Game and education

educators’ concept

Abstract

This paper is about the existing relations between games and education according to educators’ concepts. After a brief discussion held upon the issue of the presence of games in the school environment, this paper also brings part of the results found through a qualitative survey carried out from 1999 thru 2001, in which 184 educators took part with the objective of not only investigating the presence of games in the school environment and identifying how and how often they happen, but also with the objective of finding out what the concepts of educators about games and education are. Such concepts can be summarized as it follows: (1) games represent possibilities to help students learn. Besides, they improve socialization, cooperation, memorization, competition, creativity, cognitive, affective and psychomotor aspects. Finally, games promote pleasure in the school; (2) games are a pedagogical resource, a helpful tool for teachers; (3) games take place in classrooms more frequently because they are relevantly important to learning. This results stimulate educators to ponder about the concepts of games and their contributions to education, particularly about the strong association between games and pedagogical contents. Thus, the orientation for new research, studies and actions on the educator ’s qualification process under the playful perspective is possible.