Unpacking FIFA play as text and action in literacy practices in and out of school

ABSTRACT

In this article, we use a model for games and literacy to explore how one FIFA gamer worked across contexts. Previously, this model has been used to address the role of computer and video games in the teaching of literacy in the subject of English. In the current article, we combine this model with a learning lives perspective, which builds on the idea of following the learner across a wide range of contexts. The findings illustrate how one learner is able to research a specific topic, build a convincing argument for it and transfer knowledge from one source to another in a critical way. The knowledge of a game and its culture and the world around the game is prevalent in a gamer’s literacy practices out of school, and this is shown when our participant draws upon this knowledge in literacy practices for specific tasks in school.

KEYWORDS:

• Literacy
• sociocultural theory
• FIFA
• computer games
• knowledge

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Øystein Gilje is Associate Professor at the Department of Teacher Education and School Research, University of Oslo. His research interests are students´ multimodal composing in and out of school. His recent publications focus on digital technology and learning in literacy practices.

Kenneth Silseth is Associate Professor at Department of Education, University of Oslo. He specializes in sociocultural and dialogic approaches to young people's learning and identity processes. Among his research interests are classroom interaction, technologyenhanced learning, game-based learning, contextualizing instruction and learning identity. Silseth is leading the research group “Living and Learning in the Digital Age” at the faculty of Educational Sciences.

Notes

1. During our fieldwork, FIFA 15, a new version of the game, was launched (25 September 2014). This is the game the students refer to in the interviews and play in the interactional video data. Almost every boy had access to FIFA 15 on PlayStation 4 (which launched November 2013).

2. Sicart (2013) argued that the rules, tactics and stars in FIFA are central aspects of the video game, and the practice of engaging and discussing stars is ‘a step in fandom for which computing simulations are offering new degrees of depth and engagement to our fantasies’ (2013, 43). In FIFA 15, it is striking to see how the game simulates both the soccer match and the media broadcasting of the event. ‘In the FIFA franchise, as in most products under the EA sports label, the drive is to make the games even closer to the actual game, that is, to make the computer game converge with the sport’ (Sicart 2013, 33).

3. http://fifa-talentscout.ea.com/. Available 10 June 2017.

4. Reviewers might be promoted to data editors, which is considered a ‘fantastic place to start for anyone who has wanted to be a part of the EA SPORTS FIFA Team, regardless of where you live in the world’. (https://www.easports.com/fifa/news/2014/fifa-ea-talent-scout-team).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the The Research Council of Norway. The KnowMo project is a collaborative project, and we appreciate all the comments and suggestions received from our colleagues.