Gee, Pleasantly Frustrating

Gee, Pleasantly Frustrating

James Paul Gee introduces a  foreign concept to education (a nearly foreign concept anyway), the idea that it should be “pleasantly frustrating.” The key word there is pleasantly. Of course in order for educators to realize this concept they would have to drastically change the way in which they do things and that is exactly what Gee has in mind when he adapts the learning and teaching principles in What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy.

Gee’s insight into learning and educating is a detailed and comprehensive list numbering 36 principles but there are three concepts in learning necessary to understand those principles and those are “situated cognition,” “new literacy studies,” and “connectionism.” Situated cognition is the idea that what people learn is “fully embedded in (situated within) a material, social, and cultural world (Gee 9).” New literacy studies argues that reading and writing as “social and cultural practices with economic, historical, and political implications (Gee 9).” Connectionism is the idea that we learn best when our learning is based upon actual experiences in the world (Gee 9). The key to understanding these three principals is that the learning experience is an embodied experience, an experience that is comprehensive, and that all learning is rooted in an embodied experience.

The Crux of what Gee tells us about good learning and good instruction in video games is that the games “encourage players to thing about relationships, not isolated events, facts and skills. Gee argues that good learning, through the embodied experience, mirrors scientific learning and experimentation (Gee 217). The cycle typical of experimental science, Gee tells it, is built on a cycle of hypothesizing, probing, getting a reaction, reflecting on the results and re-probing to gain better results (Gee 216). Learning of this nature encourages players to “explore thoroughly before moving on, to think laterally, not just linearly, and to use such exploration and lateral thinking to re-conceive one’s goals from time to time (Gee 217). Gee’s insight into learning is rooted in good common sense and necessary for educational institutions to embrace as education evolves.