Week 8
I have been thinking about Gee, Whitton in conjunction with the readings in Week 4 of my MEd (Chartered Teacher) course, which this week focuses on Cognitive Style and Formative Assessment. Furthermore, do certain games and game genres appeal to users based on the Howard Gardner’s idea of Multiple Intelligence?
Richard Riding (Richard Riding , School Learning and Cognitive Style, 2002, David Fulton Publishers, London) defines the term cognitive style as an individual’s preferred and habitual approach to organising and representing information. He goes on to suggest that it may in fact be built into us and influence how we naturally tend to react to events and ideas.
If we recognise the way(s) in which we prefer to work, it allows us to develop strategies to work more effectively or to minimise our weaknesses. Riding proposes that there are different dimensions along which we are placed.
Firstly there is the: wholist – analytical dimension: whether a person organises information in wholes or parts. Secondly there is the: verbal – imagery dimension: whether a person represents information verbally or in mental pictures.
These two dimensions can be seen as if on two continuums, and can be represented as follows:
Within the wholist – analytical dimension wholists would see the overall picture (perhaps missing out on details);
While analytics would see a collection of different parts (perhaps sometimes concentrating on one or two parts to the exclusion of others).
Somewhere in the middle (and perhaps getting the best of both worlds) would be intermediates.
Perhaps this is what Gee is positing re subdomains, if one thinks about Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) theory, and furthermore, I am aware of the multimodal aspect of digital games, and the second dimension is pertinent to the use of such games in adapting delivery for optimum reception by pupils. For instance, is the Nintendo Wii providing the necessary support for the kinesthetic learners as defined by Howard Gardner in his idea of Multiple Intelligences?. 
Within the verbal – imagery dimension verbalisers would consider or represent information in words or through word associations while imagers would use mental pictures either of information or of things associated with it. Then somewhere in the middle again would be a group of bimodals.
Riding suggests that verbalisers will prefer stimulating environments with a social group helping them to develop or share meanings while imagers will prefer a more passive, static environment. Does this have an effect on the predilection of some gamers for online collaborative gaming? There seems to be little doubt that the pockets of digitial games-based and traditional learning is apposite within a classroom setting. It would of course be possible to have different combinations of the dimensions, for example an analytic imager or a wholist verbaliser. Riding goes on to state that someone’s preferred style doesn’t seem to relate to intelligence or ability and that ability would influence the level of performance while style would influence the manner of performance. He also says that it is separate from both personality and gender.
Cognitive style is the preferred manner of working but importantly learning strategies can be learned and developed to support or give alternatives to our first preference.
So, what does this all mean for learning, and in particular digital games based learning?
Well, learning performance is liable to be affected by an interaction between cognitive style and:
· its mode of presentation;
· its type of content.
The structure would cover both the format structure (appearance, headings, length of paragraphs etc) and its conceptual structure (sequence of ideas, relationship of points, logic, chronology etc).
Where a person is on the wholist – analytic dimension may cause them to prefer: large steps, large chunks of verbal information, simple diagrams, or small steps, small chunks of verbal information, lots of pictorial or diagrammatic information.
The consequence of this is that we as teachers should be thinking about our modes of presentation – text, pictorial, text and pictorial, multimedia.
Imagers learn better from pictorial representations than do verbalisers. Verbalisers learn better from verbal representations than do imagers. So how we present things and what we have learners do with that information should be considered. What about the content? Is it concrete or abstract?
It’s also worth noting that we as individuals will have our own preferred styles and there might be a tendency to assume that everyone learns the same way we do, which might cause us to skew our teaching towards our own preferences. Some possible modes of expression as preferred by the different types identified. (These are noted in a possible order of preference.)
Analytic verbaliser
Text
Speech
Diagrams
Pictures
Analytic imager
Diagrams
Pictures
Text
Speech
Wholist verbaliser
Speech
Text
Pictures
Diagrams
Wholist imager
Pictures
Diagrams
Speech
Text
We therefore as teachers might like to consider the possible differences in our students and of our own preferences which might affect how we tend to present information.
As we become aware of differences in our students we should begin to make them aware of their own preferences, see the positives in their preferences but also see any possible negatives, and give them opportunities to practice other ways of working in order to broaden their repertoire of approaches by using a variety of teaching or presentation methods.
This surely suits the adoption of digital games-based learning!
Keywords: IDGBL