Researching Virtual Play Experiences: Visual Methods in Education Research

✍ Scribed by Chris Bailey

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 394
• Series: Digital Education and Learning
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book illuminates the lived experience of a group of primary school children engaged in virtual world play during a year-long after-school club. Shaped by post-structuralist theory and New Literacy Studies, it outlines a playful, participatory and emergent methodological approach, referred to as ‘rhizomic ethnography’. This ‘hybrid’ text uses both words and images to describe the fieldsite and the methodology, demonstrating how children’s creation of a digital community through Minecraft was shaped by the both the game and their wider social and cultural experiences. Through the exploration of various dimensions of the club, including visual and soundscape data, the author demonstrates the ‘emergent dimension of play’. It will be of interest and value to researchers of children’s play, as well as those who explore visual methods and design multimodal research outputs.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Praise for Researching Virtual Play Experiences
Contents
About the Author
List of Figures
1: ‘Welcome to Banterbury’
1.1 Introducing Minecraft
1.2 Introducing Minecraft Club
1.3 Introducing the Banterbury Players
1.4 About the Author: Identity, Roles and Perspectives
1.4.1 Remnants of Teacher-ness
1.4.2 An Autistic Researcher
1.5 Aims of the Study
1.6 Contributions
1.7 Navigating the Text
References
2: Situating the Study
2.1 Framework for Research
2.1.1 Children’s Play
2.1.2 New Literacy Studies (NLS)
2.1.3 Multimodality and Multiliteracies
2.1.4 New Literacies
2.1.5 Space and Place
2.2 Poststructuralist Paradigm
2.2.1 What Is Poststructuralism?
2.2.2 Post-structuralist Studies
2.3 Existing Research
2.3.1 Social Worlds of Children
2.3.2 Virtual World Videogames
Defining Virtual Worlds
Alternative Approaches
Emerging Themes
Virtual World Play as Social Experience
Virtual World Play and Identity
The Creation of the Virtual World
Virtual Worlds and Learning
Recent Minecraft Literature
2.4 Implications
References
3: Exploring Lived Experience
3.1 Ethnography
3.2 Methods Overview
3.2.1 Virtual Models Discussion Sessions
3.2.2 Fieldnotes and Blogging
3.2.3 Photography
3.2.4 Video
3.2.5 Screen Recordings
Screencasts
Screenshots
3.2.6 Artefacts
3.3 Emergence and the Rhizome
3.4 Emergent methodology
3.5 Rhizomic Ethnography
3.5.1 Epistemology
3.5.2 Fieldwork
Emergent Design
Emergent Data Generation
Playfulness
Dealing with data
Selecting data
Representing data
Analysing data
3.6 Writing plateaus
3.7 Artistic Emergence as Neurodivergent Writing
3.8 Ethics
3.8.1 Justice (Power)
3.8.2 Informed Consent
3.8.3 Anonymity and representation
3.8.4 Non-maleficence and beneficence
3.9 Introducing the Plateaus
References
4: Plateau 1: Building and Being in Banterbury
4.1 Building and Being in Banterbury
4.2 Episode 1: Boom I’m On
4.3 Episode 2: The Sheep Shear
4.4 Episode 3: One Or Several Wolves
4.5 Episode 4: Free the Sheep
4.6 Episode 5: A Crippling Fear of Endermen
4.7 Discussion
4.7.1 Creative Play On- and Off-screen
4.7.2 The Role of the Game
4.7.3 Social Construction
Emergent Thought
4.8 Thinking with the BwO
4.9 Summary
References
5: Plateau 2: Playing with the World
5.1 Everyday Discussion
5.1.1 Food
5.1.2 Technology
5.2 Everyday On-screen
5.3 Playing with the World
5.3.1 Episode 1: Dad Dancing
5.3.2 Episode 2: Cleopatra and the Sex Ed Lady
5.3.3 Episode 3: The Horse Funeral
5.3.4 Episode 4: An Emerging Economy
5.4 Discussion
5.4.1 Social Performance, Technology and Remix
5.4.2 Social Humour
5.4.3 Social Players
5.4.4 Social Challenges
5.4.5 Virtual Becomings
5.5 Summary
References
6: Plateau 3: Visualising Soundscapes
6.1 Why Focus on Soundscapes?
6.2 Recording Sound
6.3 Representing Soundscapes
6.3.1 Tracings of a Soundscape
6.3.2 Mapping a Soundscape
6.4 The Significance of Sound
6.4.1 Non-vocal
6.4.2 Vocal
Noise Levels
Song
Order and Territory
Stability, Comfort and Continuity
Response to Change
Being Together
Walls of Sound—Marking Collective Territory
6.5 Discussion
6.6 Summary
References
7: The Emergent Dimension of Play
7.1 Revisiting the Plateaus
7.2 The Emergent Dimension
7.3 Generating Emergence
7.3.1 The Organisation of Space
7.3.2 The Composition of the Group (BwO)
7.3.3 The Resources (The Plane of Consistency)
7.4 The Emergent Process
7.4.1 Spontaneity
7.4.2 Exuberance / affect / enjoyment
7.4.3 Imagination
7.4.4 Performance
7.4.5 Mischievousness
7.5 Implications and Possibilities
7.5.1 Emergent Dimension Potential
7.5.2 Social / Virtual Potential
7.6 Emergent Methodology and Representation
7.6.1 Complexity of the Social World
Describing Complexity
Rhizomic Ethnography
7.6.2 Representation
Modal Complexity
The Hybrid / Neurodivergent Text
Methodological Synergy
7.6.3 Methodological Implications
7.7 Limitations and Future Possibilities
7.8 Final Reflections
References
Index