Leveraging Mobile Games for Place-Based Language Learning

Knowledge About Vs. Knowledge Of

Maintaining the relevance and purpose of any educational intervention demands that we, as educators, move beyond replication of existing practices in digitally-mediated environments towards what Hughes (2005) classifies as transformational interventions.

As a relevant example of the transformations suggested, Scardamelia and Bereiter (2006) describe the need for formal learning environments to become places capable of building, rather than simply transmitting, knowledge. In both diagnosing and addressing this need, they posit a conceptual distinction between knowledge of and knowledge about as key.² This is very similar to the distinction between learning about a language (i.e., knowledge about) and being able to use a language as part of a community (i.e., knowledge of) (Kramsch, 2002, 2009; Stryker & Leaver, 1997; Thorne, Black, & Sykes, 2009).³ In general, there still tends to be an overemphasis on learning about a language at the expense of learning the skills necessary for intercultural competence, especially at lower levels of proficiency (MLA, 2007; Bardovi-Harlig, 2001; Felix-Brasdefer, 2007; Sykes, 2009⁴).