La construcción de la identidad a través de los videojuegosun estudio del aprendizaje en el contexto institucional de la escuela.

Resumo

This doctoral dissertation investigates the problem of learning and the construction of the social identity through a technological object: videogames. These technologies are analyzed considering them from a macro sociocultural discourse that can only be understood appealing to the keys that move the world beyond the school walls.. From this perspective we are interested in the new spaces of power and authority that these technologies introduce in the institutions. To understand such processes the analysis is organized around certain aspects that operate in the interaction between the users and the video games as mediating objects of the dominant culture. These premises.. will guide us in the analyses. The research object is defined by stating that videogames are involved in the construction of the social identity of the users promoting archetypes of identification models. These discourses design learning modes that generate a microculture of practices and meanings with a logic different from the school culture. As educators, we are interested in understanding how students organize their behaviours and identities once immersed in this technological culture. Furthermore, we aim at understanding the communicative strategies developed by users when utilizing this technology. We claim that these cultural behaviours bring about consequences in academic learning. This study presents basic aspects of the theoretical background, underpinning the construction of the social identity in the context of the global condition and the hybridization of cultures. We point out the characteristics of the cultural scenario linking the subjects of education and the Information Society. It also studies in depth the characteristics of the digitalization of the narrative space and the ludic arena, which offer us the possibility to analyze videogames from a complex perspective. The study combines both, quantitative and qualitative research methods. The quantitative analysis of data regarding the characteristics of a population of students attending three schools and the use of videogames is intertwined with the qualitative analysis carried out through group and individual interviews to children and adults from the city of Río Gallegos, Patagonia, Argentina. This conceptual construction is deepened in a sociosemiotic analysis of the narrative of a videogame: Pokémon, carried out through focus groups with children users in informal contexts from Argentina and Valencia, Spain. To sum up, our main interest is to ascertain the characteristics of learning generated by videogames within the ludic arena. We propose an educational intervention which promotes both the development of thought, and the comprehension of cultural meanings.