Learning and Identity: What Does it Mean to be Half-Elf?

Can identity work and reflection on identities, that go into the process of playing video games, improve student’s learning? James Gee, in his book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2007), in particular Chapter 3 Learning and Identity: What does it mean to be half-elf, suggests that if schools encourage this, learning in schools would be more successful and powerful. But do we, as teachers, really think this way?

You may ask, what is identity work and why so much emphasis on identities in video games and learning? Gee suggests that Role Playing Games involve playing with three different identities. There are virtual, real-world and projective identities. All three work together, at once. The first being one’s identity as a virtual character, the second being a nonvirtual person playing a video game and the third being the line between one’s real-world identity and the virtual identity whereby you can project your values and desires into the virtual character. This third identity plays a significant part in the learning puzzle, as you will understand further on.

Some young people, when playing a first-person shooter game, take on a character that makes them think differently about what they value and what they don’t about that character. For example, they may redo a fight scene because they have let the character down or they pull off a victory in a more spectacular fashion that would suit a superhero. They feel responsible to and for the character, therefore projecting an identity on that character (Gee, 2007).

Gee then goes on to suggest that when players develop these projective identities, they learn to ‘own’ the character identities they create, a model that has interesting potential for the classroom. He suggests that students may take on projective identities (and uses scientists as an example), both working within that role and having a critical overview of the role from outside of it.  Maybe this is a way to help teachers create more new and exciting learning experiences.  

However, according to Gee, each identity can fail (or succeed) in different sorts of ways. The virtual identity can fail to defeat another character in battle, the real-world identity can fail to use the game controls in an effective way and the projective identity can fail because the real-world identity has caused the virtual identity to do something in the game that the character you want it to be would not or should not do. These scenarios can be important experiences in a student’s learning cycle.

So why are these identities such an important part of learning outside video games? Gee suggests, that when playing video games, such as Arcanum, all deep learning, both active and critical, is inextricably caught up with identity in a variety of ways. He believes you have to commit yourself to the learning in terms of time, effort and active engagement. If you don’t, you can’t learn in a deep way. Students have to see themselves in terms of a new identity.  In Gee’s science classroom example, in order to become a virtual scientist you need to engage in words, interactions and actions that allow you to take on the identity of the scientist.  In the classroom, students could choose their own styles of virtual identities by asking certain questions, working in close collaborations, studying texts before/after experimentation and many more.

Continuing this idea, in the science classroom, Gee then goes onto suggest that if a child brings to science learning a real-world identity as a learner, a school learner or a science learner who is damaged, this identity needs to be repaired before any active and/or critical learning can occur. You may ask, how can I do this? It all comes down to good teaching and we can all do it. Learning for all types of students. Gee recommends three things:

1.     The learner must be enticed to try

2.     The learner must be enticed to put in lots of effort even if he/she begins with little motivation to do so

3.     The learner must achieve some meaningful success when he/she has expended this effort

Are these recommendations discussed in education often enough today? Do teachers talk about the identities learners bring to school and how these identities relate to motivation and effort (or their lack of) in relation to specific sorts of pedagogies? Gee makes a strong point that video games are good at these three things. He also adds, that they are only for some types of learners, and uses himself as an example, in that he became interested in video games through his son playing.

Pursuing the third recommendation further, good video games offer players a feeling of achievement. One of these feelings, James Gee calls, is the “amplification of input principle”. For a little input, learners get a lot of output. Like in science, have you ever felt satisfied when what you actually do, seems so small compared to what you get? Like that time, in high school chemistry, when you added two chemicals together in the glass container on the Bunsen burner, for it to result in the perfect chemical reaction.  

When it comes to taking on a projective identity in the science classroom, Gee suggests students must project their own values and desires into being a ‘virtual scientist’. They must decide on what type of person they want this scientist to be and what type of history this person will have. Will they be persistent, resilient when facing failure, collaborative, a risk taker or even creative? It is not just role-playing. Students proactively build a virtual identity, a certain type of person with a certain type of history. What they are trying to do is project their own hopes and desires onto that person.  Gee believes that if learners can carry on so far as to take on this projective identity, magic happens. Students have a chance to feel what it’s like to actually be that sort of scientist (or person) they have wanted and built their character in the classroom to be. Be given a chance to take on the virtual identity as a real-world identity. As quoted by Gee, “If learning deeply, student’s learn through the projective identities new values and new ways of being in the world based on a combination of their real-world identities and the virtual identity at stake in the learning. “ 

In final consideration, when you consider using identity work and reflection on identities, that go into the process of playing video games, to improve student’s learning, Gee makes a good point, that it is important for teachers to pick the particular virtual identities and worlds they will create in their classrooms - carefully. If children are learning deeply, they will learn through their projective identities, new values and new ways of being in the world. 

Gee, J. P. (2007). Learning and Identity: What Does it Mean to be a Half-Elf? In What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.