Serious games e o desenvolvimento do pensamento computacional: uma abordagem vigotskiana

Abstract

Computational thinking emerges in the current cybercultural, socio-historical context as a way of thinking that offers good perspectives, both in programming and in other areas of knowledge. At the same time, gaming related research shows that such kind of media has a great potential for teaching and learning. Taking this into account, this research’s problem was to investigate how serious games contribute to computational thinking development in students of 7th and 8th grades. In that sense, this research’s main goal was identifying the contributions of serious games in the development of such a way of thinking, as well as elaborating a pedagogical practice proposal that involved a game of such genre as a mediating element. To achieve this goal, first, we build a theoretical framework articulating the concepts of education, serious games and computational thinking, with the Vigotskian approach to learning and development. Then, we elaborated the theoretical guidelines that consolidated this research’s theoretical foundation. We chose the case study as our method, a qualitative approach, and the case we studied was an Introduction to Computer Science workshop, mediated by a serious game, held in a public school, composed of students from 7th and 8th grades. This research’s corpus was constituted by the students’ creations inside the serious game and the documentation of activities through notes and filming. Among the activities carried out in the workshop, we highlight: exploration, dialogued exposition, problem solving and pair programming. Analysis was performed by using two different procedures, both grounded upon the theoretical guidelines: textual data (notes and recordings transcription) was analyzed through Textual-Discursive Analysis, while the students’ creations inside the game (computer programs) were analyzed with a custom method, which examined qualitatively what computational thinking concepts were learned in what game levels and by which students. Results show evidences of internalization of computational thinking concepts, both in qualitative and quantitative terms. Such internalization was mediatized by CodeCombat, which indicates serious games contribute to computational thinking development. Aspects related to serious games that allow such phenomenon may be categorized as: mediatization, in which we include interactivity, the possibility of learning from failure, cyberculture, gaming culture and social interaction promotion; challenge, problems in the gaming context that seek to mediate access to the learning subject, concepts related to computational thinking itself; vigotskian mediation, the more knowledgeable other’s ability to strengthen the student’s understanding and sense making in relation to the game challenges. The research findings also corroborate the notion that the mediatization potential of a serious game can be better explored when combined with the mediation of a MKO. Based on results, we created a pedagogical practice proposal that uses CodeCombat as its mediating element. Lastly, we emphasize that this research’s Vigotskian approach may be expanded to other contexts, not limiting itself to serious games. We propose that results may be transposed to environments where other learning resources are used, such as learning objects, entertainment games, programming platforms like Scratch, and even unplugged computing activities.