Constructionist Gaming: Understanding the Benefits of Making Games for Learning
Open accessAbstract
There has been considerable interest in examining the educational potential of playing video games. One crucial element, however, has traditionally been left out of these discussions-namely, children's learning through making their own games. In this article, we review and synthesize 55 studies from the last decade on making games and learning. We found that the majority of studies focused on teaching coding and academic content through game making, and that few studies explicitly examined the roles of collaboration and identity in the game making process. We argue that future discussions of serious gaming ought to be more inclusive of constructionist approaches to realize the full potential of serious gaming. Making games, we contend, not only more genuinely introduces children to a range of technical skills but also better connects them to each other, addressing the persistent issues of access and diversity present in traditional digital gaming cultures.
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The constructionist paradigm explicitly casts students as active learners taking part in interactions with materials which are crucial to learning and knowledge-acquisition.
“The constructionist paradigm explicitly casts students as active learners taking part in interactions with materials which are crucial to learning and knowledge-acquisition (see [4, 46, 56]).”
From Responding to Generative AI Technologies with Research-through-Design: The Ryelands AI Lab as an Exploratory Study (2024) · cites this paper as [46]
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References 136 · Cited by 383
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- Authors
- Kafai, Y. B., & Burke, Q.
- Affiliations
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- College of Charleston (US)
- Corresponding author
- Kafai, Yasmin B.
- Venue
- Educational Psychologist
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2015-10-02
- Volume
- 50
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 313-334
- ISSN
- 0046-1520 (ISSN-L)
- 1532-6985
- PMC
- PMC4784508
- OpenAlex
- W2255937970
- Cited by
- 383
- References
- 136
- Citations by year
- 2026: 42 · 2025: 41 · 2024: 49 · 2023: 40 · 2022: 35 · 2021: 29 · 2020: 54 · 2019: 41 · 2018: 30 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 2
- FWCI
- 43.83
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- public-domain
- Locations
- Educational Psychologist (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Games and Gamification
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Teaching and Learning Programming
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Games and Media
- Keywords
- game development, serious games, constructionism, children's learning, programming education, collaboration, identity, educational video games
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