models, practices, and theories of teaching to map out the complex 
ecosystem of learning.

Like teaching, gameplay is environmental. The social and cultural 
setting, the ambitions (and biases) of designers, educators and players, 
and the technologies used all influence the colors, moments, stories, 
and characters we ultimately experience on our screens. Gameplay is at 
its most meaningful when we intentionally put play and its environment 
in dialogue, making space for learning, exploration, and engagement. 
However, understanding the living, complex, and dynamic intertwining 
between the inhabitants of this ecosystem and the actualizing of 
meaningful teaching has proven difficult. It is often the "thingness" of 
the game, not the persons involved, which captures our attention – 
flashy visuals and impressive technologies overshadow the unique 
qualities of those who gather around the screens, who create 
experiential environments of gaming hardware, and who code and curate 
the pixelating properties of gameplay.

In this special issue, we want to curate a collection of accessible 
stories, theories, and methods of triumphs and failures involving gaming 
and teaching. We invite perspectives from inhabitants of the entire 
gameplay ecosystem: developers, teachers, museum guides, facilitators, 
students, policy makers, scholars, journalists, artists, and anyone else 
who would like to share their experiences of creating and incorporating 
games and game-based technologies into their teaching. We particularly 
invite methodological/theoretical approaches addressing the topic of 
teaching and games, especially those involving, new approaches as well 
as critical discussions and praxis involving missed opportunities and 
failures, as well as moments of unexpected successes and meaningful 
change. We encourage reflections on positive and negative experiences as 
sharing both is necessary if we want games to ultimately become 
accessible to everyone, and ensure that we create inclusive learning 
environments. This call is an invitation to join the conversation.

In addition to the journal's traditional formats of peer-reviewed 
articles, we are also including a /Call for Failures and Successes, /a 
short-paper format focusing on real-world experiences with games and 
teaching (see information below).

Topics for the peer reviewed articles & the stories of failure and 
successes may include, but are not limited to:

  * Teaching about games, teaching with games, or teaching through games
  * Teaching with new immersive technologies: VR, AR, MR, playful
    wearables & IoT
  * Games for journalism, activism, public outreach, citizen
    empowerment, and critical discourse
  * How to design better games & better educational experiences
  * Failures and Success in collaboration between designers, educators
    and policy makers.
  * Pedagogical strategies for using games in different contexts and
    with different purposes
  * Gameful Facilitator: Processes involved in organizing & executing
    game-based events.
  * Gaming related to value formations in culture, religion & society
  * Empathy games: cultural awareness, human connections, and/or
    community building
  * Designing and using games as a democratic tools towards
    accessibility & inclusion
  * Transformative learning in the educational environments - the
    interplay between the physical and virtual spaces
  * Students’ experience & perspectives - individual and intersocial
    changes in the teaching environment
  * “Failure is Fun” - discussing games as pedagogy & transformation,
    reaching positive learning outcomes through “failures”
  * Discussions of game literacy, and its impacts on teaching with games
  * Discourses on physical, socio-economic, cultural, and political
    aspects of game environments
  * The politics of games and game technologies: structures of power
    that affect the creative use of games for teaching
  * Teaching by making games: game design & game jams as a teaching
    opportunity
  * Designing site specific games & urban games in education
  * Designing and using single-player vs. multiplayer games for and in
    educational environments
  * Methods for evaluating games and teaching: how do we evaluate the
    unique outcomes of using games in a plurality of environments?
  * How do we define “learning effects” when studying teaching and games?

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GUIDELINES

Submit a title and 300-word abstract to Björn Berg Marklund 
((bjorn.berg.marklund /at/ his.se) <mailto:(bjorn.berg.marklund /at/ his.se)>), Jordan 
Brady Loewen ((jbloewen /at/ syr.edu) <mailto:(jbloewen /at/ syr.edu)>) and Maria 
Saridaki ((msaridaki /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(msaridaki /at/ gmail.com)>) by 1. April 
2021.

Possible formats for submission include:

a) regular academic articles
b) interviews
c) research reports
d) book reviews
e) game reviews
f) short-paper format “Failures and Successes”

Guideline for the short-paper format /Failures and Successes/:

Please provide in 1 concise page (roughly 400 words) the /context, 
intentions, and failures or successes/**involving digital games for 
teaching. In your proposal, clearly highlight each category.

  * For**/context/, provide important information about the situation
    you’ll be writing from. For example, what types of students are you
    working with? What type of learning setting are you going to be
    discussing (e.g., courses, programs, grades, public space, etc.)?
  * What was your**/intention/ to use, teach, or involve video games as
    part of your pedagogical strategy? What were you hoping it would
    help students learn?
  * How and why did it**/fail or succeed/, and what was learned from
    that failure/success? If you were to try again, what might you do
    differently?

Please include pictures and media if you have them. Keep your language 
clear and concise.

All articles submitted will be subject to double-blind peer-review. 
There is no article processing charge.

For more on submission formats and guidelines see:

http://www.gamevironments.uni-bremen.de/submission-guideline/ 
<http://www.gamevironments.uni-bremen.de/submission-guideline/>__

_https://www.gamevironments.uni-bremen.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/gv-stylesheet.pdf_

TIMELINE

Title and abstract submission: 1. April 2021

Full text submission: 1. July 2021

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