Becoming a tutor: student scaffolding in a game-based classroom

NATALIA MONJELAT; PILAR LACASA; LAURA MÉNDEZ

Technology, Education and Pedagogy

Taylor&Francis

Año: 2016

Student interaction in school contexts is a topic that has been researched from many different perspectives. However, the role of students as tutors scaffolding other peers is not normally addressed, since studies are usually focused mostly on the teacher. Moreover, considering the many technologies that can support students´ work nowadays, studies describing specific practices are still needed in order to understand the many possibilities and constraints that can emerge from the use of these tools in the field of education.The aim of this exploratory case study is to gain in-depth knowledge about scaffolding between students, presenting data from an ethnographic study carried out at a Spanish high school where a commercial video game was introduced as part of the curricular activities. Analytically, scaffolding metaphor is the departing point to describe in detail how the process of scaffolding took place, focusing on its purposes and on the role of students as tutors.Our findings reveal how students offered mostly procedural scaffoldings, performing tutor functions such as highlight relevant features, reduce levels of freedom or control the frustration. These results highlight that students can perform scaffolds and this should be considered as part of the classroom design too, making this process visible for the students. Moreover, specific features of the video game enhance these interactions, which should also be considered when designing game learning environments in the future.