Gaming Culture: Teachers Perception in High Schools of Brazil

Victor Prado

, Carla Delgado

, Mônica Ferreira da Silva

, Lorena Pires Griõn

and Leandro Mendonça do Nascimento

Graduate Program in Informatics, PPGI/Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Keywords: Technology, Games, Gamers, Perception, Tournament.

Abstract: In order for games to be perceived as more than sheer entertainment, opening up its educational potential as

well as new professional possibilities for students, schools must first recognize and embrace this universe.

With this in mind, this work will attempt to demonstrate teacher’s perception of games in high schools of

Brazil, using the city of Maricá, in Rio de Janeiro state as an example. For this, the following research was

done over the period of a year and followed a City wide School versus School tournament, called Ti-Games

Maricá, which included a series of game based activities done in every single school of said city. This article

will focus solely on the impacts regarding activities for teachers and how it affected their perception of games.

1 INTRODUCTION

According to a research by the specialized company

Newzoo (2018), one with more than ten years of

experience and one of the most cited, there were more

than 75.7 million gamers in Brazil. Most of the

Brazilian youth play at least one digital game and the

country was in 2018 the thirteenth biggest game

market in the world.

Added to this, Brazil was in December 2019 the

fifth biggest internet user, surpassing the likes of

Russia and Japan, both notorious consumers of games

and digital technology. The same research by Statista,

another leading research firm, demonstrates that

every nine out of ten Brazilians access the internet at

least once a day.

The National Common Curriculum Foundation

has, as one of its principles, the use of technology in

class, in ways beyond that of administrative use. In an

act of legal dissonance, most public schools

implement measures to ban games and mobile phones

from school’s boundary.

For these reasons, the following research was

done following a city wide project called Ti-Games

Maricá, executed over the school year of 2019. While

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3960-7195

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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6917-4274

the main activity was a school versus school game

tournament, there were a series of workshops, talks

and other activities involving games. This project was

the city’s first initiative toward building a game

development cluster.

With high dropout rates – Brazil had the third

highest rate amongst countries researched by United

Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 2012

(UOL, 2013) – many studies relate these rates with

learning deficits, which start in the third year of

elementary school, when 11,6% of students fail

according to the School Census of 2017, creating a

year-grade disparity as the student progresses. This in

turn, converges to at least 35% of the students that

complete elementary school, dropping out before

high school, according to ex Minister of Education,

Professor Maria Helena de Castro.

There is close to no research regarding the

correlation between the high dropout rates and the

lack of effective technology use in class by teachers,

or the relation with the mere lack of encouragement

in regard to games and technology use by these

institutions. However, as demonstrated by the World

Economic Forum Risk Report of 2021, two critical

risk factors for country development are related to the

Prado, V., Delgado, C., Silva, M., Griõn, L. and Nascimento, L.

Gaming Culture: Teachers Perception in High Schools of Brazil.

DOI: 10.5220/0010486603190323

In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2021) - Volume 2, pages 319-323

ISBN: 978-989-758-502-9

319

disparity in access to technology and technology use

in education.

One evidence of the ill adapted environment,

which is Brazil’s usual public school to the current

student’s habits and world (digital natives), is in the

last Programme for International Student Assessment

(PISA). While this evaluation has been done every

two years for the last twenty, there has been little sign

of evolution in regard to public school’s

environments as perceived by students. “Bullying,

indiscipline and loneliness: the climate of Brazilian’s

schools as revealed by PISA in 2018” was the

headline that gave way to international notoriety of a

system that has little to no focus on embracing

students.

The same report states that nothing short of half

of the students skip classes in Brazil (50%) and 41%

recognize the high levels of indiscipline, as well as

23% feel alone in school, while 13% self declare

feeling sad in school. The very report indicates the

obvious; a better school environment helps reduce the

dropout rate.

1.1 Terms and Definitions

In 2015, a research done by Pew Research Center

about the perception of digital game universe by the

very consumers, demonstrated amongst a series of

facts, that the very users were prejudicial with certain

affirmations of the area. For example, men have twice

the chance of considering themselves “gamers” in

comparison to women, even though the number of

game consumers was practically the same.

“Game designers themselves offer a bewildering

and often contradictory set of definitions” –

RaphKoster, (A Theory of Fun for Game Design,

2004).

The English dictionary Merriam-Webster, defines

the term “gamer” as being someone who plays games,

but more commonly used as someone who plays

digital games. For all means, we shall use this

definition in this research and consider “games” as all

digital games except those of gambling.

As for the concept of games in a broader sense,

we shall adopt Johan Huizinga concept of “magic

circle”, Homo Ludens, 1938, interpreted and more

thoroughly defined by Katie Salen and Erick

Zimmerman in Rules of Play, 2003.

While the Ti-Games project consisted in a series

of activities focused in demystifying the games

universe to students and teachers, the main element

consisted of a unique format of game tournament.

One never done before in Maricá and with only one

comparable example. For this reason, all tournament

referrals are about Ti-Games.

1.2 Necessary Study Delimitation

While the project focused on a series of activities that

aimed for the insertion of games in schools and the

recognition of gaming culture by these institutions,

this article focuses mainly on the impacts of said

project, on the perception of teachers. The whole

project, named Ti-Games, was requested by the city

of Maricá, in order to help develop a game cluster. It

was part of a greater development program for the

city, focused on transforming Maricá, in a

technological hub.

Therefore, focusing on this matter, the following

sections will describe only a fraction of the complete

project and try to briefly overview it.

1.3 “Digital Native” Students

In his 2003 book, “Don’t Bother Me, Mom – I’m

Learning”, technology expert Marc Prensky suggests

the use of games for the development of children and

adolescents. Maybe possible benefits are attributed to

the habits of playing games. Prensky algo argues

thatthe current educational system is not adequate for

“digital natives”. In his opinion, teachers tend to be

technologically outdated when compared to their

students, not only in use and access to newer

programs, but also in language and expressions used.

Prensky coined the terms “digital native” and

“digital immigrant”, while talking about the

differences between generations and their

relationship with digital technology. He believes

digital natives were born in a world with digital

interfaces, contrary to those that saw its rise and had

to learn these new tools, “digital immigrants''.

2 METHODOLOGY

While all schools in the city did participate, it is worth

noting that this was never obligatory as well as the

involvement of teachers and faculty of each school.

Teachers received a questionnaire post first

contact with the project. This contact was officially

the first activity every school received and focused

mainly on demystifying games to the faculty.

The intention of this survey was to measure the

initial overall perception of games and its industry, by

each institution’s faculty.

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2.1 Ti-Games Project as Activity of

Introduction to Application of

Games in the School Environment

“Purposeful play builds self-confidence and real-

world problem-solving skills.” - Jane McGonigal

(SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting

Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient--

The goals of the inter school tournament

comprehend the stimuli to sociability between

students through a democratic and inclusive

experience. This starts with the legitimacy of games

by schools and within schools, earning its space for

an official activity within school boundaries and with

the support of school faculty. The tournament was

designed for a friendly competition that values

process and collaboration and with no monetary gains

or ranking of skills.

In its first phase, the tournament works within

each school, with internal activities to select students

with greater affinity to games.

In the first day of actions, the principal and faculty

interested (a decision made by each institution) listen

to a brief talk about games and some scientifically

proven benefits of playing, as well as a brief summary

of the industry and its economic relevance. The goal

is to open a discussion focused on stamping out

common misconception about games and through

this, bring this generation of “digital immigrants”

closer to their students, who are “digital natives”

(Mark Prensky, 2001).

Soon after the faculty centered talk and

discussion, the students partaking in the tournament

are assembled for a talk about the game industry and

its career possibilities; however the main focus is

game development. There are other activities ranging

from workshops to game tournaments and while these

involve the faculty, they are all focused on attending

students.

Since most public schools have only basic

infrastructure, all necessary materials were brought

for the days which these actions were held.

Each of the fifty schools received the project

twice, meaning two days of several activities, one of

which established a school team. These teams were

made by the students with the highest score on the

internal activities. The first phase is expected to end

at the same time for all fifty institutions participating

in the project, this way there is no extensive time

lapse between activities for one or more institutions.

Schools can train or not while they wait for the

second phase. It is ideal that they create their own

internal activities centered on the tournament, in

order to fulfill one of the project’s goals, which is

institutionalizing games in schools, going beyond

access and actually supporting this hobby.

This school versus school phase requires

institutions to compete against each other in similar

fashion as students did within each school, in order to

create a team. Not only is the format similar so

students and teachers are already familiarized with it,

but there are other mechanics outside matches to give

each school extra chances. All schools can participate

in up to five bouts. No institution is penalized for not

showing up, nor do we remove merit for those that

manage to show up on all events. The way the team

divides themselves for each round is up to them and

if a team member cannot get in, any student from that

school can replace him. The team is a formality only

for the most part, an indication of achievement by

those 5 students. While they do have priority for the

second phase, there is no elimination for not showing

up.

The point system used was solely meant to

no way to gain massive advantage. Most points are

rewarding for showing up to each event and there is a

progressive decrease and in the amount earned. Points

earned for winning events serve only as a tie breaker

for classifying for the semi-finals.

Semi-finals and finals happen in one single event

and in classic key format (Swiss). Since the whole

project is about effort and school mobilization

through games, this more competitive part is only

done as a symbolic event and extending it would go

against core values of the tournament. Unlike most

game tournaments, the project is not interested in

ranking or reinforcing loss of defeat. For this reason

the prize awarded is the same for the first and second

placed teams. Furthermore, the prize is a gaming

room for each school. Students that represented the

winning team get their name on metal plaques to go

with the equipment and structure for each school. All

semi final participants get unique shirts and

certificates, the same goes for all faculties

accompanying them, as to value the moment and their

feat.

2.2 Analyses of Initial Survey after

First Contact with the Project

One of the main goals of the project was to provoke a

paradigm shift in the way schools and faculty face the

relationship between newer generations, technology

and digital entertainment; for this is fundamental do

any pedagogical implementation of games.

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321

Figure 1: Most teachers said they were not familiar with

games in any sense.

With these premises in mind, we endowed the

Tournament with activities aimed at informing the

faculty of all schools of the city of Maricá, of the

potential of games beyond entertainment, including

professional possibilities within this industry. One of

these activities was a 25 minute presentation, done in

each of the fifty schools, at the start of visit, for some

of the available faculty, but always including the

school’s principal. After the presentation, time was

reserved for questions and discussions regarding

anything related to the topic. Only after concluding

this session, did we hand out the survey for those who

were present. We collected 136 responses, from

which the majority were given by principals and head

coordinators of each school.

This report is based on these answers received.

The first question was aimed at exposing the

respondent relation with games. We asked them to

classify their opinion and offered four possible

answers. In order to avoid biased responses, masked

by self-esteem, this question was preceded by a

simple straightforward question about the content

seen.

This initial data was confronted with the

information received by the survey done at the end of

the project.

According to results, many teachers did not

believe games could be anything more than

entertainment. Only 30% of teachers already

encouraged the use of games before the Tournament.

Since participation was optional, it is safe to assume

that most of the teachers that took part in the project

were already open to new possibilities.

The absolute majority of respondents (teachers

that heard the presentation and participated in the

activities) changed their perception in relation to

games and further possibilities of its use in class.

Many did not know much about the industry and

economic dimension of this universe.

2.3 Teachers Evaluation at the End of

the Project

Figure 2: Most teachers expressed some interest deepening

their understanding of games.

These evaluations were conducted on the last day of

the project, at the end of all activities, December 8

of 2019. One of the reasons for the low count of

answers was the fact that many schools were not

present on the Tournament’s last day, as well as the

school’s year end. All answers were voluntary and

could also be made online, during the weekend, with

a link sent to teachers that participated. This also

ended up contributing to a lower count, since we did

not foresee a closure of public school’s social

networks during that month, due to a court order. This

impediment resulted in poor communication with

teachers and amongst themselves, affecting the

involvement of more than half of the schools (since

the majority was public).

All teachers that responded observed that all their

students were involved in the tournament in some

manner. Half of these students were involved by

school spirit and cheering, evidencing the

participation for beyond sheer engagement in direct

activities. This fact is made clear by answers related

to involvement of the school community. Most

affirmed that school direction had a direct

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contribution. This is further reinforced by the

necessity of a formal request to join the tournament,

signed by each school’s direction at the start of the

project.

Figure 3: Immediately after the talk, most teachers were

intrigued by the possibilities involving games and its

culture.

This total commitment from the school, illustrates

the importance of answers in regard to the possibility

of positive results towards education, by the use of

games in class. Most of the respondents confirmed

their belief in this possibility. These same teachers

affirmed in their majority, that they noticed a greater

interest in school by their students, after the start of

the project.

3 FINAL ANALYSES OF THE

IMPACT OF TI-GAMES ON

TEACHER’S PERCEPTION OF

GAMES

While only a fraction of the total research done over

the complete Ti-Games project. It is imperative to

highlight the importance of the teacher's involvement

in the overall project and the clear correlation

between their effort and the final result. Not only

were they the ones responsible for the school’s

mobilization, but without their direct support and

belief, games cannot be legitimized within school.

Although not the focus of this article, it is

important to note that all teams that advanced to the

finals had major participation from teachers. In other

words, it was common for some of the teams

(schools) in the finals to be led by the same teacher.

This meant that those teams represented two different

schools and this equaled two different communities

and jobs for the professor, yet the common

denominator was the teacher’s mobilization effort.

This clearly states the weight of a teacher’s belief and

the importance of focusing on their perception, before

the introduction of any new educational tool.

It is recommended that further research is done on

the embracing of games within schools, without

specific use. How the recognition of this tool and

associated culture by the school and faculty, can

impact the lives of students in this day and age.

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