Real-Life Contexts in Learning Games: Towards a New Typology

Introduction

The Latin origins of the word context give a strong clue to its strength within education: cotexere, to 'weave together'. As will be explored in this paper, context draws a number of facets together, and most importantly, gives meaning to the combined facets greater than the sum of their parts: weaving them together, adding colour and texture.

This is not a new revelation, of course: in daily conversation one will hear a request to ‘give me some context’, or an example that begins ‘to put it in context...’ Context adds relevance; relates a concept to some familiar territory or setting. As such, it has enjoyed long and detailed study by psychologists, educators and social scientists across a number of domains and from a range of perspectives.

By contrast, the role of context in learning games is a potential area of study that, to date, has not drawn focus, despite the fact that the game design process, and games themselves, use context to great effect (immersing players in other worlds, or in deep narratives, or realistic simulations). This paper aims to structure and catalyse research in this area through a study of the types of contextual learning possible within learning games and playful activities.