Reimagining Boredom in Classrooms Through Digital Game Spaces [First Edition] 9781003860754, 9781032334547, 9781032345383, 9781003322689

Citation preview

Reimagining Boredom in Classrooms through Digital Game Spaces

This book challenges common understandings of boredom and disengagement in classrooms, taking a relational approach to boredom which looks beyond the usual distinctions between in-­school and out-­of-­school practices. The book explores how a sociomaterial perspective can provide an alternative analysis of boredom as performative and as a phenomenon assembled in space and time rather than as a psychological attribute of the individual student. This perspective explores the affective experience of learning and how it is created in the classroom through assemblages of people, technology, objects and environment and the differing relations within them. Drawing on empirical data from a case study that compares formal learning and digital gaming practices in a group of secondary schools in England, the book suggests that by altering the affordances and constraints available in learning situations, we can prevent boredom and disengagement emerging in the classroom. This innovative book proposes that the mobility and dynamism of game spaces offer us new ways to re-­imagine engagement in learning and will be of relevance to scholars, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of teaching and learning, digital gaming, educational philosophy and educational technology. Noreen Dunnett is a research associate in Digital Education, Centre for Research in Digital Education, and an associate tutor and dissertation supervisor on the Master of Science in Digital Education, University of Edinburgh, UK.

Routledge Research in Education

This series aims to present the latest research from right across the field of education. It is not confined to any particular area or school of thought and seeks to provide coverage of a broad range of topics, theories and issues from around the world. Theorising Public Pedagogy The Educative Agent in the Public Realm Karen Charman and Mary Dixon New Perspectives on Educational Resources Learning Materials Beyond the Traditional Classroom Edited by Karl Christian Alvestad, Kari H. Nordberg, and Hege Roll-Hansen Interdisciplinary Approaches to Space in Inclusive Education Beyond the Spatial Turn Edited by Georg Rißler, Andreas Köpfer, and Tobias Buchner Inspiring Purpose in High-Performance Schooling Mary Anne Heng Social Work Education and the COVID-19 Pandemic International Insights toward Innovation and Creativity Edited by Yael Latzer and Liat Shklarski Developing a Didactic Framework Across and Beyond School Subjects Cross- and Transcurricular Teaching Edited by Nina Mård and Søren Harnow Klausen Reimagining Boredom in Classrooms through Digital Game Spaces Sociomaterial Perspectives Noreen Dunnett For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Research-inEducation/book-series/SE0393

Reimagining Boredom in Classrooms through Digital Game Spaces Sociomaterial Perspectives Noreen Dunnett

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Noreen Dunnett The right of Noreen Dunnett to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Dunnett, Noreen, author. Title: Reimagining boredom in classrooms through digital game spaces : sociomaterial perspectives / Noreen Dunnett. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Series: Routledge research in education | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2023047640 (print) | LCCN 2023047641 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032334547 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032345383 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003322689 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Video games in education. | Classroom environment. | Classroom utilization. | Motivation in education. | Boredom--Prevention. Classification: LCC LB1028.75 .D86 2024 (print) | LCC LB1028.75 (ebook) | DDC 371.102/4--dc23/eng/20231101 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023047640 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023047641 ISBN: 978-1-032-33454-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-34538-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-32268-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003322689 Typeset in Galliard by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

Contents

List of illustrations vi Acknowledgements viii 1 The problem with boredom

1

2 Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon

12

3 Becoming an assemblage ethnographer: a personal account

35

4 The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices 59 5 Practices, participation and agency: feedback and modelling

90

6 Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming 123 7 Conclusion

140

Index 148

Illustrations

Figures 1.1 Author screenshot: Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. Tutorial screen with Jacob the assassin, standing on a platform above a Victorian factory floor 5 3.1 Classroom layout: Minecraft English lesson Skype interviews 49 3.2 The terrapin tank in Robert’s science lesson classroom 53 4.1 Example of a pre-planned Mathematics PowerPoint slide 63 4.2 Teacher ‘zones’ in Science, Geography and Computing classrooms, Farnswood School, 2017 67 4.3 Experimental equipment zones for teacher and students, Farnswood School, 2017 68 4.4 Students and teacher gathered around the IWB/teacher zone in Science lesson, School P, Dec 2016 69 4.5 Robert’s Rainbow Six Siege gaming ‘network’ during lagging glitch 75 4.6 Paper plan drawing, student manipulating blocks and Minecraft world blocks 78 4.7 Minecraft Education Edition tutorial world (left) and in-game portfolio 79 4.8 English Intervention network diagram 82 5.1 ‘Purple pens of power’ poster – wall display, Farnswood School, 2017 93 5.2 English lesson D.I.R.T proforma (left to right) 95 5.3 Computing lesson – student website and OneNote evaluation proformas 95 5.4 Examples of handwriting - Dylan’s (top) and Mark (bottom) 98 5.5 Extract from the English Intervention Minecraft booklet, Farnswood School 103 5.6 Call of the Sea tutorial screen 109 5.7 Xbox One controls for Rainbow Six Siege 110 5.8 Empress of the Deep: Song of the Blue Whale tutorial screen 112 5.9 Consecutive PowerPoint slides from Oak National Academy online History lesson 114

Illustrations  vii 5.10 Clash of Clans replay screen 119 6.1 Tutorial screens from The Pedestrian and Unravel 2 125 6.2 Narrative prompt from the Computing OneNote notebook used in the Cryptography escape room 129 6.3 Example from the Cryptography escape room activity in OneNote notebook 129 6.4 Cryptography lesson/escape room assemblage 131 6.5 Author created screenshot reconstruction of Dylan’s home gameplay in The Turing Test 134 6.6 Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege map guide: Bank – SiegeGG and a screenshot of player perspective 137

Table 3.1

Comparison of learning and gaming practices

54

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my colleagues on the MSc in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh for their inspiration and support over the last 14 years, particularly my doctoral supervisors, Professor Sian Bayne and Dr Hamish ­Macleod and Clara O’Shea and Dr James Lamb, who very kindly read chapter drafts of this book and gave invaluable feedback. I would also like to thank Professor Cathy Burnett, Sheffield Hallam University, for encouraging me to publish the doctoral research upon which this book is based and for making me a better writer. Finally, thanks to Professor Melissa Terras – without her guidance and support, I would never have had the book proposal accepted. Many other people have supported and helped me throughout the long and difficult journey of writing this book. I thank my husband for his incredible patience and understanding when our planned ‘retirement’ took a very different turn; my children for their interest and encouragement; my parents and sisters and my amazing friends, who never failed to ask me for progress reports every time we met over the last two years. My thanks also to Ubisoft Games, Microsoft Minecraft Education Edition, SkookumArts, Out of the Blue Games, Oak National Academy and Gogii Games for their permission to use screenshots from their games and online material. I would like to dedicate this book to my mother, Aileen Dunnett, who died in December 2022 and will sadly never get to read this book.

1 The problem with boredom

Whether or not young people enjoy or feel comfortable at school does not seem to be a concern treated seriously in education policy decision-making in ­England. (p. 44) For nearly one in two 15–16-year-old young people in England, school is not an enjoyable or meaningful experience … many secondary schools have adopted teaching methods that many young people experience as alienating and stressful. (p. 4) (McPherson et al., 2023)

In this book, I argue that teachers, education researchers and policymakers should be as concerned about young people’s experiences of alienation from school and learning as they are by league tables and levels of achievement. Sadly, the alienation cited by McPherson et al. (2023) is not restricted to the UK. The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) report for 2018 (Schleicher, 2019) indicated that almost 30% of students internationally were dissatisfied with their schooling experience. So, what might be the cause of young people’s dissatisfaction and alienation? Schools in the UK (and indeed in many education systems across the globe) are subject to a system of accountability (PISA and OECD) and focus on achievement which encourages standardisation, predictable but sometimes inflexible classroom practice (McPherson et al., 2023, p. 44) and an emphasis on examination performance over the quality of student learning experience. Approaches to pedagogy tend to support and feed into the requirements of this system of assessment and accountability, with direct instruction (­Engelmann et al., 1988) often being preferred to other classroom approaches (Davis, 2020; Ofsted, 2017; Snell, 2018) which might lead to less easily measured outcomes. Indeed, many of the young people interviewed in McPherson et al. (2023) study described ‘…feeling constrained and disengaged by the “teach-to-the-test” mechanistic pedagogies they encountered in the classroom…’ (p. 44). Students who are under-stimulated are more likely to experience boredom and withdraw effort at school as a result of that experience (Shernoff & ­Csikszentmihalyi, 2009). Although there has been excellent research into DOI: 10.4324/9781003322689-1

2  The problem with boredom student engagement (Bergdahl et al., 2020; Shirley & Hargreaves, 2021) in the past few years, boredom, in comparison, remains a relatively under-­researched area. Indeed, some educational experts and teachers in the schooling system seem to consider boredom as a necessary evil (Belton & P ­ riyadharshini, 2007; Feldges & Pieczenko, 2020; Page, 2017), something to be endured to achieve the ultimate goal – a set of exemplary examination results without which progress in life is impossible (McPherson et al., 2023). If boredom is recognised as worthy of attention, it is often considered from the perspective of student behaviour and self-regulation (Macklem, 2015). But should we dismiss boredom in this way? Evidence from studies suggests that boredom typically impairs attention, motivation, behavioural strategies and performance in achievement settings (Pekrun et al., 2010). Boredom should not be viewed as an entirely negative experience, however. Research indicates that boredom can also be a creative experience (Belton & Priyadharshini, 2007), although most creative boredom experiences occur during children’s free time when they have time and space to play imaginatively (Quindlen, 2002). This is not usually the case in schools. Boredom in schools In the mid-2000s, I was working as an educational technology consultant in secondary schools, many of which had just moved into new, purpose-built buildings as part of the government’s BSF (Building Schools for the Future) programme. Even though new surroundings and improved technology provided many possibilities, students still seemed bored and uninspired by their classroom experience. As part of my doctoral study in 2015–2016, I asked a group of teachers in four different secondary schools in the north-east of England, UK, what bored them or engaged them when taking part in a learning experience. The interviews were very revealing. A sizeable proportion of teachers mentioned a personal preference for ‘hands-on’ or active learning and an active dislike of being ‘talked at’ for long periods. They stressed that they liked to be ‘creative’ and that they were ‘doers’. They felt bored if they could not see the relevance of the content they were asked to pay attention to, if there was a lot of writing involved and if they were not allowed to discuss the material with their peers. What was remarkable about these conversations was that they were almost identical to the conversations that I had had with students. Boredom was associated with passivity, lack of autonomy, lack of activity and a failure to perceive personal relevance. Teachers clearly recognise the kinds of activities that spark engagement and those which promote boredom. Several confided that they went into teaching to pass on their passion for their subject, and yet they admitted that students in their schools were often bored and disengaged. These teachers were all passionate, enthusiastic professionals; so how was boredom emerging and why should we care?

The problem with boredom  3 Boredom, like engagement, operates on a continuum. It is not a state of being. The reasons for boredom are complex. It depends not just on the student’s disposition for learning and on their ‘boredom-proneness’, but on the many elements which make up the student’s experience of school and the classroom. The distinctive contribution of this book is to regard boredom as performative, assembled in space and time and emerging from interrelations between human and non-human actors such as objects, technology and the environment, rather than as represented in the individual behaviour, achievement and attitude of students (Bergdahl et al., 2020). I take a more relational view of learning spaces and environments (Decuypere & Simons, 2016) and reveal how an emphasis on the importance of predictable educational outcomes (Biesta, 2015) has led to certain practices and ways of valuing engagement becoming stabilised and entrenched in secondary schools in England. These values are part of the politics of boredom (Anderson, 2021), with exam results and academic achievement part of the capitalist, neoliberal promise of education and standardised, predictable but repetitive learning practices being something to be endured in return for some future ‘promise of intensity’ (Anderson, 2021) and reward. I argue that those involved in the education of young people should seek to make formal learning ‘an optimal experience’, for as Csikszentmihalyi (1991) says, ‘The key element of an optimal experience is that it is an end in itself ’ (p. 67). Rather than being narrowly focused on examination results and employment prospects, the experience of formal learning can be an enjoyable experience, a ‘flow’ experience, as Csikszentmihalyi expresses it, which engenders a lifelong love of learning and allows young people to follow their passions. Affect and digital game spaces Games are considered by Csikszentmihalyi (1991) to be flow activities. What has the study of digital games got to offer research into academic boredom? I suggest that digital gaming practices, already part of formal classroom learning, offer the potential to provide a productive contrast with traditional classroom practices. This is not an argument for less challenge in the classroom. As Whitton (2012) says, ‘…Players do not necessarily expect to complete a game on the first attempt – in fact, that might even be boring’ (p. 253). However, I argue that games, through their more dynamic, mobile and adaptable relations, can disrupt the notion of practices as immutable, entrenched and untouchable and encourage teachers to consider ways in which they could intervene to create affective classroom atmospheres, which might prevent boredom and disengagement emerging. Neither is this book advocating for the use of digital games in the classroom. Instead, it is proposing that games may provide a mode of experience from which we as educators can learn and shape the affective atmosphere of

4  The problem with boredom the classroom. To demonstrate what I mean by ‘mode of experience’, I offer an account of my first experience of playing a videogame called Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate (2015) on the Microsoft Xbox console: I’m sitting in my living room, holding a game controller in my hands. It’s the first time I have seen one. One thing is for sure, the very materiality of holding that controller at least gives me the illusion that I am in control of this experience! The screen tells me to ‘Press A’ on my controller, to start. I’ve learnt that the A button is the equivalent of the RETURN key on my computer – it selects and takes an action on the screen. On the screen, the game loads up and a narrative called a ‘cut scene’ begins, setting the scene for the context of the gameplay. I am pleasantly surprised by the realism and quality of the visuals. The narrative begins in the fictional present day. I am told that the Brotherhood of Assassins is fighting a centuries-old battle with another faction called the Templar Order. The scene then fades to a scene in Victorian London. A voiceover from a character called Henry Green narrates historical scenes, telling us that an evil gang leader called Crawford Starrick is trying to take over London, with the help of a street gang called the Blighters. Another cut scene shows Evie and Jacob, twin assassins, who are to be recruited to help Henry overcome the Templars. The tutorial screen opens in front of me. I am playing Jacob. I am standing on an aerial walkway inside a Victorian iron factory in Croydon, owned by Rupert Ferris. I can see workers on the factory floor, piles of coal and other industrial machinery. As I’m sitting in my living room, I am taking in all the information on the screen in front of me, information that will ‘attune’ me to the game environment and how to take action within it. At the top left-hand corner of the screen, I can see my first ‘mission’, broken down into steps: LOCATE and ASSASSINATE Rupert Ferris. Step one is to REACH Ferris. How do I reach Ferris I wonder? I notice a green diamond with an arrow and the text 64m above it at the top of the screen. Could this indicate where Ferris is and in which direction I (as Jacob) must travel to REACH Ferris? I’m not sure how to move my avatar Jacob yet. The game instructs me how to do this by flashing up the text HOLD RT to Free Run directly over my character in the middle of the screen. I work out that R means Right and T means Trigger. I feel for the button on my controller and hold it. Nothing happens. I work out that I need to push the movable button on the left of my controller forward at the same time as the RT button and I move forward. The game has begun.

The problem with boredom  5

Figure 1.1 Author screenshot: Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. Tutorial Screen with Jacob, the assassin, standing on a platform above a Victorian factory floor. Source: ©Ubisoft, 2015. All other rights are reserved by Ubisoft Entertainment.

I recount this experience to illustrate the difference between the affective or emotional experience of playing a game and that of taking part in a typical classroom activity. Superficially, there are similarities. The cut scenes in a digital game perform similar functions to the teacher’s direct instruction in a lesson. The ‘mission’ the player takes on has a similar function to the lesson objective and the ‘steps’ just described in Assassin’s Creed resemble the scaffolding and task instructions typically provided by the teacher in a lesson. There are some significant differences, however. Cognitive overload is certainly present. As I learn how to operate the game controller, I am presented with a lot of information, both on the screen and haptically. Despite this, I have agency – I can choose how to perform the mission I have accepted. I can choose to stop and try again later when I get frustrated. I can ‘google’ for help when I am not sure what gaming shorthand such as RT means. I can draw on multiple sources of information. Participation is optional. Affective responses are shaped by the modes of engagement required of us in different situations (Veale, 2015). Games, such as Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, require players to make decisions and take actions to proceed through a hybrid text, in a context that that player finds personally relevant and is emotionally invested in. As Gee (2004) puts it In good games, players feel that their actions and decisions – and not just the designers’ actions and decisions – are co-creating the world they are in and the experiences they are having”. (my emphasis, p. 17) In mainstream classrooms, by comparison, it is teachers who make decisions about the nature of the learning and how the student is to proceed through the lesson, as I discuss in later chapters. Contexts in lessons may or may not be

6  The problem with boredom those that students find personally relevant or emotionally engaging. Opportunities to participate are constrained by the teacher rather than the game mechanics. The important questions that emerge here are about whether some modes of engagement are more likely to cause boredom to emerge than others. Should teachers be concerned about affect and how it is engendered in the learning process? Hybrid practice in the global pandemic It could be argued, quite justifiably, that the goals of the formal education system are not the same as those of digital games. Game designers and gaming companies constantly strive to improve the player experience to ensure that players remain engaged and buy more games. Schools, on the other hand, are defined by their capacity to produce outputs – successful examination results – rather than their ability to provide satisfying, optimal learning experiences. Successful examination results are focused on efficacy – transmitting large amounts of information (or ‘knowledge’) to the maximum number of students in the shortest amount of time. This requires standardisation of practice, a compliant student body and a teaching culture focused on accountability and achievement. As a result, classrooms have become a ‘black box’ with processes and practices assumed to be automatic and unquestionable. During 2020–2021, schooling was subjected to the biggest upheaval to traditional schooling since the two World Wars, albeit temporarily. The COVID-19 lockdowns, which caused global school closures, resulted in calls from some quarters, for a radical rethink of educational practices. These calls have ranged from suggesting a complete overhaul of the curriculum and the assessment regime to changing the way we ‘measure’ engagement. One thing is for sure; these enforced periods of online learning changed the way we think about teaching and learning practices, whether for better or for worse. Online learning opened the ‘black box’ and disrupted the notion of the ‘classroom’ as a highly regulated physical space. Instead, education spaces such as ‘classrooms’ were assembled differently during school lockdowns. The concept of ‘classroomness’ changed, the classroom became a ‘mesh of practices’ (Burnett, 2014) created in virtual as well as physical spaces. Official and unofficial spaces exist simultaneously – breakout spaces, chat, the home environment, the school classroom, YouTube, Oak National Academy and so on. The hybrid practices developed during COVID-19 have provided the opportunity to question psychological and sociological discourses about how affective experience is shaped in classrooms. The dominant discourse of ‘classroom-as-container’ (Leander et al., 2010) has begun to change, making way for a more complex, networked understanding of learning in which distinctions between in-school and out-of-school practices have no meaning and from which boredom or engagement can emerge. This book takes a sociomaterial perspective that is informed by Latour’s (2005) Actor–Network Theory (ANT) and has been heavily influenced by Sørensen’s (2009) approach – the

The problem with boredom  7 book is a ‘sequence of insights’ in which concepts are developed through interaction with empirical material. ANT encourages us to understand classroom and gaming practices in terms of ‘sociomaterial entanglements’ and to notice effects, such as boredom, which may emerge from the different ways that elements combine or assemble. ANT provides a spatial account of ‘how relations in an assemblage are drawn together and stabilised’ (Müller & Schurr, 2016) and acknowledges the power relations inherent in the way that space and time are organised and that social and material elements combine and assemble. Approaches such as ANT and assemblage theory can provide novel ways to frame educational problems, providing new entry points for interventions in emerging phenomena such as disengagement and boredom. Assemblage theory is important in this book because it recognises the role of affects in forming assemblages. Fox and Alldred (2015) argue that assemblage theory allows researchers to move away from simply considering bodies, things or social interactions to looking at ‘capacities for action, interaction, feeling and desire produced by bodies or groups of bodies by affective flows’ (p. 402). Research methods have had to change to accommodate this theory, and areas such as political geography have specifically embraced an approach called ‘assemblage ethnography’ (Ghoddousi & Page, 2020). Assemblage ethnography focuses on the notion of assemblage as the coming together of human and non-human and examines how agency emerges from the changing patterns of relations (Ghoddousi & Page, 2020). It breaks away from the bounded spatiality of traditional ethnography, which worked with specific, bounded research sites, towards more networked and relational configurations, which can consider multi-sited ethnographies and which can blur the boundaries between the researcher and researched, allowing both to participate in the emergent agencies of assemblages. Assemblage ethnography has allowed me to explore boredom through my own experiences and those of my research participants – in the classroom and whilst playing games. (Ghoddousi & Page, 2020). Through a series of vignettes, I contrast the practices engendered within the current schooling system with those of digital gaming. The empirical data on which these vignettes are based were generated from my experiences in four secondary schools in the north of England over a two-year period, as well as from my own experiences of digital gaming and education. Traditional ethnographic methods such as observation, interview, field notes, audio and video recordings and photographs enable the assemblage ethnographic researcher to ‘follow the actors’ but also during that research process, to become an actor in the assemblage. In my empirical research, I became part of gaming and classroom assemblages, not simply generating but also configuring empirical evidence of material practices in both the classroom and digital gaming. The ethical implications of such a researcher role are fascinating and I explore this in more detail in later chapters. As already mentioned, assemblage ethnography moves away from traditional notions of bounded research sites to the consideration of assemblages

8  The problem with boredom across multiple sites. These multiple sites included the four secondary schools in the north of England, mentioned earlier in this introduction, as well as experiences of digital gaming, my own and those of my participants. Exploring the experiences of gameplay in commercial off-the-shelf games (COTS) rather than educational games allowed me to consider characteristics and practices distinct from those of the classroom, which I argue, create different affective atmospheres which may prevent boredom from emerging. The concept of ‘atmosphere’, as Ash (2013) reminds us, is a term used to ‘denote shared feelings and moods in a particular space or environment’ (p. 22). The main focus of my study of digital games is Minecraft (2011), which has around 126 million players globally (Warren, 2020) and is particularly popular with the 7–13-year-old age group and already widely used in educational settings in the UK and the United States (although often a version called Minecraft Education Edition). I also explore a range of other COTS games, including Rainbow Six Siege (2015) and The Turing Test (2016), which my participants played at home, comparing their gameplay experience with formal learning practices and with Minecraft gameplay in the classroom. Three of the schools in my study were independent, local authority, secondary schools (at the time of the study), and one was part of a large multi-academy trust. Empirical work began with an exploratory, preliminary study in three schools whose teacher views on engagement and learning I described earlier in this chapter. The following year, I spent a more sustained period (7  months) in a fourth school (a school I will refer to by the pseudonym Farnswood School), during which I interviewed 12 staff and 15 students and experienced 27 lessons alongside my participants. Most of my student participants were drawn from the 11–13-year-old age group (Year 7–9), the stage of formal schooling at which most young people are already either engaged or disengaged in learning (Ross, 2009), making it an optimum period to study how boredom or engagement are enacted in the classroom and during digital gameplay. Conclusion The sociomaterial perspective I take in this book, ANT and the assemblage ethnographic approach, aims to provide new ways of framing educational issues such as boredom and engagement and to offer new points of intervention. In Chapter 1 of this book, I outline and critique the prevailing psychological and sociological understandings of boredom and disengagement and attempt to justify why traditional understandings can be usefully problematised. I consider the role of affect in the learning process and discuss how current classroom and schooling practices may be contributing to the emergence of boredom and disengagement in the classroom. More broadly, I consider these practices in the light of online learning during the COVID-19 school lockdowns and consider whether this hiatus might begin to change the dominant discourse of ‘classroom-as-container’, allowing space for a more

The problem with boredom  9 hybrid approach to learning which can encompass both in-school and out-ofschool learning practices, as well as informal practices such as those found in digital gaming. In Chapter 2, I explain how sociomaterial approaches, such as ANT and assemblage theory, can re-frame the discourse around boredom and disengagement. This chapter describes the reasons for becoming an assemblage ethnographer and how this role might help to make practices visible to others. By looking more explicitly at the role of affect in everyday practices and recognising the agency of non-human entities, we can analyse and intervene in situations being researched and experienced. In Chapter 3, I present a detailed analysis of spatio-temporal boundaries in classrooms and digital gameplay and demonstrate how they might influence and induce affects such as boredom in formal learning. Chapter 4 compares how affective experiences such as boredom can emerge from the relations created in different classroom assemblages by analysing two specific practices that are common to both classrooms and digital gaming – feedback and modelling. Chapter 5 explores the ways in which affective experiences can be actively shaped and influenced. Based on Santuber et al.’s (2020) enactive approach, I introduce their concepts of affective niche and affective scaffolding and through two vignettes, demonstrate how we might use these concepts to understand and intervene to prevent the emergence of boredom in formal learning. I conclude by discussing what the empirical research presented in this book has revealed about current schooling practices and whether sociomaterial approaches to formal classroom activities can help us intervene in the processes that are leading students to become bored. Can a sociomaterial approach, which allows for multiple performances of engagement, encourage teachers to intervene in classroom practices to alter the affective experience of formal learning? By exploring the ways in which gameplay experiences are assembled and the different modes of participation that are available to players, can we alter the affordances and constraints available for students in the classroom? Can new hybrid ways of learning and teaching, stabilised during COVID-19 school lockdowns, help us to improve the student experience, avoiding the emergence of boredom and incorporating more mobile and dynamic practices which acknowledge the agency of all the elements in the teaching-learning assemblage? References Anderson, B. (2021). Affect and critique: A politics of boredom. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 39(2), 197–217. Ash, J. (2013). Rethinking affective atmospheres: Technology, perturbation and space times of the non-human. Geoforum, 49, 20–28. Belton, T., & Priyadharshini, E. (2007). Boredom and schooling: a cross-disciplinary exploration. Cambridge Journal of Education, 37(4), 579–595. https://doi.org/10. 1080/03057640701706227

10  The problem with boredom Bergdahl, N., Nouri, J., Fors, U., & Knutsson, O. (2020). Engagement, disengagement and performance when learning with technologies in upper secondary school. Computers & Education, 149, 103783. Biesta, G. (2015). On the two cultures of educational research, and how we might move ahead: Reconsidering the ontology, axiology and praxeology of education. European Educational Research Journal, 14(1), 11–22. Bulkhead Interactive. (2016) The Turing Test [Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows] Bulkhead Interactive, Square Enix Collective. Burnett, C. (2014). Investigating pupils’ interactions around digital texts: A spatial perspective on the “classroom-ness” of digital literacy practices in schools. Educational Review, 66(2), 192–209. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience/Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Harper Perennial. Davis, A. (2020). Making teaching more research-informed: Some challenges. Impact (10). Retrieved May 2023, from: https://my.chartered.college/impact_article/ making-teaching-more-research-informed-some-challenges/ Decuypere, M., & Simons, M. (2016). Relational thinking in education: Topology, sociomaterial studies, and figures. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 24(3), 371–386. Engelmann, S., Becker, W. C., Carnine, D., & Gersten, R. (1988). The direct instruction follow through model: Design and outcomes. Education and Treatment of Children, 11(4), 303–317. Feldges, T., & Pieczenko, S. (2020). Boredom in educational contexts: A critical ­review. Encyclopaideia, 24(57), 1–15. Fox, N. J., & Alldred, P. (2015). New materialist social inquiry: Designs, methods and the research-assemblage. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 18(4), 399–414. Gee, J. P. (2004). Learning by design: Games as learning machines. Interactive Educational Multimedia: IEM, 15–23. Ghoddousi, P., & Page, S. (2020). Using ethnography and assemblage theory in political geography. Geography Compass, 14(10), e12533. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford University Press. Leander, K. M., Phillips, N. C., & Taylor, K. H. (2010). The changing social spaces of learning: Mapping new mobilities. Review of Research in Education, 34(1), 329–394. Macklem, G. L. (2015). Boredom in the classroom: Addressing student motivation, self-regulation, and engagement in learning (Vol. 1). Springer. McPherson, C., Bayrakdar, S., Gewirtz, S., Laczik, A., Maguire, M., Newton, O., O’Brien, S., Weavers, A., Winch, C., & Wolf, A. (2023). Schools for all? Young people’s experiences of alienation in the English secondary school system. Edge Foundation Available online at: https://www.edge.co.uk/documents/349/DD0940__Young_ Futures_Young_Lives_FINAL_JVbavJ7.pdf Mojang Studios. (2011). Minecraft. [Windows, macOS, Linux] Mojang Studios, Stockholm; Xbox Studios. Müller, M., & Schurr, C. (2016). Assemblage thinking and actor-network theory: Conjunctions, disjunctions, cross-fertilisations. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 41(3), 217–229. Ofsted. (2017). Bold beginnings: The Reception curriculum in a sample of good and outstanding primary schools. November, No. 170045.

The problem with boredom  11 Page, D. (2017). The surveillance of teachers and the simulation of teaching. Journal of Education Policy, 32(1), 1–13. Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Daniels, L. M., Stupnisky, R. H., & Perry, R. P. (2010). Boredom in achievement settings: Exploring control–value antecedents and performance outcomes of a neglected emotion. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102(3), 531–549. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019243 Quindlen, A. (2002). Doing nothing is something. Newsweek, 139(19), 76. Ross, A. (2009). Disengagement from education among 14-16-year-olds. Department for Children, Schools and Families. Santuber, J., Dremel, C., Owoyele, B. A., & Edelman, J. A. (2020). Building an apparatus: Disclosing affectivity in sociomaterial research. In Joey F. George, Souren Paul, Rahul De, Elena Karahanna, Suprateek Sarker, Gal Oestreicher-Singer (Eds.), Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2020, Making Digital Inclusive: Blending the Locak and the Global, Hyderabad, India, Association for Information Systems. Schleicher, A. (2019). PISA 2018: Insights and interpretations. OECD Publishing. Shernoff, D. J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2009). Cultivating engaged learners and ­optimal learning environments. In Rich Gilman, E. Scott Huebner, Michael J. ­Furlong (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology in schools (pp. 131–145). Routledge. Shirley, D., & Hargreaves, A. (2021). Five paths of student engagement: Blazing the trail to learning and success. Solution Tree Press. Snell, A. (2018). A case for direct instruction – E-ACT. Retrieved 18 January, 2023, from https://www.e-act.org.uk/news/2018/case-direct-instruction/ Sørensen, E. (2009). The materiality of learning: Technology and knowledge in educational practice. Cambridge University Press. Ubisoft Montreal. (2015). Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege [Playstation 4/5, Windows, XBox series] Ubisoft. Ubisoft Quebec (2015). Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate (Standard edition). [XBox, Sony PlayStation]. Ubisoft. Veale, K. (2015). Affect, responsibility, and how modes of engagement shape the experience of videogames. Digital Games Research Association DiGRA. Warren, T. (2020). Minecraft still incredibly popular as sales top 200 million and 126 million plays monthly. The Verge. Retrieved 10 June, 2021, from https://www. theverge.com/2020/5/18/21262045/minecraft-sales-monthly-players-statisticsyoutube Whitton, N. (2012). The place of game-based learning in an age of austerity. Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 10(2), 249–256.

2 Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon

Introduction In the introduction to this book, I argued that psychological approaches to boredom are not capable of encompassing the complexity of boredom as a phenomenon. Current research into boredom in educational settings still tends to focus on student attributes and behaviour (Breidenstein, 2007; ­Macklem 2015; Tze et al., 2016) and, rather than seeking to understand how boredom has evolved, advocates that teachers place greater emphasis on the development of boredom-coping skills. By restricting interpretations of boredom and disengagement purely to the attributes of individual students, rather than exploring how the affective experience of learning is created in the classroom, I argue that we restrict opportunities for teachers to consider the participation and agency of other factors in the learning process. Educational research into boredom, such as it is, lacks a coherent theoretical framework, tends to focus on university students and relies heavily on self-report as a methodology. There is a distinct lack of research amongst students in the 11–16-year-old category in UK secondary schools. Taking a more relational approach to boredom and engagement, as I do in this book, enables us to look beyond the usual distinctions between in-school and out-of-school learning practices. With digital gaming as a critical tool, formal learning environments can be re-evaluated by incorporating the materiality of everyday situations, thus expanding notions of educational practice. I will propose, in the final chapter of this book, that rather than aiming for predictability and standardisation in teaching practices, teachers and researchers might begin to recognise the unique elements and characteristics of each learning situation and develop practices based on their own dynamic judgement rather than in response to policy or the purely practical demands of assessment. In this chapter, I will address some of the issues that may arise when suggesting a re-imagining of academic boredom, such as the problems of defining boredom, the lack of focus on school-specific boredom and the limitations of current theoretical and methodological frameworks. I examine the connection between current schooling practices, predominant pedagogy and student experience, as well as comparing the role of ‘affect’ in creating boredom and DOI: 10.4324/9781003322689-2

Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon  13 engagement in classrooms and digital game environments. By applying Actor– Network Theory (ANT) and assemblage theory, I outline how sociomaterial perspectives can provide more helpful theoretical frameworks. Using this approach, I aim to create a new way to frame educational problems like boredom and find new ways to intervene. Boredom: definitions and theories A single, clear definition of boredom is difficult to come by. Psychological approaches, such as those of Eastwood et al. (2012), characterise boredom as ‘the aversive experience of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity’ (p. 1), and as the inability to ‘engage attention and participate…’. Cognitivist approaches, on the other hand, consider boredom to be ‘an interaction between a non-stimulating environment and an individual’s impaired ability to concentrate’ (Fisher, 1993 as cited in Raffaelli et al., 2018). Although boredom is often seen as a negative emotion, in non-educational settings it can have potential benefits. Where time is not an issue, boredom can inspire creativity and problem-solving, provide opportunities to explore different perspectives and ‘think outside the box’. It can spur individuals to seek out new activities and explore new interests (Belton & Priyadharshini, 2007; Quindlen, 2002). However, teaching and learning practices in formal classrooms do not tend to lend themselves to such opportunities as I discuss later in this chapter. Within educational contexts, psychologists characterise boredom as an ‘academic emotion’, an affective state (Eastwood et al., 2012) or a personality trait. Academic boredom is directly linked to academic learning, classroom instruction and achievement and is considered to be one of the most prevalent academic emotions (Macklem, 2015; Pekrun et al., 2010). However, Pekrun (2006) points out that educational research into emotions tends to address single emotions, and more integrated frameworks are somewhat lacking. There have been relatively few empirical or theoretical studies of academic boredom, despite its acknowledged prevalence and effect on motivation, learning and engagement, as Raffaelli (2018) acknowledges in his literature review. Key studies around boredom in education such as Pekrun et al. (2010), Eastwood (2012) and Nett et al. (2011) were published more than ten years ago and still rely heavily on a psychological perspective. In a more recent study, Finkielsztein (2021) re-frames academic boredom as a sociological phenomenon, exploring the activities and work of academic staff and the systems that support them. His findings will be discussed in more detail later. Psychological studies of boredom divide it into trait and state boredom. In psychological theory, the concepts of ‘state’ and ‘trait’ refer to different aspects of human characteristics or experiences. A ‘state’ refers to a temporary situation or experience that an individual finds themselves in and has responded emotionally to, for example, anger, anxiety or boredom. A ‘trait’, on the other hand, refers to enduring and stable characteristics of an individual’s personality

14  Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon such as extraversion or open-mindedness and are likely to remain consistent across different contexts. Research which relies on trait boredom is likely to describe the ‘boredom prone-ness’ of an individual and the effect of this on their ability to sustain attention (Boylan et al., 2021; Harris, 2000). People with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are particularly associated with boredom proneness and an inability to sustain attention (Hunter & Eastwood, 2018). For schools, the inability to engage attention is of particular interest. Teachers often rely on observable signs of attention such as eye gaze to monitor their students’ engagement in the classroom and the likelihood of learning occurring, an issue I will take up later in the section on pedagogy and classroom practice. State boredom is much more strongly associated with the situation or environment surrounding an individual. This might include tasks that are seen as meaningless, repetitive and inappropriate in terms of difficulty level and situations that are very restrictive, lack momentum or flow or where the learner has little power. Vogel-Walcutt et al.’s (2012) review of literature surrounding state boredom in educational contexts draws together recommendations to avoid or mitigate state boredom. Digital gaming studies also have a body of research focusing on player engagement and avoiding boredom, especially state boredom. There is a particular emphasis, in this literature, on the state of ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991), which is often referred to as ‘presence’ and ‘immersion’ (Takatalo et al., 2010). In the same way that classroom boredom can be avoided by utilising novel activities and fast pace, flow states in gaming (which are considered the opposite of aversive states such as frustration and boredom) are sustained with the right level of challenge, novel situations and player autonomy (Halbhuber et al., 2019). Both formal learning and digital gaming studies frequently cite Deci and Ryan’s (1985) self-determination theory (SDT) to explain engagement and boredom (Ryan et al., 2006). According to SDT, individuals are driven by three innate psychological needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness. If these needs are satisfied, the assumption is that intrinsic motivation will follow. Although SDT is a person-centred approach, it does consider environmental and technological influences. SDT proponents would regard optimal learning outcomes to be dependent on how well the learning environment provides opportunities for the student to develop a sense of personal competence and autonomy and positive relationships with others. The lack of such opportunities in the learning environment would be likely to affect motivation and engagement and enable boredom to emerge. Unlike educational contexts where achievement, in the form of examination results, tends to be the desired outcome, gaming environments are not designed to achieve outcomes beyond the intrinsic goals of the game itself. Nevertheless, good games are designed to avoid boredom and frustration by providing a gaming environment which satisfies the player’s need for autonomy through the provision of in-game choices and varied opportunities for

Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon  15 action, competence through the pacing of challenges and relatedness through multiplayer gaming and chat facilities (Przybylski et al., 2010). Purely psychological approaches tend to define boredom from the subjective perspective of the individual and overlook its social character and the need for relatedness. If we regard boredom as a social phenomenon, we acknowledge that emotions might not be innate or part of an individual psychological state but socially constructed. Instead, boredom may occur when social interactions are not sufficiently stimulating and/or do not result in effective and productive communication. In other words, boredom happens when there is no meaning in the interaction and when a person disengages from that interaction. It is an emotional state emerging from the relationship between the individual and institutional/organisational/social circumstances, such as school or gameplay sessions. As mentioned earlier, Finkielsztein (2021) regarded academic boredom as a sociological phenomenon. He explored this phenomenon through the activities and work of academic staff in universities and suggested that boredom is ‘constructed in the process of interaction and results from one’s malfunctioning interaction with the environment’ (p. 63). He defined boredom as a negative emotion, a restless inattention and a withdrawal from interaction in a social or physical environment. Finkielsztein, borrowing from Macklem (2015), regards boredom as having five components: . affective (an unpleasant, negative feeling) 1 2. physiological (a non-optimal level of arousal) 3. cognitive (a low level of attention, the perception of time dragging on) 4. motivational (disinclination towards the activity/situation at hand) 5. expressive (a slumped posture, drowsiness) (p. 72) Boredom is manifested simultaneously as lethargy and restlessness (Elpidorou, 2018). The restlessness is provoked by a desire to escape the ‘boring situation’ or activity. Lethargy is produced by the inability to do so. Finkielsztein sums up his definition of boredom as …as a state of inattention/disengagement prompted by a sense of meaninglessness, being a suspension between two activities/engagements in which one is simultaneously listless in the current situation and restless to find a relief from it. (p. 78) This sociological perspective, although still person-centred, at least acknowledges that boredom is relational in nature – a group characteristic stemming from shared social conditions. Societal or organisational conditions, rather than the individual, become responsible for a mismatch between a person’s needs and the ability of the environment to provide for them. According to Ohlmeier et al. (2020), there are four elements which influence a good person-environment fit. These revolve around cultural norms, which regard

16  Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon boredom as personal failure; societal beliefs about what might be beneficial for students, for example, pedagogy such as direct instruction; management trends in education towards hierarchy and formalisation, which is heavily influenced by the ‘domain of qualification’ (Biesta, 2014) and social inequality, which affects access and support in the education system. In summary, then, traditional psychological and sociological approaches understand boredom as a phenomenon in which the human being is the primary agent in the learning environment. In psychological approaches, students are regarded as personally responsible for their own ‘boredom’. They are either ‘prone to boredom’ or unable to self-regulate to ensure that a state of boredom does not overwhelm their learning experience. Sociological approaches broaden the responsibility – the student’s membership of a particular social group and the place of that group in society can also contribute to their boredom in formal learning environments. However, ultimately it is still the student who is expected to ‘self-regulate’ their own behaviour to prevent feelings of boredom in learning situations. In comparison to the paucity of research on academic boredom, books on academic engagement are plentiful (Fredricks, Reschly & Christenson, 2019; Reschly, Pohl & Christenson, 2020; Shernoff, 2013; Shirley & Hargreaves, 2021). Recent studies of both academic boredom and engagement acknowledge other contributory factors to state boredom such as teachers, technology and physical environment. Indeed, Shirley and Hargreaves (2021) explicitly call for frameworks and research methods that ‘attend to relationships among multiple variables, events, and systems simultaneously and inclusively’ (p. 193). Biesta (2014) discusses pragmatic approaches to experience and learning, including John Dewey’s, which view it as a process by which people become more aware of their environment as it changes. Currently, most school learning is based on static and entrenched practices related to the transmission of knowledge and skills (McPherson et al., 2023). Biesta (2014) refers to this as ‘the technological view of education’, based on input-mediating variable-­ output models or cause-and-effect relationships that assume education is a closed system. However, as Biesta points out, education is an open system because it is in interaction with its environment. It is this emphasis on human participation in and interaction with the environment, as well as the idea that learning is a result of action, that makes Dewey’s transactional and pragmatic approach to learning and education appealing. By focusing on the cognitive aspects of learning, recent educational research has attempted to reduce the complexity of the learning experience. Psychological attributes and perceptions, rather than interaction with natural environments, objects and technology, can also be used to reduce complexity and boredom in learning. The reality is that no experience is created in isolation or limited to a particular individual or group of people, even when we narrow the focus to a single phenomenon such as boredom. Our experiences of the world are gathered through our senses, our bodily responses which are processed cognitively to produce our perception of a

Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon  17 situation. Dewey (1896) talks about people as becoming ‘attuned’ to their environment and adapting to it. Most research into perception, however, relies on experimental data produced in controlled conditions, rather than naturally occurring behaviour and relations between humans and their environment. This attempt to reduce complexity is understandable, but clearly there is also a danger of misunderstanding occurring when only manufactured situations are studied. In contrast, I have studied a series of naturally occurring learning situations in classrooms and digital gaming sessions to understand the dynamic relations between people, objects, technology and environment. Mulcahy (2012) argues that sociomaterial approaches allow us to shift our focus from affect as either an inner psychological state or a sociological phenomenon to affect as ‘embodied practices of assembly, human and otherwise’ (p. 11). With such a shift, we can account for how materials participate in pedagogic practice and how this participation changes the relations between teacher, student and environment. If we acknowledge that affects such as boredom are central to teaching and learning in classrooms and registered bodily as intensity, we can study and understand how such affects change the pedagogical relationship. However, before making such a shift in focus, I want to discuss current schooling practices which might have contributed to the likelihood of boredom emerging as part of student experiences of learning. Boredom as a phenomenon of schooling practices In recent years, there has been an increasing emphasis on accountability, highstake testing and high levels of scrutiny of schools and schooling practices. Examination results are seen as the primary goal of education, with standardisation, stability and predictability becoming highly desirable (McPherson et al., 2023). A gaming session, unlike a lesson, has no external goals or assessments other than those set by the player and the affordances or possibilities for action (Gibson, 1977) which the game offers (Ash, 2013). As Finkielsztein (2021) concluded, an activity needs to be personally meaningful. Bored students, who are not active and enthusiastic participants in their own learning, are likely to disengage from school and formal education. Numerous studies conclude that boredom can result in withdrawal of a­ ttention, increased distractibility, reduced attention, motivation, effort and p ­ erformance, which in turn have a negative impact on self-regulation and achievement (Eastwood et al., 2012; Hunter & Eastwood, 2018; Tze, Daniels & Klassen, 2016). So, are schooling practices contributing to boredom and what are the potential dangers of lack of participation and engagement in learning? Educational goals are directly related to the debate about the purpose of education and about the sort of curriculum which should provide it. Most philosophical approaches concerning the curriculum revolve around ideas about knowledge and what is worthwhile and valuable, both to the individual and to society (Bailey as cited in Marples, 2010). As I have already mentioned,

18  Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon technological views of education regard education as a closed system, seeing it in terms of a cause–effect relationship, where inputs and outcomes are directly related. The advantages of this view are that educational outcomes become more predictable, but the danger for educational research is that it cuts down the ways that researchers can think about and explore educational practice and the effect that this practice has on the student experience. Learning in many English schools has become associated strongly with achievement and specific notions of ‘success’ (Shernoff & Csikszentmihalyi, 2009). Boredom has become almost a ‘rite of passage’ for some teachers who may feel that it is not their role to ‘entertain’ and are irritated by suggestions that the learning experience should be ‘fun’. Just as school uniform should prepare students for the ‘world of work’ (Olsson & Shanks, 2022), boredom and hard work prepare students for the rigours of learning in higher education and the reality of the world outside school. In the next section, I explore how different notions of pedagogy and pedagogic practice might have come to influence the student experience of learning in ways which may be contributing to boredom. Boredom and pedagogy A key thinker in the area of pedagogy, Bernstein (2004) views education through the lens of pedagogic practices, which order knowledge in particular ways, either to be dependent on market forces or upon the ‘assumed autonomy of knowledge’ (p. 196). He defines two types of generic pedagogical practices which order the transmission of knowledge: visible and invisible pedagogy. Visible pedagogical practices have an explicit regulative and discursive order and emphasise the performance of the student and the ability of the texts they create to satisfy criteria, whereas invisible pedagogy has implicit regulative and discursive rules and emphasises acquisition and competence. Bernstein (2004) points out that the explicit rules of selection, sequence, pace and criteria of a visible pedagogy readily translate into performance indicators of schools’ staff and pupils, and a behaviourist theory of instruction readily realises programmes, manuals and packaged instructions (p. 213). It is not surprising then that in the school sector in the UK, an approach called Direct Instruction (DI) has become a prevalent pedagogical model (Peña-López, 2009) and is seen by many as the most valuable, efficient and cost-effective approach to successful outcomes such as examination results. Boxer and Bennett (2019) define it as: ‘Direct Instruction is a specific programme with scripts, focused resources and teaching sequences planned to the most minute details’ (p. 12). The Direct Instruction Model (DI) was developed by Engelmann et al. (1988) to improve reading, arithmetic and language skills in kindergartens in San Diego. The original version of this model was focused on what it called ‘the disadvantaged’ and on enabling such students to ‘catch up with their peers’. Indeed, one of the two major rules of this model is to ‘Teach

Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon  19 more in less time’ (p. 303), based on the assumption that there is inherent value in the speed at which knowledge is transmitted. Other assumptions made in this model were that ‘all children can be taught’, rather than the assumption that all children can learn. Responsibility for learning lies firmly with the teacher and makes measuring input and output in such a model much more straightforward. Pedagogical approaches relying on transmission and recall are based on cognitive views of knowledge, which see mind and body as separate and mind as distinct from context or environment. Cognitive learning approaches concentrate on the acquisition of knowledge and the laying down of mental schema. Teachers lay down a sequence of steps and procedures for students to follow, which include the strategy they want students to use. The problem with this approach is that the strategy belongs to the teacher and students may not employ it in future learning actions (Ashman & Conway, 2002). Researchers such as Wilson and Scott (2017) and Watters (2015) have drawn interesting parallels between the goals for instructivist pedagogies such as DI and some LA/AI (learning analytics/artificial intelligence) approaches, which require the formal modelling of skills and the quantifying of learning processes. AI techniques, similarly to direct or explicit instruction, are designed to adapt and scaffold individual learner experiences to maximise learning quality and minimise learning time, automating the kind of knowledge currently assessed in examinations and amplifying existing assumptions about effective teaching approaches (Holmes et al., 2023). AI technologies and Intelligent Learning Environments (ILE) have had a good track record for promoting learning outcomes, but, like Engelmann et  al.’s (1988) model, they have not focused on affective outcomes. Engelmann claims, rather vaguely, that ‘Direct Instruction students’ scores are quite high in the affective domain’ (p. 311) but concedes that affective measures suffered from ‘low reliability’. In fact, in Stockard et al. (2018) report on the effectiveness of DI Curricula, they say. All of the estimated effects (of DI) were positive, and all were statistically significant except results from meta regressions involving affective outcomes. (p. 479, my emphasis) This review consistently found that affective measures were not statistically significant. There was an assumption that raising students’ achievement would improve their self-esteem as an outcome of DI, but there was little interest in students’ emotional reactions during the learning process. This, despite aversive emotional states such as boredom being acknowledged as detrimental to higher-order thinking and learning (Pekrun et al., 2010). Some recent research (Sun et al., 2022) that directly compares the effect of DI and collaborative learning on boredom and engagement advances the

20  Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon notion of ‘modes of participation’ within these two pedagogical approaches. It  suggests that differing modes of participation allow students different opportunities/affordances and constraints that influence their cognitive and emotional engagements, echoing Bernstein’s (2004) rules in visible and invisible pedagogy. These rules or opportunities and constraints, in turn, affect student learning. Similar to collaborative learning, digital gaming also assumes a different ‘mode of participation’ to formal classroom learning, a theme which will be explored in later chapters. Sun et al. (2022) argue for a new understanding of engagement as a ‘function of the nature and conditions for participation in lessons’ (p. 1). In their study, teachers taught the same topic either through direct instruction or collaborative learning. What the study discovered was that with direct instruction teachers do most of the thinking, with students only filling in gaps upon request. DI privileges teacher–student interaction above other forms of interaction. As a result, student engagement in DI lessons was highest when students were interacting with the teacher unlike collaborative learning where the most engaging interactions were with peers. The drawback with the participation structures of direct instruction lessons was that students were frequently in a bystander role. In this model, teachers can only interact with one student at a time, hence students who must wait to find their own opportunity to participate are likely to become bored or frustrated. Teacher–student interactions in direct instruction models are almost always initiated by the teacher, usually through directed questioning. Sun et al found that the purpose of questioning in direct instruction lessons is to confirm what the teacher already knows. Students are not offering anything new; they are performing their knowledge for the teacher. This can also be a source of frustration for students who may have valuable contributions to make but are given no opportunity to do so. Ironically, it is often the teacher’s concern about bystanders being disengaged which leads them to shut down opportunities for talk by insisting on silence from everyone except the specific student being addressed (Sun et al., 2022). In contrast, collaborative learning allowed many more opportunities for students to speak and actively participate in tasks. When peers question them, students recognise that their fellows may be uncertain and lacking in information and that their answers will genuinely be offering value to the discussion. This can be much more motivating. Sun et al. found that regardless of instructional approach, students were more positively engaged when they interacted with peers, teachers or both in the classroom than being alone. The conclusion they draw is that opportunities to actively participate in lessons are vital to student engagement and the avoidance of boredom. DI, on the other hand, can sometimes provide limited opportunities for student participation if turn-taking is too rigidly enforced as it can interfere with engagement and position students in passive roles. I am not suggesting that direct or explicit instruction as a pedagogical approach is solely responsible for boredom emerging in classrooms. All pedagogical approaches involve some aspect of DI. However, as I implied earlier,

Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon  21 some of the assumptions which underlie Engelmann’s version of DI can lead to the implementation of teaching and learning practices that are problematic for student engagement and participation in the classroom. Engelmann (1988) says that ‘All children can be taught’. This statement is based on a number of assumptions which proponents of DI tend not to question – that teachers are responsible for what is learnt by students and that education is a closed system, which can be measured through inputs and outputs. Control the input and you can control the output, which in education, is examination or test results. To this end, Engelmann advocates that every teacher uses the same scripted presentation of lessons so that all children receive the same sequence of tasks and the same strategies. This ensures that inputs are consistent and standardised, which makes outcomes measurable and directly attributable to these inputs. I argue that such tight control of classroom practices places too much emphasis on efficiency, cost-effectiveness and examination results at the expense of the student’s experience of learning, resulting in resentment, boredom and a decrease in student engagement and motivation. Interestingly, both Engelmann et al. (1988) and Stockard et al. (2018) review stress that DI should not be the sole diet in a school day. Just as du Boulay (2019) argues that ILEs should not be implemented in isolation, DI as a pedagogical system should not be given undue value and influence and should certainly not be the only educational experience children have. Educational experience should be assembled directly by teachers just as Du ­Boulay (2019) argues that AI systems in education should be ‘orchestrated’ by them rather than implemented in isolation. In fact, du Boulay points out that much of the criticism around AI does not concern the systems themselves but the way ILEs are currently being deployed in some educational environments. Similarly, there is a danger in UK schools that DI is being implemented wholesale in multi-academy trusts (Jarvis, 2023; Mansell, 2023), where the focus is overwhelmingly on successful outcomes rather than student experience. Pedagogical approaches such as DI are an interesting contradiction when considered from a cognitive perspective. Cognitivist approaches regard boredom as a reaction to a non-stimulating environment. A branch of cognitive psychology called embodied cognition has recently been applied to educational contexts. There has been an increase in empirical research into embodied theory in terms of how embodied approaches combined with mapping of relations between activities, objects and digital representations which might enhance participation and learning (Ioannou & Ioannou, 2020; Kosmas & Zaphiris, 2019; Manches, O’Malley and Benford, 2010). This kind of research frequently incorporates the role of technology and digital gaming in providing such opportunities, an aspect I explore in detail in later chapters. Embodied learning approaches assume a direct link between body and mind and aim to develop teaching methods that promote children’s active engagement in the classroom to create ‘affect’ by giving opportunities for physical interaction with the learning material and providing hands-on activities.

22  Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon Teachers interviewed for my doctoral study commented on their own preference for active and embodied learning: I like hands on stuff, I like creative stuff and I like to be able to see that I’ve achieved something. (Teacher, School P, 2016) …for me I’m an active learner, all the way … like I don’t learn unless I’m doing. I find it extremely difficult to take something in by listening to somebody else. I’ve got to be doing it… (Teacher, School S, 2016) DI is a pedagogical approach that frequently allies itself with the necessity of strict behavioural constraints in the classroom which aim to ‘contain’ the bodies of students to minimise distraction and maximise attention on the teacher, rather than encourage physical movement or interaction with learning materials. The student has limited choices about how to ‘become’ or perform an ‘engaged student’ since this identity is fixed by the behaviour policies and ethos of the school and how these are ‘assembled’ in the classroom. An approach called S.L.A.N.T, Technique 47 from 62 teaching techniques, (Lemov, 2015, p. 360) is an example of what Lemov calls ‘habits of attention’. The acronym stands for: S:  Sit up straight. L:  Lean your body toward the speaker. A:  Ask and answer questions. N:  Nod your head ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ T:  Track the speaker with your eyes. Student autonomy is restricted to polarities such as ‘comply or don’t comply’, ‘listen or don’t listen’ and ‘follow the teacher with your eyes or don’t follow the teacher’. Morgan (2020) even suggests that students might be burdened with greater cognitive load if they have to concentrate on body posture, head nodding and eye tracking – this is linked to the idea that the more closely the student interacts with the material, the more effective it is likely to be. Even though the S.L.A.N.T approach may enhance attention, posture such as leaning towards the teacher doesn’t directly link cognitive processes with the subject matter in the same way that manipulatives might in a Mathematics lesson. However, there is evidence that links exist between student engagement and the teacher’s gestures and bodily enactments (Kosmas & Zaphiris, 2019). This has been particularly noted in modern languages, Science and Mathematics lessons (Alibali & Nathan, 2012; Cook & Goldin-Meadow, 2006; Jusslin et al., 2022; Kosmas & Zaphiris, 2019). It could be, therefore, that if students are tracking the teacher and engaged by the gestures of the teacher, this might

Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon  23 have the opposite effect – not adding to cognitive load but indeed, engaging students and preventing boredom. In this section, I have alluded to embodied approaches to learning and how approaches such as DI seek to constrain bodily movement in classrooms to focus attention on the teacher. Indeed, there are even AI systems that attempt to maximise student attention by identifying students’ facial expressions, which are being developed and used in China (Holmes et al., 2023). I have also mentioned the emphasis that such pedagogical approaches give to the speed and time taken for the delivery of standardised content, themes I will now pursue further. In following sections, I move away from the pedagogical framework of formal learning and begin to look more closely at how boredom might be linked to the way educational spaces are organised. In a relational approach such as ANT, phenomenon such as boredom are seen as ‘network effects’ emerging from the relations between elements such as people, objects, technology and environment and the way in which these are assembled. Rather than regarding them as ‘containers’ for educational activity, schools and classrooms are actively constructed social spaces. Boredom and hybrid learning The COVID-19 pandemic, with its accompanying school lockdowns, created a unique opportunity for teachers and education researchers to re-think the construction of educational environments and activity. The necessity to replace in-person teaching and learning with online learning prompted a questioning of the traditional dynamic of highly regulated physical space as bounded, stable places or static containers. It became more apparent to teachers and researchers how education spaces such as classrooms are actively constructed through relations between social and material actors – students, teachers, technology, objects and environment. COVID-19 school lockdowns did not necessarily prompt new cycles of practice, however, with some schools replicating their entire face-to-face offer in a virtual environment. Schools that avoided the direct replication of in-person teaching and learning practices online were able to take advantage of a wider range of temporal and spatial possibilities. A recent study of primary classrooms during COVID-19 (Dunnett, 2023) revealed that hybrid learning environments offered affordances or possibilities for action which were unavailable in the physical classroom setting. For example, the ‘timetables’ in each of the study’s schools diverged from the traditional linear and sequential model used to organise the curriculum. Instead, timetables were assembled around a class ‘narrative’ created in the online class feed around the dispersed and diverse timelines which individual students were creating from themselves from a daily ‘menu’ of activities provided by their teachers. Students were able to be involved in several activities simultaneously as the boundaries between

24  Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon formal and informal learning became blurred. Students’ agency over the timing and duration of ‘official’ tasks allowed them the opportunity to follow their own interests without disrupting or detracting from the whole class activity. In many schools, content was uploaded for students to access at their leisure and to edit at will to suit their own purposes, increasing their engagement with that content. Recording online lessons, rather than making them all live, gave students the ability to stop, start and replay teacher input. The permeable nature of online educational spaces also distributed agency with teachers and students equally able to share online materials previously inaccessible in the physical classroom due to lack of devices. This unavoidable and imposed ‘experiment’ or deviation from common world-wide education practices has provided an opportunity to re-examine the role of time and space in creating educational experiences. Time, in particular, has been associated with the aversive affective state of boredom. Boredom tends to be perceived as time passing slowly, which, in turn, negatively affects engagement in activity (Breidenstein, 2007). In the next section, I explore the links between perceptions of time, boredom and participation in gaming and learning activities. Boredom: perceptions of time Outside of formal learning situations, researchers such as Quindlen (2002) actively advocate boredom for children during free time, rather than constant, scheduled activity, to encourage their creative development. Others claim that the lack of boredom, stemming from constant access to television or electronic entertainment to fill time or a void in activity, may reduce children’s opportunities for developing imaginative capacity. Unfortunately, with the pressures of high-stakes assessment and an overloaded curriculum, few schools have the luxury of allowing students to have unscheduled time. In the average school day, there is little time to think, reflect or let your mind ‘wander’ as this is interpreted as lack of attention rather than an opportunity to think creatively. Breidenstein (2007) describes boredom as an experience ‘that observes and makes time explicit’ (p. 104) and leads to individuals detaching themselves from the situation they are in, in essence becoming disengaged. There is some disagreement about whether boredom is a consequence of time moving slowly rather than feelings of boredom being aroused by the perception of time dragging. Recent work by Finkielsztein (2021) concludes that we get bored by something which in turn makes us perceive time as passing slowly. As a psychologist, Macklem (2015) regards perception of time as a function of emotion. She suggests that some individuals have boredom proneness, which means that they experience time passing more slowly than others. Another concept associated with time perception is ‘flow’, which is well-­ established in academic and gaming research (Shernoff & Csikszentmihalyi, 2009). Flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991) is associated with a lack of awareness of time passing or perceptions that time is speeding up. It is a state in which

Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon  25 attention has been fully allocated to ‘non-temporal information processing’, giving the impression that time has been suspended or that it is moving more quickly. In contrast to boredom, a ‘flow state’ is considered to be enjoyable, desirable and intrinsically motivated. Similarly, to Dewey’s emphasis on action as a necessary condition for knowledge and to my earlier discussion of embodied cognition, Csikszentmihalyi (1991) regards action and a feeling of movement as necessary for a ‘flow’ and for optimal experience of learning. Flow activities do not follow ‘clock’ time; they have their own pace and sequence of events. Csikszentmihalyi mentions games as an example of such activity. Control and agency are key to gaining this experience. In gaming, ‘flow’ is sometimes referred to as ‘immersion’. Good gaming experiences are manifested by a loss of sense of time, by forgetting the real environment and by a feeling of being in the game environment. Flow is described as a situation where a person’s attention is intense, sustained and fully allocated to the activity in hand. Boredom, in contrast, is often dismissed as the inability of an individual to sustain attention on an activity. Boredom and attention What exactly is meant when we use the term ‘attention’? In psychological and neuroscientific research, attention is defined as ‘…the flexible control of limited computational resources’ (Lindsay, 2020). In other words, attention is required to be dynamic to allow the brain to use its limited information-processing resources effectively. We can only pay attention to so much input at a time; therefore, we need to be able to select what is important from moment to moment. Attention is not static, it fluctuates. There is still some uncertainty about whether the inability to sustain attention causes boredom or whether boredom makes it difficult to pay attention. Sustaining attention is difficult but research has found that reward for performing tasks, adding novelty, surprise or irregularity or introducing stress (Finkielsztein, 2021; Oken et al., 2006) all help to maintain attention and prevent boredom. In digital gaming, such elements are often used to sustain player engagement, especially stress. Multiple visual, auditory and textual cues must be attended to in order to make progress or succeed in the game. Ash (2013) discusses the sense of unease and the unexpected in first-person shooter games, where the enemy could creep up and kill your avatar at any moment. He says that this actively encourages the player to concentrate attention on every possible form of sensory feedback, both visual and auditory. Studies indicate that cognitive tasks such as those we ask students to undertake in school are not emotionally neutral. The emotional experience of being bored, for example, may impact academic performance, just as being bored will affect your performance in a digital game. Classroom techniques such as ‘cold calling’, a form of questioning where students can be called on randomly is an example of induced stress, which could also be argued to help attention. However, this technique requires far less concentration on sensory feedback. Although schools make an effort to gain

26  Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon students’ attention through such techniques as cold calling and S.L.A.N.T, this is usually not because they have concerns about boredom. Instead, there is an assumption that observable signs of attention, such as eye gaze and posture, represent a student’s engagement in the classroom and are an indicator that learning is likely to occur (Lindsay, 2020). People with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are particularly associated with boredom proneness and an inability to sustain attention. Trait boredom describes the ‘boredom prone-ness’ of an individual and the effect of this on their ability to sustain attention. In such an approach, boredom is regarded as an individual personality trait that can be resolved by teaching self-regulation strategies to help children develop boredom-coping skills, whether they have attention disorders or not. Even the phrase ‘boredom coping skills’ implies that the problem is not that boredom exists but that students are not effectively managing it. Narrow focus on individual attention can be to the detriment of situational and environmental factors in physical classroom environments. State boredom, rather than trait boredom or boredom proneness, is associated with the situation or environment surrounding an individual. It acknowledges that the existence of boredom could arise from tasks that are seen as meaningless, repetitive and inappropriate in terms of difficulty levels or situations that are very restrictive, lack momentum and where the learner has little power. These external factors are much more open to intervention than the internal psychological attributes of individual students; hence, the large number of studies in this area. Chapter 3 will discuss how ANT and assemblage theory can extend our understanding of boredom beyond even these situational approaches by exploring how elements in a learning situation, such as environment, objects, technology and humans, are assembled and how boredom emerges from the relations between them. Boredom and digital gaming As we have established in previous sections, academic boredom is considered to be ‘an aversive affective state’, with particular human-centred characteristics. In game studies, research into affective states such as boredom or engagement tends to take one of three approaches – game-centred, player-centred or user-centred (Hung, 2016). Player-centred approaches focus on the social aspects of learning and the way that people participate in gameplay. As discussed earlier in this chapter, such studies often rely on psychological models such as SDT to assess how engaging experiences are created for players by satisfying the need for autonomy, competence and relatedness. Game-centred approaches focus on how gaming environments are designed to captivate the player and avoid boredom. Here the interest is in what is labelled ‘game mechanics’, the programmable aspects of the game which constrain or enable the player to participate in the game (Abdul Jabbar & Felicia, 2015). These mechanics are what define the rules and physical properties of the game world. In game research, various models are used to assess how game

Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon  27 mechanics impact player experiences. An example of such a model, Sweetser and Wyeth’s (2005) GameFlow model, was originally developed as a tool to review new digital games and provide feedback to game developers about the experience of playing of their game, but it has been adapted and used by a variety of disciplines, including academic research. It examines closely how player engagement elements such as concentration, challenge, skills, control, clear goals, feedback, immersion and social interaction are satisfied by the game mechanics within a digital game. The model assumes that the game itself plays an active part in creating an optimal playing experience, rather than the player’s psychological tendencies. Although the model was originally developed to evaluate real-time strategy games, it has been adapted and used with a variety of different game genres such as first-person shooter, adventure games and educational games. An example of a ‘game mechanic’ which might constrain player participation in a digital game is the ‘cut scene’. Cut scenes are a narrative device where gameplay is paused whilst a short cinematic sequence is used, usually to set up a task for the player. However, the inclusion of too many ‘cut scenes’ or too much reading of on-screen text interrupts the flow of a game and slows the pace. Other game mechanics, those which necessitate excessive repetition of actions or are too predictable, are also likely to induce boredom. I have personally experienced such ‘disruptive’ game mechanics in the Xbox game F ­ irewatch (2016). This game is what is called a ‘walking simulator’ or interactive story. In the initial ten minutes of the game, there is a lot of on-screen reading and little active gameplay, beyond clicking to choose an option for the next story segment. The story takes priority over active gameplay. Lack of active participation is linked to the concept of rewards – if there are to be long stretches of gameplay without reward, the player needs to know that rewards exist and will be coming in the future. This is not apparent in the opening sequences of Firewatch. Many reviewers of Firewatch rated it highly. For them, it was less about the lack of variety in game mechanics and more about the compelling story and gorgeous forest setting. Rewards in other games are often related to specific actions, for example, fighting off enemies or collecting certain items from the gaming environment. Elements such as surprise are seen as key to engagement, accompanied by correct level of challenge, variable pace, active participation and rewards. To increase the responsiveness of the game for individual players, game developers are increasingly using AI to monitor and collect data about the player’s actions during gameplay enabling real-time adaptations to be made to ongoing gameplay. Sepulveda, Besoain and Barriga (2019) explore the use of an automated difficulty selection mechanism in a digital game that keeps the player engaged and properly challenged, neither bored nor frustrated. This mechanism is called Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA). DDA is an AI-based system that allows the change of attributes and behaviours within the game in runtime. They conclude that such adaptive game AI need to avoid predictable behaviour, which becomes boring, by producing a variety of

28  Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon different ‘behaviours’ or reactions and allowing for a range of random player action. Similarly to AI in education, they acknowledge that there is still a lot of work to be done to make game engines sophisticated enough to deal with such issues. Many digital games captivate and immerse the player by providing an embodied experience, using haptics built into game controllers, a form of haptic feedback called ‘rumble’, which provides a physical reaction in response to your action in the game. In virtual reality (VR) gaming, in addition to the VR headset, peripherals such as sensitised vests and gloves provide a sense of ‘touch’ in the gameworld (Söderström et al., 2022). Lastly, an augmented embodied experience can be provided using avatars that interact with and act for players within the game. User-centred approaches to studying engagement in games look beyond players as social entities and include other digital technologies, people and environments. Such approaches draw on ANT as a way of situating games in a network of users, technologies and environments. Player experience and player practices are not just created within the game software itself. The rules that govern each game and the underlying structure are also created through the relations between the materiality of the gaming interface in the form of game controls, consoles and keyboard. ANT doesn’t privilege one element over another – it would look at boredom as a phenomenon and whether it is observed to influence the network. It includes humans, objects, technologies as well as time, space and so on. Ash and Gallacher (2011) are interested in games in terms of the concepts of materiality, practice and embodiment. They say that virtual worlds, such as those in many videogames, are brought into being through material practices and technologies. Interaction between player, interface and location creates the world of the game – the world emerges through the practices of the players. Their proposition is that: Different videogames produce different forms of spatiality and different spatial experiences for users. (p. 11) Construction games such as Minecraft (2011) produce spatial experience which is different from a first-person shooter like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege (2015). Open world games such as the Assassin’s Creed (2007–2021) series, discussed in the introduction to this book, provide very different gameplay experiences than Firewatch (2016). Open world games are based around the idea of exploring the game world, there is no pre-established script, there are many secondary tasks and mini-games and players can choose what missions and in what order they complete them. The perception of player agency is much stronger in this genre of games although as in all digital games, agency is distributed, an idea I take up in Chapter 4. The growing awareness that different games create different ‘affective’ experiences led me to focus my study on commercial games rather than

Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon  29 educational games. Educational gaming research, as you would expect, concentrates on exploring how games might improve the learning of people who play them. In schools, digital games are seen as ‘interventions’ (Duncan, 2016), and education has been interested predominantly in what we might do with games, rather than what we might learn from them. The affective state of engagement is regarded by some teachers and educationalists as a ‘poor proxy for learning’ (Bennett, 2016; Coe, 2013), with digital games actively accused of being a distraction, of not engaging with curriculum content and providing little evidence of efficacy or relevance to the current testing regime. I agree that engagement is not a proxy for learning. However, I argue that if boredom emerges in learning situations, a consequent lack of participation and engagement can influence learning. Games include activities that involve spatial movement and orientation which become ‘affective territory’ (Ash, 2009, p. 2108). The screen has affordances which allow actions (Davis & Chouinard, 2016) from the player, to observe or move, capabilities that create affects. By restricting my investigation to commercial games, which do not concern themselves directly with learning but rather player engagement and enjoyment, I can isolate how they create positive affective experiences. In effect, I can work out how gameplaying experiences are assembled to avoid the experience of boredom, which in turn, may affect learning. Conclusion We began this chapter by considering the arguments for re-imagining our notions of academic boredom in formal schooling environments. I argue that current schooling practices and pedagogical approaches and their lack of focus on the quality of the student experience are contributing to the creation of boredom in classrooms. Traditional psychological and sociological approaches to understanding such experiences consider students and teachers as the primary agents in the learning process. They often attempt to reduce the complexity and messiness of boredom as a phenomenon by regarding boredom as a problem of ‘self-regulation’ on the part of students or by considering boredom as an inevitable part of the schooling process. The relationship between the social and material aspects of schooling practices is largely ignored in such approaches. Like Mulcahy (2012), I am proposing that we actively ask how materials participate in pedagogic practice and what is performed through this participation. To address these questions, I have proposed ANT and assemblage theory as more helpful theoretical frameworks. This approach can help us move away from the dominant discourse of ‘classroom-as-container’ and educational practices as stable and entrenched and unable to be questioned. Instead, we can explore how spaces such as classrooms are actively constructed in the relations between students, teachers, technology, objects and environment and how affects such as boredom emerge from the ‘embodied practices of assembly’ (Mulcahy, 2012). Digital gaming, with its more dynamic practices, provides a

30  Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon useful lens through which to compare differing modes of participation and the affective intensities it produces. Using ANT and assemblage theory, I aim to create a new way to frame affective states such as boredom and find new ways to intervene. In Chapter 3, I go further and describe how I used an approach called assemblage ethnography to understand how affective experiences are assembled in classrooms compared to digital gaming experiences. References Abdul Jabbar, A. I., & Felicia, P. (2015). Gameplay engagement and learning in gamebased learning: A systematic review. Review of Educational Research, 85(4), 740–779. Alibali, M. W., & Nathan, M. J. (2012). Embodiment in mathematics teaching and learning: Evidence from learners’ and teachers’ gestures. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 21(2), 247–286. Ash, J. (2009). Emerging spatialities of the screen: Video games and the reconfiguration of spatial awareness. Environment and Planning A, 41(9), 2105–2124. Ash, J. (2013). Rethinking affective atmospheres: Technology, perturbation and space times of the non-human. Geoforum, 49, 20–28. Ash, J., & Gallacher, L. A. (2011). Cultural geography and videogames. Geography Compass, 5(6), 351–368. Ashman, A., & Conway, R. (2002). An introduction to cognitive education: Theory and applications. Taylor & Francis. Belton, T., & Priyadharshini, E. (2007). Boredom and schooling: A cross-disciplinary exploration. Cambridge Journal of Education, 37(4), 579–595. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/03057640701706227 Bennett, T. (2016). Blocked: Minecraft and the taboos in education. Tom Bennett’s School Report. Retrieved 22 January, 2023, from http://behaviourguru.blogspot. com/2016/11/blocked-minecraft-and-taboos-in.html Bernstein, B. (2004). The structuring of pedagogic discourse. Routledge. Biesta, G. (2014). Pragmatising the curriculum: Bringing knowledge back into the curriculum conversation, but via pragmatism. The Curriculum Journal, 25(1), 29–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585176.2013.874954 Boxer, A., & Bennett, T. (2019). The researchED guide to explicit and direct instruction: An evidence-informed guide for teachers. Hachette UK. Boylan, J., Seli, P., Scholer, A. A., & Danckert, J. (2021). Boredom in the COVID-19 pandemic: Trait boredom proneness, the desire to act, and rule-breaking. Personality and Individual Differences, 171, 110387. Breidenstein, G. (2007). The meaning of boredom in school lessons. Participant observation in the seventh and eighth form. Ethnography and Education, 2(1), 93–108. Campo Santo. (2016) Firewatch [Linux, OS X, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One]. Panic. Coe, R. (2013). Improving education: A triumph of hope over experience. Durham University: Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring. Cook, S. W., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2006). The role of gesture in learning: Do children use their hands to change their minds? Journal of Cognition and Development, 7(2), 211–232.

Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon  31 Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience/Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Harper Perennial. Davis, J. L., & Chouinard, J. B. (2016). Theorizing affordances: From request to ­refuse. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 36(4), 241–248. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Conceptualizations of intrinsic motivation and self-determination. In Intrinsic Motivation and Self-determination in Human Behavior (pp. 11–40). Dewey, J. (1896). The reflex arc concept in psychology. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The early works (1882–1898) (Vol. 5, pp. 224–243). Southern Illinois University Press. Du Boulay, B. (2019). Escape from the Skinner Box: The case for contemporary intelligent learning environments. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(6), 2902–2919. Duncan, S. C. (2016). “Games with learning”: Adpositions and the lusory attitude. On the Horizon, 24(3), 246–256. Dunnett, N. (2023). Sociomaterial perspectives on hybrid learning in primary classrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic. In C. Burnett & K. Marsh-Davies (Eds.), Teacher identity and teaching practice post-COVID, (pp. 256–273). Routledge. Eastwood, J. D., Frischen, A., Fenske, M. J., & Smilek, D. (2012). The unengaged mind. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(5), 482–495. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1745691612456044 Elpidorou, A. (2018). The bored mind is a guiding mind: Toward a regulatory theory of boredom. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 17, 455–484. Engelmann, S., Becker, W. C., Carnine, D., & Gersten, R. (1988). The direct instruction follow through model: Design and outcomes. Education and Treatment of Children, 11(4), 303–317. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42899079 Finkielsztein, M. (2021). Boredom and academic work. Routledge. Fredricks, J. A., Reschly, A. L., & Christenson, S. L. (2019). Handbook of student ­engagement interventions: Working with disengaged students. Academic Press. Gibson, J. J. (1977). The theory of affordances. Hilldale, USA, 1(2), 67–82. Halbhuber, D., Fehle, J., Kalus, A., Seitz, K., Kocur, M., Schmidt, T., & Wolff, C. (2019). The mood game-how to use the player’s affective state in a shoot’em up avoiding frustration and boredom. In Proceedings of Mensch Und Computer 2019 (pp. 867–870). Harris, M. B. (2000). Correlates and characteristics of boredom proneness and boredom 1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 30(3), 576–598. Holmes, W., Bialik, M., & Fadel, C. (2023). Artificial intelligence in education. In Data ethics: Building trust: How digital technologies can serve humanity (pp. 621–653). Globethics Publication. Hung, A. C. Y. (2016). Beyond the player: A user-centered approach to analyzing digital games and players using actor-network theory. E-Learning and Digital M ­ edia, 13(5–6), 227–243. Hunter, A., & Eastwood, J. D. (2018). Does state boredom cause failures of attention? Examining the relations between trait boredom, state boredom, and sustained attention. Experimental Brain Research, 236(9), 2483–2492. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s00221-016-4749-7 Ioannou, M., & Ioannou, A. (2020). Technology-enhanced embodied learning. Educational Technology & Society, 23(3), 81–94.

32  Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon Jarvis, P. (2023). Toxic schools? The unfolding tragedy in state education in England. Yorkshire Bylines. Retrieved 3 June, 2023, from https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/news/ education/toxic-schools-the-unfolding-tragedy-in-state-education-in-england/ Jusslin, S., Korpinen, K., Lilja, N., Martin, R., Lehtinen-Schnabel, J., & Anttila, E. (2022). Embodied learning and teaching approaches in language education: A mixed studies review. Educational Research Review, 37, 100480. Kosmas, P., & Zaphiris, P. (2019). Embodied interaction in language learning: Enhancing students’ collaboration and emotional engagement. In Human-computer interaction–INTERACT 2019: 17th IFIP TC 13 international conference, Paphos, Cyprus, September 2–6, 2019, Proceedings, Part II 17. Lemov, D. (2015). Teach like a champion 2.0; 62 techniques that put students on the path to college. Jossey-Bass. Lindsay, G. W. (2020). Attention in psychology, neuroscience, and machine learning. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 14, 29–. https://doi.org/10.3389/fncom. 2020.00029 Macklem, G. L. (2015). Boredom in the classroom: Addressing student motivation, self-regulation, and engagement in learning. Springer International Publishing. Manches, A., O’Malley, C., & Benford, S. (2010). The role of physical representations in solving number problems: A comparison of young children’s use of physical and virtual materials. Computers & Education, 54(3), 622–640. Mansell, W. (2023). Teach like a champion’ academy trust sets out minute-by-minute expectations of how teachers should conduct lessons. Education Uncovered. Retrieved 2 June, 2023, from https://www.educationuncovered.co.uk/news/163806/ teach-like-a-champion-academy-trust-sets-out-minutebyminute-expectations-onhow-teachers-should-conduct-lessons-.thtml Marples, R. (2010). What is education for?. In R. Bailey (Ed.), The philosophy of education: An introduction (pp. 35–47). Bloomsbury Academic. Retrieved 4 July 2023, from: http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/10.5040/9781472541307.ch-003 McPherson, C., Bayrakdar, S., Gewirtz, S., Laczik, A., Maguire, M., Newton, O., O’Brien, S., Weavers, A., Winch, C., Wolf, A. (2023). Schools for all? Young people’s experiences of alienation in the English secondary school system. Edge Foundation. Retrieved 3 April 2023, from https://www.edge.co.uk/documents/349/ DD0940__Young_Futures_Young_Lives_FINAL_JVbavJ7.pdf Mojang Studios. (2011). Minecraft. [Windows, macOS, Linux] Mojang Studios, Stockholm; Xbox Studios. Morgan, J. (2020). Behaviour management: The science behind SLANT. Times Educational Supplement. Mulcahy, D. (2012). Affective assemblages: Body matters in the pedagogic practices of contemporary school classrooms. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 20(1), 9–27. Nett, U. E., Goetz, T., & Hall, N. C. (2011). Coping with boredom in school: An experience sampling perspective. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 36(1), 49–59. Ohlmeier, S., Finkielsztein, M., & Pfaff, H. (2020). Why we are bored: Towards a ­sociological approach to boredom. Sociological Spectrum, 40(3), 208–225. Oken, B. S., Salinsky, M. C., & Elsas, S. (2006). Vigilance, alertness, or sustained attention: physiological basis and measurement. Clinical Neurophysiology, 117(9), 1885–1901. Olsson, A., & Shanks, R. (2022). Employability and school uniform policies: Projecting the employer’s gaze. Childhood, 29(4), 628–645.

Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon  33 Pekrun, R. (2006). The control-value theory of achievement emotions: Assumptions, corollaries, and implications for educational research and practice. Educational Psychology Review, 18(4), 315–341. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-006-9029-9 Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Daniels, L. M., Stupnisky, R. H., & Perry, R. P. (2010). Boredom in achievement settings: Exploring control–value antecedents and performance outcomes of a neglected emotion. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102(3), 531– 549. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019243 Przybylski, A. K., Rigby, C. S., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). A motivational model of video game engagement. Review of General Psychology, 14(2), 154–166. Peña-López, I. (2009). Creating effective teaching and learning environments: First Results from TALIS, OECD. https://www.oecd.org/education/school/creating effectiveteachingandlearningenvironmentsfirstresultsfromtalis.htm Quindlen, A. (2002). Doing nothing is something. Newsweek, 139(19), 76. Raffaelli, Q., Mills, C., & Christoff, K. (2018). The knowns and unknowns of boredom: A review of the literature. Experimental Brain Research, 236(9), 2451–2462. Reschly, A. L., Pohl, A. J., & Christenson, S. L. (2020). Student engagement: Effective academic, behavioral, cognitive, and affective interventions at school. Springer. Ryan, R. M., Rigby, C. S., & Przybylski, A. (2006). The motivational pull of video games: A self-determination theory approach. Motivation and Emotion, 30, 344–360. Sepulveda, G. K., Besoain, F., & Barriga, N. A. (2019). Exploring dynamic difficulty adjustment in videogames. In 2019 IEEE CHILEAN conference on electrical, electronics engineering, information and communication technologies (CHILECON). Valparaiso, Chile. Shernoff, D. J. (2013). The nature of engagement in schools. In Optimal learning environments to promote student engagement. Advancing responsible adolescent development. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7089-2_3 Shernoff, D. J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2009). Cultivating engaged learners and optimal learning environments. In Handbook of positive psychology in schools (pp. 131–145). Shirley, D., & Hargreaves, A. (2021). Five paths of student engagement: Blazing the trail to learning and success. Solution Tree Press. Söderström, U., Larsson, W., Lundqvist, M., Norberg, O., Andersson, M., & Mejtoft, T. (2022). Haptic feedback in first person shooter video games. In Proceedings of the 33rd European conference on cognitive ergonomics (pp. 1–6). Stockard, J., Wood, T. W., Coughlin, C., & Rasplica Khoury, C. (2018). The effectiveness of direct instruction curricula: A meta-analysis of a half century of research. Review of Educational Research, 88(4), 479–507. Sun, J., Anderson, R. C., Lin, T.-J., Morris, J. A., Miller, B. W., Ma, S., … Scott, T. (2022). Children’s engagement during collaborative learning and direct instruction through the lens of participant structure. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 69, 102061. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2022.102061 Sweetser, P., & Wyeth, P. (2005). GameFlow: A model for evaluating player enjoyment in games. Computers in Entertainment (CIE), 3(3), 3. Takatalo, J., Häkkinen, J., Kaistinen, J., & Nyman, G. (2010). Presence, involvement, and flow in digital games. In Bernhaupt, Regina (Ed.), Evaluating user experience in games: Concepts and methods (pp. 23–46). Netherlands: Springer London. Tze, V. M. C., Daniels, L. M., & Klassen, R. M. (2016). Evaluating the relationship between boredom and academic outcomes: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 28(1), 119–144. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-015-9301-y

34  Re-imagining boredom as a schooling phenomenon Ubisoft Montreal. (2015). Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege [PlayStation 4/5, Windows, XBox series] Ubisoft. Vogel-Walcutt, J. J., Fiorella, L., Carper, T., & Schatz, S. (2012). The definition, assessment, and mitigation of state boredom within educational settings: A comprehensive review. Educational Psychology Review, 24(1), 89–111. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10648-011-9182-7 Watters, A. (2015). Education technology and Skinner’s box. Hack Education. Blog post. http://hackeducation.com/2015/02/10/skinners-box Wilson, C., & Scott, B. (2017). Adaptive systems in education: A review and conceptual unification. The International Journal of Information and Learning Technology, 34(1), 2–19.

3 Becoming an assemblage ethnographer A personal account

Introduction Most studies of academic boredom begin with the bored human being at the centre of the learning experience. Traditional school ethnographers have, therefore, tended to concern themselves with the experiences and interactions of people, regarding them as active agents, surrounded by passive objects such as desks, boards and computers, in the physical school building that acts as a ‘container’ for educational activity. Researchers either rely on the perceptions of students and teachers or on observations of behaviour, usually non-verbal, which are manifested through a lack of engagement or attention. Indeed, Breidenstein (2007) comments on the unsatisfactory nature of researching boredom saying, ‘… wherever the ethnographer appears, boredom is vanishing (p. 96)’. ANT, the approach taken in this book, encourages us to understand classroom and gaming practices in terms of ‘sociomaterial entanglements’ and to notice effects, such as boredom, which may emerge from the different ways that elements combine or assemble. In this chapter, I will describe why I became an assemblage ethnographer and how I used this role to make the practices I took part in visible to others. By becoming an assemblage ethnographer, I was able to move beyond human-centred methods such as interviews and surveys and collect a variety of data that allowed me to reassemble the ‘events’ I wanted to understand. One of the key differences between traditional ethnography and assemblage ethnography (Ghoddousi & Page, 2020) is that it looks more explicitly at the role of affect in everyday practices, recognising the agency of non-human entities but using affects to analyse and intervene in situations being researched and experienced. To achieve the more intimate level of ethnography necessary in this kind of research, the ethnographer needs to be able to sense the ‘flows of affects traversing the collective body of the assemblage’ (p. 11). The use of my mobile phone to ‘record’ my experiences allowed me to ‘stay in motion’ (Beddall-Hill et al., 2011) with my participants, something Büscher & Urry (2009) dub ‘co-present-immersion’. These data enable me to reconstruct the story of how boredom emerged in the gaming and learning situations I participated in over a period of two years. DOI: 10.4324/9781003322689-3

36  Becoming an assemblage ethnographer However, when the researcher is ‘de-centred’ in this way, certain ethical issues face the assemblage ethnographer, something I discuss in the following section. Ethics in assemblage Assemblage ethnography brings together the concepts of assemblage and affect, as we have discussed earlier in this book. The agency of non-humans is recognised and the assemblage ethnographer uses affects to analyse and intervene in the emergent agencies of human/non-human entanglements. Instead of agency lying with the researcher or the human participants, agency emerges from the changing patterns of relations in an assemblage (Ghoddousi & Page, 2020). Ethics are also emergent in assemblages. Bazzul (2018) calls such an approach ‘ethics-in-assemblage’. Ethics are dependent on the particular arrangement of elements in an assemblage – they are dynamic, local and specific to the material phenomena within it, whether they be human or non-­ human. Although this approach has been criticised for its lack of tangible politics, it still allows for the examination of power relations and the possibility of intervention. The assemblage ethnographer’s ethical actions are part of the process of the research and entangled in the relations between human, non-human, object, technology and environment in educational situations (Dennis, 2018). Dennis discusses whether researchers are fully responsible for research outcomes, reminding us that decisions about what is or is not ethical in research are often made during ongoing research activities and guided by first-hand experiences. Legally, there are a number of safeguarding issues in the UK in relation to working with children in schools, which must be considered in advance and outside of the research activity itself. It is a requirement that adults hold current DBS1 certificates and follow safeguarding protocols for any disclosures that children may make to them. Gray and Winter (2011) stress the importance of advising children about the limits of confidentiality before consent is sought to work with them. My consent form informed students that if they disclosed anything I felt needed to be reported to the school’s safeguarding officer, I would do so. The name of the safeguarding officer in each school was specified on all consent forms, for students, teachers and parents. These preconditions to my encounters with participants will have affected my relations with them, just as encountering student participants as an adult in a school setting rather than a social situation emphasised underlying power relations which militated against the ‘hanging out’ approach I took. However, by ‘hanging out’ with participants, there was a possibility that they may share information they might otherwise not have done in a formal interview and may also have felt under pressure to work with me. It is considered ‘ethical’ in qualitative research such as ethnography to gain written consent from participants; in fact, it is a requirement for many ethics committees in universities and research bodies. However, the very act of

Becoming an assemblage ethnographer  37 seeking consent implies a distance between the researcher and other participants, a greater agency on the part of the ethnographer. This greater agency was demonstrated in my efforts to write the information leaflet for students in age-appropriate language and format (Harcourt et al., 2011) and to spell out what was required from participants. I explained the same information orally and informed students that they could drop out of the research at any point. I adhered to what Dockett, Perry and Kearney (2013) call ‘process consent’, where participants are given multiple opportunities to give or withhold consent. Each of these steps emphasised my ‘distance’ and different way of ‘beingin-the-world’ as Dennis (2018) calls it. There is little discussion of the place of these existing research protocols in the current literature on assemblage ethnography or ethics-as-assemblage. In the early stages of new ethical approaches such as this, it seems that there may be a period where traditional protocols and new ways of ‘being’ an ethnographer remain entangled. Steps such as written consent and the anonymisation of data such as quotations from interviews, recordings or photographs using pseudonyms will continue. In the empirical work on which this book relies, I used my mobile phone to collect and store most of my data – this is discussed in a later section of this chapter. I was careful to take limited numbers of photographs of individuals, to show only a back view with no faces visible or if that was unavoidable, faces obscured. Photographs of school buildings or signage have had identifying logos or titles obscured. Other ethical considerations

My greater agency in the research assemblage was not the only ethical issue. Three out of the five core participants referred to in this book self-identified as having an additional or special educational need or disability, such as autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), dyslexia and an attention deficit disorder (ADD).2 These additional needs were likely to have influenced how they participated in learning situations and affected the levels of engagement and/or boredom which emerged in those situations. Whyte (2006) lists various qualities which she feels researchers studying children with special needs should have. As a former teacher, I possessed some of the qualities or qualifications Whyte mentions – I had experience working with children with some of these special needs, the ability to communicate with them and knowledge of the physical and cognitive impairments and their likely impact on children. With the dyslexic and ADD participants, I interviewed their form tutors and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) key workers to ensure that I understood the impact and extent of these needs and how they might affect both the participants and the research process. Expressing this in assemblage ethnographic terms, I acquired capacities which enabled me to ‘be with’ my participants and to experience the classroom experiences of boredom alongside them in an empathic manner. I incorporated media methods such as audio and video recordings as well as informal chats and interviews to facilitate students’ ability

38  Becoming an assemblage ethnographer to express themselves (Harcourt et al., 2011). However, by making these ‘accommodations’, I also ‘affected’ the relations in the classroom and gaming assemblages of which I was a part. Although not a ‘bystander’, at times I stood a little distance outside some classroom situations, seeing it from the point of view of a knowledgeable educational professional as well as participating as an ‘interested’ friend of a student with SEND.3 Emerging ethics

In this ethnography, I saw myself and my participants as opening up new ways of understanding and experiencing boredom. I set out to be an active participant and to enact my researcher role according to the situations I found myself in. Ethical issues changed, emerging as situations developed. For example, in the preliminary stages of research, the Farnswood School management team was happy for me to communicate solely with the members of staff who organised the Minecraft Club and English Intervention classes. However, when undertaking more in-depth research, which required attending lessons with the five individual participants on separate days, I provided more detailed information to senior members of staff responsible for safeguarding and pastoral care and asked the school to obtain consent from teachers of those lessons and the parents of my student participants, since I intended to elicit audio recordings, make video recordings and take photographs of them. I explain the nature of this in-depth research in later sections. Ethnographic issues My empirical work began with a pilot study in a group of three schools in the north of England which I refer to by their pseudonyms Schools B, S and P. At the time, I was working as a Digital Education Consultant for a major IT company that offered a ‘managed IT service’ to local education authorities who were part of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme in England. As part of this service, they employed a team of ‘e-learning consultants’, all ex-teachers, who were supposed to help schools adopt appropriate technology to align with pedagogic practices and newly designed school buildings. This role offered me a unique opportunity to observe a wide range of schools as they attempted to integrate both innovative learning spaces and new technology into their educational practice. From this ‘outsider’ perspective, but as a former classroom teacher, I observed that teaching and learning practices were not changing, despite potential opportunities presented by new and innovatively designed school buildings and an accompanying increase in technology such as IWBs (interactive whiteboards), iPads and laptops. For example, School P was a ‘new build’ school which opened in 2015. The original reception area was a huge, light-filled atrium area with an amphitheatre for large school gatherings such as assemblies, coffee bar style seating and computers down one side, tables and chairs in groups and soft seating for visitors.

Becoming an assemblage ethnographer  39 This ‘hybrid design [of architecture] … developed to accommodate traditional … as well as … team teaching’ (Mulcahy et al., 2015) is echoed in all the BSF schools in my geographical research area. The ‘vision’ for the BSF building programme is summed up in this quote from Mulcahy (2015): The institutions created now will physically encapsulate and determine the ideas it is possible to have about education, learning and learning relationships until the dawn of the next century. (Rudd et al., 2006, p. 1) The relations which these spaces were intended to encapsulate largely failed to materialise, however. The original intention for these open-plan spaces was to act as ‘break out’ areas for small groups to work informally, but such was the concern about student behaviour that this rarely happened in practice at any of the schools in my study. In the ten years that the new buildings have been occupied, many of the open-plan areas have been ‘walled off’ to provide more closed, traditional spaces such as conventional classrooms or office space, rather than engendering the sort of team teaching discussed by Lai, Huang and Lam (2020) in their study. A culture of over-surveillance and accountability promoted by the current assessment regime (Page, 2017) may also have contributed to teachers feeling intimidated by having their teaching constantly on display to fellow teachers and senior management. According to teachers I interviewed, to teach in such an open area was often noisy and disruptive, both to the classes and to anyone walking through the area to reach other areas. At School S, large screens were placed around such an area to provide some privacy and prevent distraction to students from other students passing through. This attitude to noise was a common theme in the literature around school buildings and innovative learning environments (Lai, Huang & Lam, 2020). Mahat et al. (2018) reported that noise impacted negatively on students’ engagement and led to teachers turning open spaces back into closed classrooms. As Mulcahy and Morrison (2017) express it, walls are ‘affective objects’ (p. 752) and open-plan areas provoke ‘intensities of feeling’ which are not in harmony with ‘standards’ and a knowledge-driven curriculum, where compliance and close attention to teacher-led instruction is highly valued. Talking informally to teachers and students during my visits, my overwhelming impression was that many students were ‘bored’ and ‘disengaged’ by the traditional, standardised and sometimes over-regulated classroom practices in which they were taking part. Around the same time that I was working in these schools, my interest in gaming practices and learning was provoked by several events – my involvement with Games Britannia Schools’ Videogame Festival, a story-writing project for reluctant writers using the 3D environment of the digital game ­Minecraft (2011) and work with students on a Master’s programme in Digital Education who were exploring the use of virtual environments such as ­Minecraft and Second Life (2013).

40  Becoming an assemblage ethnographer The Games Britannia Schools’ Videogame Festival4 (2012) took an interesting approach to games and learning. At the festival, several workshops for students were provided by game industry professionals, particularly on coding and game design development. One of these workshops used challenging mathematical concepts usually associated with advanced-level studies in Mathematics, in this case, Newtonian mechanics. The workshop tutor used a practical programming exercise to teach 11–13-year-olds how to animate a bouncing ball without explicitly revealing the mathematical concepts behind it. Such an exercise would have been an unlikely occurrence in a Computing classroom with this age group. Formal learning contexts such as schools tend to introduce educational concepts in a linear, sequential and predictable pattern at an age-appropriate level. The inclusion of such a high level of challenge in a learning experience would usually be associated with boredom and disengagement from the learning activity. However, because the context of such learning was the development of mechanics for a digital game, this did not seem to be the case, as the facilitator and a participant in the session confirm in these quotes from a video interview: We did a simple physics workshop where we did Newtonian mechanics … so they wouldn’t have known they were doing Newtonian mechanics … but that is what they were doing. (Gaming workshop tutor, June 2013) We’ve been making a bouncing ball … it was really hard at first but then once you know how to do it, it’s easier. (Participant, gaming workshop, June 2013) The active participation of students in the learning process and the immediate feedback of the ‘bouncing ball’ appeared to produce high levels of engagement in this challenging learning experience. This prompted my interest in the modes of participation involved in such informal learning experiences compared to formal classroom learning. As a part of my work with Games Britannia and my digital education consultancy, I organised a collaboration between an English teacher who had set up a creative writing project in MinecraftEdu (2011) and TeacherGaming, the Finnish company that produced this educational version of the game. The ­English teacher had been inspired by his own son’s experiences of creative writing in the classroom to create an experiential writing experience in MinecraftEdu. Like many children, including several of the participants in my own empirical work, his son struggled with handwriting, which led to him becoming distracted in classroom situations. However, the teacher watched his son voluntarily and enthusiastically write several pages about his adventures in Minecraft. Realising that the secret of this engagement was writing from personal experience, the teacher set up a Minecraft ‘world’ for his English classes, with a virtual library as the starting point. From the library, players could

Becoming an assemblage ethnographer  41 choose different story worlds to explore and then come back and write about their experiences. This project formed the basis for my own project with an English class during my research fieldwork, which I describe in detail later. Similarly, as a tutor for a master’s course on digital learning environments, I wanted to give students the opportunity to experiment with them before asking them to assess their educational value. Second Life (2013) is a multiplayer online virtual world which became very popular with universities between 2007 and 2013. Many universities built whole virtual campuses and even had online graduation ceremonies for distance learning students. In our master’s course, we used Second Life for online meetings, simulating a ‘face-toface’ experience for distance learning students. At a later date, since Minecraft is more closely linked to learning and schools, we were given the opportunity to experience, build and collaborate in it, instead of Second Life. These personal experiences of classrooms and digital gaming practices provoked my interest both in boredom/engagement and in the practices which seemed to be implicated in these phenomena. After gaining ethical approval, I sought to confirm my initial impressions, of classroom and gaming practices by arranging to interview groups of teachers (10 teachers) in the three schools already mentioned and to observe a selection of their lessons (19), covering six different curriculum areas. In this pilot study, I asked teachers to describe to me their own experiences of engagement and boredom, how they recognised ‘bored’ students and what activities appeared to provoke this reaction. As I describe in the introduction to this book, teachers had definite preferences: ‘hands on’ learning rather than passive listening; demonstrating their learning in a variety of ways rather than solely in writing and making strong associations between passivity, lack of agency and personal relevance and boredom. Teachers also recognised that their students may experience learning in similar ways to themselves. To gain a student perspective on this, I organised student focus groups to discuss their experience of formal learning and their views of digital gaming. At this stage, although my research was qualitative it did not take the form of an ethnography. The students in the focus group regarded me as an authority figure, an ‘outsider’ to the school and not a fellow gamer; consequently, discussions did not go well. Students were reluctant to discuss their gaming, instead trying hard to ‘guess’ what an acceptable response to my questions in this school context might be. It was apparent that if I truly wanted to understand how boredom was being engendered and how it was experienced by students, I would need to become part of the research assemblage alongside the participants and be open to new ways of experiencing myself (Dennis 2018). I needed to work in a school that had not had direct experience with me in my digital education consultant role but with whom I had an existing relationship. Consequently, I approached a fourth school (pseudonym Farnswood). My experiences in Farnswood School, over a period of seven months, form the basis for most of the empirical evidence I draw on in this book.

42  Becoming an assemblage ethnographer Becoming part of the research assemblage Farnswood is a large comprehensive school for the 11–16-year age group, on the outskirts of a large northern English city, in a semi-rural location. It is not a ‘new build’ school and only took a peripheral part in the BSF programme described earlier are from white British backgrounds, with an unusually high number of SEND students. At the time of my study, the school was struggling academically, having received a poor rating from the governmental inspection body OFSTED. Their report mentioned that teachers were not consistently providing ‘challenging and engaging activities in lessons and homework’ (p. 2) and that ‘pupils do not engage well with their learning’ (p. 5). After my role as a digital education consultant ceased, I applied for a job as an exam invigilator at Farnswood School. In this short-term role, I gained informal insight into the staff, students and organisation of the school before my negotiated access as a researcher, as well as allowing staff to become familiar with me, as fellow staff member. Social activities such as the school annual sponsored walk to raise money for local community organisations and other nominated charities enhanced my presence in the school community. The walk began on the school grounds, with the route taking participants around the local area. The reaction of people encountered along the route revealed that the school played a positive part in the local community. Walking with students, parents and teachers increased their acceptance of me in the multiple identities I needed to assume as an ethnographer: fellow teacher, gamer and researcher. Gaming ethnographer – Minecraft Club

During my time at Farnswood, I discovered that there was a Minecraft Club, run as part of lunchtime extracurricular activities. After an informal chat with the staff member running the Minecraft Club and a preliminary lunchtime visit, I made a formal request to conduct research in the school and gained ethical approval from the university where I was pursuing doctoral studies. Once permission had been granted for my research, I attended the lunchtime Minecraft Club on a weekly basis. As an assemblage ethnographer, establishing a ‘gamer’ identity for Minecraft Club was essential. I wanted to ‘hang out’ with club members so that I could experience, explore and participate in their gaming practices. The term ‘hanging out’ is used by Ito et al. (2008) to describe how young people participate in their given social networks as a kind of informal maintenance of continuous presence or co-presence in multiple contexts, online and offline. It is a loose term which does not require acceptance by the social group, just tolerance and intermittent ability to participate in an activity. To achieve this ‘tolerance’, I had to address my credibility as a ‘fellow gamer’. Ethically, to truly participate in gaming assemblages, I also wanted to open up new ways of

Becoming an assemblage ethnographer  43 experiencing myself (Dennis, 2018) by improving my knowledge and gaining direct, first-hand experience of playing a game. I had limited prior gaming experience, having played Minecraft and Clash of Clans (2012) with my nephews, with students in my pilot study schools and with adults on an online MSc in Digital Education. To address the deficit in my experience, I bought an Xbox One console and began playing a range of popular commercial games regularly Assassin’s Creed Syndicate (2015), Forza 4 (2018), Inside (2016), Ori and the Blind Forest (2015), some of which interested me personally and some which were popular with the age group I was working with. As well as relying on my ability to empathise and chat like a ‘gamer’, I retained my normal, informal style of dress – leather jacket, jeans and Dr Marten boots to emphasise my ‘gamer’ identity, rather than taking on a more formal ‘teacher’ or official visitor identity, one that students would associate with OFSTED inspectors, for example. I introduced myself by my first name only (highly unusual with official adult visitors). I explained that as a gamer and researcher, I was interested in comparing their gaming experiences with those of the classroom by observing their gameplay and sharing their classroom experiences. As an ethical assemblage ethnographer, I shared my experiences of playing games and exploring Minecraft with adult students at the University of Edinburgh. Experiencing assemblage ethnography – Minecraft Club

The atmosphere in the Minecraft Club room was very informal with students wandering in and out as they wished. There were few rules – students had to be playing Minecraft and were not permitted to eat their lunch in the room (due to the hardware in the room). Other than keeping a rough register, enforcing these two rules and ensuring that new members knew how to log into Minecraft, the teacher took no part in the activities. I was the only adult in the room who was an experienced Minecraft player. Consequently, over the months in which I attended the club, students tended to come to me for help or to share their activities or creations. However, during weekly sessions, students were as likely to help me as for me to help them. There were three memorable incidents in this respect – helping me log in to the club Minecraft server, helping me craft in a Survival game (a mode of the game I had not experienced) and helping me to escape an underground location. On the first visit, I walked around the classroom and sat down next to students to watch their gameplay. There seemed to be a large range of activities taking place – some were coding, using server controls, technically sophisticated work; others were building or exploring the Minecraft environment with fellow players. There seemed to be a wide range of experience with Minecraft, from expert and experienced players to relative beginners. Although I was very familiar with Minecraft, students ‘led’ the conversations we had at

44  Becoming an assemblage ethnographer Minecraft Club and I frequently deferred to their ‘greater knowledge’, as shown in this conversation with Robert, one of my core participants: Robert: On Xbox there’s an actual app where you can change the edit … so what you can make it is … ‘em … you could like, for example, that clip and that clip together (indicates on his screen) Researcher: Oh, you mean like meld them together… Robert: Yeah, you can also go … em – you can message people, you can text stuff on here – I think you can go on your app – let me just see – captions – so you can edit. Researcher: Let me just get mine up as well so I can follow it you know what I mean so that you can show me how it works. (Field interview with Robert, Minecraft Club) Much of the ‘data’ were collected in similar informal ‘chats’ with students about their gaming, which could be called either an ‘artefact’ or ‘touring’ interview (Wherton et al., 2019) since they focused on a YouTube video or a tour through the Minecraft world to see structures or areas a student had built there. YouTube videos or an in-world, participant-led tour around a Minecraft structure became prompts for students to talk to me about what they found engaging, how they had gone about learning something new or the process they had followed to construct a virtual building or structure. Since these conversations also occurred in the club environment, students saw them as part of the normal activity of the club. Researcher: So, talk to me about how you did that then … did you have a picture in the first place? D: Yeah, I had an idea of what we would do because … there’s me and other people in a team and we built this … to make people, with the brand-new game … have fun … that’s what my team’s doing right now cos it’s on a realm I’ve been able to put it on a realm. (Field interview with Dylan, Minecraft Club) I frequently shared my own gameplay experiences with participants and asked them for advice. I took photographs, short videos of computer screens and audio recordings of participant discussions, purposely using my mobile phone since such devices are familiar, relatively unobtrusive and it is easy to export data collected this way (Costa, 2019). The practical, theoretical and ethical issues around the use of mobile technology in ethnography and qualitative research are discussed further later in this chapter. Many students were only casual Minecraft players, taking advantage of the club to pass the time over the lunch break. I was struck by the lack of fellow female gamers. There were rarely more than three girls from a total of 33 attendees. I tried several times to get involved with these female club members,

Becoming an assemblage ethnographer  45 without success. One who had joined the club because of her interest in programming left when this became less of an emphasis for club activities, which became dominated by PvP and competitive building. The other two girls who were more regular attendees at the Minecraft Club preferred to remain ‘invisible’ in the club environment. However, I did not wish to dismiss girls’ experiences either of gaming or of being bored. I understood that they had ‘…quite possibly very different play patterns, preferences, and possibilities’ (Jenson & De Castell, 2010, p. 57). Research suggests that gaming in male-oriented environments such as the Minecraft Club is ‘not socially rewarding for females’ (Schott & Horrell, 2000, p. 39) and that girls tend to choose to play in their homes more than anywhere else. Indeed, Ito et al. (2008) noted that girls tended to be stigmatised more if they identified with ‘geeked out practices’ (p. 36) such as gaming, which do not have the same status in female friendship networks. The girls who attended Minecraft Club came alone and did not appear to be included in any friendship groups. This may have been a major stumbling block to further participation, since girls tend to see gameplaying as an opportunity for social interaction (Marcon, 2016). For the male participants of the Minecraft Club, gaming was a ‘pervasive social activity … a context where they casually share technical and media-related knowledge’ (Ito et al., 2008, p. 26). Not surprisingly then, it was much easier to hang out with male students, once my credentials as a gamer and a fellow Minecraft enthusiast were established and I was regarded as a knowledgeable peer rather than an authoritative adult. It is very possible that the predominance of male club members might have resulted in different assemblages of Minecraft gameplay, changed patterns of participation and altered the affective atmosphere of Minecraft Club. In fact, this possibility was borne out when a temporary, after-school gaming club, with the EA game FIFA as the focus, was set up in Farnswood School. Attendance at this club was 100% male, with male students and staff competing against each other in a knockout competition. The gaming practices in this club had more in common with the competitive practices in physical football matches than digital gaming, with audiences of male students cheering the two game players as they watched the game on a large screen. Over a period of several weeks, a small group of five ‘founder’ club members (all male) started to emerge as likely fellow participants in my ethnography. I’ve called these participants Robert, Dylan, Stuart, Lincoln and Mark (pseudonyms). I planned to spend a day with each participant, accompanying them to all their lessons and sharing their experiences of formal learning activities. Similarly, to Sørensen (2009), I wanted to experience learning myself to see how sociomaterial elements were assembled in the classroom as well as understand participants’ digital gaming experiences. Although Minecraft was the main focus of discussion during Minecraft Club, much of the discussion I had with my core participants related to their home gaming experiences. Although home gaming was beyond the scope of my original study, I decided that incorporating those experiences was key to understanding modes of participation in less formal settings. Since I did not

46  Becoming an assemblage ethnographer have ethical approval for visits to observe home gameplay, I used a participant activity called a ‘go-along’ (Richardson & Hjorth, 2017) to capture an ‘embodied’ perspective of their engagement. In this process, I asked my participants to play a new game in their usual home setting and to provide an ongoing commentary of their activity in the form of an audio recording. In addition, I asked them to provide a photograph of their home gaming set up, preferably including themselves in the shot. I used the recordings, screenshots and photographs to build up a ‘re-enactment’ of their experience. Some of these home gaming experiences will be described in more detail in later chapters. Classroom experiences As I have already discussed, as an assemblage ethnographer I wanted to go beyond merely ‘observing’ boredom. I wanted to share the experience of ‘boredom’ with my participants, should it emerge during learning activities in the classroom. As an ‘interested friend or supporter’ of my core participants Robert, Dylan, Stuart, Lincoln and Mark, I accompanied each of them to their timetabled lessons over the course of a normal school day. Although I took notes, I also ‘participated’, if only peripherally, in the learning activities which my participant was presented with. Informally, I recruited my participants as fellow observers or co-researchers and invited their opinions and commentary on the lessons they and I took part in. I read through tasks on the IWB and handouts and lesson materials and discussed them with the participants, asking them questions about how they were approaching the activity and how it made them feel and shared my feelings. I specifically asked class teachers not to announce my presence although teachers occasionally addressed me directly, explained something or passed me a copy of the lesson material. Other students were interested in what I was doing and sometimes I would explain my research, if I felt their actions were directly contributing to the evidence I was assembling. On other occasions, if I felt that the query was motivated by curiosity around the participant, I simply said that I was ‘with’ the participant, which did not raise any issues since students are used to seeing ‘key’ support assistants accompanying students in lessons. This process is a good example of ethics in assemblage, where I, as the ethnographer, made ethical decisions in the moment. Essentially, as a researcher, I attempted to become part of classroom practices (Taylor, 2009), rather than an observer of them. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 describe in detail some of these classroom experiences, for example, the practices surrounding feedback and modelling and how these were assembled. Teacher-ethnographer

Part of blending with and becoming a part of Farnswood School entailed experiencing classroom activity as a teacher, not just as a student. I was particularly interested in the participation of digital gaming software in the classroom assemblage and the affective intensities it produced. Several other school ethnographies reflect similar interests – Sørensen’s (2009) observations of the

Becoming an assemblage ethnographer  47 3D FEMTEDIM environment and more recently Hawley’s (2022) ethnography of online literacies in a primary classroom. Building on the experiential story-writing in the Minecraft project discussed earlier and similar research studies around online literacy, affect and agency (Hawley, 2022), I offered to co-design and participate in a series of lessons to stimulate writing based on active, virtual Minecraft experiences in English lessons at Farnswood School. For this lesson series, I worked with Ruth, a teacher with an interest in digital games who was responsible for planning a series of intervention lessons for Year 7 (11–12-year-old) students. These students were selected for intervention because of their low scores in internal tests for writing. The intervention was designed to improve specific forms of writing – instructional, descriptive and persuasive writing. I was asked to use the existing lesson booklet, based around a visit to a local garden centre, as a template for my redesigned Minecraft booklet. The request to use a template was interesting. It reflected common anxiety about surveillance, accountability and a consequent need for standardised lessons (Page, 2017) and a perception that Minecraft would replace the garden centre as the ‘content’ of the lesson series, replacing a virtual location with the physical garden centre. Indeed, when the use of games in the classroom is raised in teaching circles, the issue of lesson ‘content’ is a common one. In a curriculum where content is of paramount importance, even educational games are seen as a less efficient way of transmitting content. I have discussed the issue of educational games and boredom in more detail in Chapter 2. The process of designing the new lesson booklet was not a good example of co-design. Due to the difficulty of finding time in Ruth’s busy school day, we had to work on the booklet separately. Similar to Hawley (2022), my version relied on online literacy practices and Minecraft, an area in which the teacher had expressed interest in our initial discussion. The story-writing task I designed emphasised digital literacy skills such as blogging, storyboarding, use of screenshots and video of Minecraft builds. However, after Ruth had reviewed and added her own ‘tweaks’, the final version excluded most of the online literacy elements, instead emphasising handwriting (indicated by the blank lines below the picture) and grammatical structures, as required in the Key Stage 3 assessment criteria. My field note at the time expressed my frustration at these constraints: I have observed … that writing is paramount and valued as an activity – doing and speaking is not. There is an admirable attempt to ‘embed’ functional English skills such as using connectives within practical activities, but they are all short, un-sustained activities with, ironically, ‘reflections’ plugged in at the end of each activity. The short time allocated to such reflection renders them meaningless… (Field note, March 2017) However, in the original lesson sequence, there had been one attempt to include a non-writing activity. Students were taken on a trip to a local garden

48  Becoming an assemblage ethnographer centre where they conducted face-to-face interviews with garden centre staff. To replace this experience, Ruth asked me to arrange five Skype interviews (one with each Intervention class) between school students and my university’s Digital Education Masters students, who were also using the Minecraft virtual environment to explore course learning concepts. This common experience with Minecraft gave students the opportunity to interview an adult with similar interests but interestingly adults who may not be as expert as them at digital gaming. The Intervention lessons were assembled within the spatial and temporal constraints of the Farnswood school network. The lessons existed outside the normal timetable – students were extracted from other lessons to take part – and timetabled three times a week over a six-week period. Students seemed to have little idea what the purpose of the lessons was, and some were actively hostile to missing their PE lessons to take part. The staff who took part were largely cover teachers and members of staff who had non-contact time. The rooms used for these lessons were those which happened to be available in these lesson slots and ranged from Design and Technology specialist classrooms to seminar rooms, staff work rooms and so on. The lack of specialist English staff or classrooms, the constraints of the curriculum, the 50-minute lesson slots, the lesson booklet and the lack of transparency about why students were taking part in the Intervention classes all militated against the success of the Intervention and, with the exception of the interview sessions discussed next, created a negative affective atmosphere – one of boredom. An excerpt from a field note during this period expressed my own feelings: The attitude of the children … has changed from excitement and anticipation to weariness and acceptance as they’ve realised that the ‘intervention’ is just more of the same kind of activity they presumably do in their normal English lessons. I’m not clear about why they have been selected for ‘intervention’ and what the activities we have designed will achieve in terms of their needs. The students are certainly not clear – either about why they are in the classes and what they are supposed to be achieving, other than playing Minecraft. The irony is that due to shortage of time, the activities they would probably have genuinely enjoyed – actual building in Minecraft – will be squeezed out… (Field note, 24th March 2017) Although my intention had been merely to attend these lessons as a fellow teacher, instead on several occasions, I found myself the ‘expert’ in the room, both in terms of the technology being used, Minecraft, and the objectives of the lesson ‘booklet’ or scheme of lessons. Importantly, what I gained as an ethnographer was an opportunity to experience first-hand how these lessons were assembled and the affective intensities created. I experienced the lesson as the teacher, who had a part in the design of lesson activities but no control over other elements of the assemblage such as environment, objects and

Becoming an assemblage ethnographer  49

Figure 3.1 Classroom layout: Minecraft English lesson Skype interviews.

people, but who actively participated and contributed to the affective intensities that emerged. The four Skype interview lessons were an example of this. Due to teachers’ lack of familiarity with Skype, I had arranged for an IT technician to be present at the beginning of each lesson to ensure that Skype was projected onto the classroom whiteboard and that the video camera was set up to allow the interviewee to see the students. My field notes from one session show how the different assemblages of people, objects, technology and environment created affect. None of the classrooms were designed to afford dialogue between adults and students either face-to-face or virtually. Seating arrangements and furniture were designed for the activity which normally took place in that classroom – IT, Design and Technology, staff workroom and so on (­Figure 3.1). Despite this, the interviews generally went well and were enjoyed by interviewers and interviewees. My field notes for one session demonstrate this and how my own role as an ethnographer was constituted:

Some confusion when I arrived at the classroom – there was a different teacher to the one expected and the wrong set of questions had been sent to M.A. (pseudonym for interviewee) by Ruth! Luckily, I was there and able to take over, sort it out and manage the questions and introductions between M.A. and students. Skype worked perfectly – students

50  Becoming an assemblage ethnographer could see and hear M.A. live and she could see them. Their questions were about her own experience of building in Minecraft, so she was able to answer them off-the-cuff. After the interview, I talked to students about gaming and maps as M.A. (interviewee) had asked them about this – got onto talking about Assassin’s Creed and Xbox games. The boys were very enthusiastic about this. One of the boys talked about using maps in Minecraft to find others in the game rather than places. The girls said they would have preferred one world where everyone built together for future lessons involving Minecraft – to develop a village and a narrative. They complained about too much writing during the lessons – perhaps we could get more video and audio approaches to storytelling involved in future units? If my blogging idea had worked and they could get more immediate feedback, would they have been more motivated to write? Their blog entries went without comment as they had different teachers from lesson to lesson. In Chapter 5, I analyse a key writing lesson in this Minecraft Intervention in detail, exploring some of the issues raised, both by my own participation and by the students’ comments in the example above. Ethnographic methods Much of this chapter has so far been concerned with why, where and how I became an ‘assemblage’ ethnographer in both gaming and classroom situations. How does an assemblage ethnographer accumulate and communicate the empirical evidence they acquire? My intention was to communicate my empirical work through a series of vignettes, by reconstructing the story of how boredom emerged in the gaming and learning situations I participated in over a period of two years. According to Ely et al. (1997), as cited in Militz and Schurr (2016, p. 57) ‘vignettes as research tools condense what the researcher experiences during field research’. To reveal how boredom is assembled, data which enabled a thick description of moments were required, to allow me to relate key moments of affective encounter (Militz & Schurr, 2016) and to trigger affective experiences in the reader. This meant collecting many different types of data, data which allowed me to recall, re-experience and reassemble encounters after they occurred, to communicate my ‘story’ effectively. The records of these encounters took the form of photographs, field notes, interview transcripts, audio and video recordings and documents which were collected and collated via my personal iPhone. In the early 2010s, there was a flurry of interest in smartphones as research tools as qualitative researchers began to realise the potential they offered in collecting, storing and collating multimodal data. The main attraction of mobile phones for many researchers, as it was for me, is their unobtrusiveness

Becoming an assemblage ethnographer  51 (Beddall-Hill et al., 2011; Costa, 2019; Favero & Theunissen, 2018; Hein, O’Donohoe & Ryan, 2011). They change the nature of ethnographic field notes and the role of the researcher – field notes are richer, allowing the researcher to reconstruct the experiences of themselves and their participants. They can also sometimes be very useful for working with participants with whom the research does not have a ‘natural fit’. In my case, my fellow participants were much younger – I was not part of their peer group, but my use of mobile technology united me with them in recognisable and shared practices. There are ethical issues surrounding the collection of such data such as privacy, since other participants can be ‘caught’ in videos and photos. The anonymity of ‘passersby’ and identifiable background details such as signs and location labels need to be assured. Similar to other ethnographers (Beddall-Hill et al., 2011; Costa, 2019; Favero & Theunissen, 2018; Hein, O’Donohoe & Ryan 2011), my main motivation for using the mobile phone was to avoid making participants uncomfortable or affecting their playing practices and provide myself with an ‘aide memoire’ when I came to ‘reassemble’ the activity of that club session. It should be mentioned that I was also recording my own ‘experience’ of being in Minecraft Club – what I could see, hear and what I took part in. I was careful to seek verbal permission before taking photographs, videos and audio recordings of gameplay screens, I did not take images of the participants themselves and individuals were not identifiable in audio recordings. After the session I typed up my thoughts and impressions in a series of field notes, adding photos and recordings to enhance my record of events. Recognising boredom

Although my work did not focus on human participants, their behaviour was used as an indicator that boredom was emerging in a learning situation. As a researcher of boredom and engagement, I was sensitised to notice the bodily behaviours of my fellow human participants as well as to my own feelings and behaviour – in fact, participant behaviour was often unintentionally mirrored by me. Baker et al. (2010) regard boredom as a cognitive-affective state resulting from human–computer interactions within learning environments rather than a phenomenon emerging from the relations between multiple elements in a learning assemblage. Their study focuses on differences between human participants such as gender, personality and age as the basis for their design of ‘affective-sensitive learning environments’. However, they do acknowledge that affective experiences are evoked by different environments and their research revealed some very helpful, practical cues for the ethnographer. In their empirical fieldwork, observers based their judgment of a student’s state or behaviour on the student’s work context, actions, utterances, facial expressions, body language and interactions with teachers or fellow students. Both Baker et al. (2010) and Finkielsztein (2021) noted visible signs of boredom, which included body language such as slouched or slumped posture, supporting one’s

52  Becoming an assemblage ethnographer head with one’s hand, leaning one’s head backwards, rubbing or clutching one’s face, putting hands behind one’s head or neck. Verbal expressions of boredom included statements such as ‘Can we do something else?’ or ‘This is boring!’ Baker et al. (2010) also observed participant actions such as off-task conversations, inactivity and repeated help requests and sustained guessing which they call ‘gaming the system’. In contrast, engagement was demonstrated by participants leaning towards the computer, mouthing solutions and pointing to parts of the screen. Photographs and field notes were invaluable in helping me to recall how human, non-human, objects, technology and environment related to each other in the events I selected to tell my story. I adopted a ‘playful’ approach to my data suggested by Hopwood (2018) and Thomson (2017). Thomson (2017) advises ordering data in different ways – juxtaposing different information with other information and trying to make links between different data types and content. Hopwood (2018) builds on Thomson’s approach, suggesting that the ethnographer systematically constructs what he calls ‘synoptic units’, which are extractive summaries of how bits of data relate to each other and to your area of interest – in my case, boredom. I began by reading through different types of data and identifying similarities – for example, I read through my field notes in chronological order and noted common threads in the narrative about the events I was documenting. Several of my field notes were close to Hopwood’s synoptic units – they described, in my own words, how different forms of data appeared to be related. I juxtaposed observation notes from lessons and gaming alongside photographs (Figure 3.1) and from this, patterns started to emerge. I listed some interesting ‘events’ which occurred – in lessons, in Minecraft Club or during home gaming lessons. Key events in school, particularly in lessons, tended to emerge around some form of conflict, disruption or disturbance in an ‘entrenched’ pattern of relations. One such event emerged during a Science lesson, where conflicts or disturbances to the established pattern of relations were observed. This conflict was between the expected attention on the IWB and teacher and another object in the classroom, a tank with live terrapins. I played with this data by looking at the photographs of the terrapin tank in close-up (see Figure 3.2), the label on the tank and the tank as part of the classroom context, with display boards and Science equipment surrounding it (Figure 3.2). I wrote up a short extractive summary to go with the pictures. Writing this episode up as a ‘synoptic unit’ in my own words led me to consider the segmentation of time in the school day, and the role of artefacts such as the timetable in organising relations to produce engagement. I found an electronic copy of the student and teacher timetables for this incident, and I realised that the timetable was responsible for assembling students, teachers and equipment and resources in specific locations at specific times. It soon became apparent that the organisation of time in school and gaming was crucial to the performance of engagement and or boredom in this context. This experience, of writing an extractive summary for a specific event, was so productive for my thinking that I began producing synoptic units around

Becoming an assemblage ethnographer  53

Figure 3.2 The terrapin tank in Robert’s Science lesson classroom.

key ‘objects’ such as the IWB and the lesson booklet (in English Intervention lessons) as well. In the next section, I discuss how I used these extractive summaries to examine the relations between humans, technology, objects and artefacts in lessons and gaming. Reassembling boredom: following the actors through synoptic units

The more playful approach I had adopted and the use of synoptic units to create ‘blocks’ for analysis enabled me to approach data in several ways. As described in the previous section, I created a series of synoptic units around ‘events’ which had struck me particularly as performances of engagement or boredom. I also created a series of extractive summaries around objects or technologies such as the iPad or the IWB and its role in producing engagement and disengagement. The IWB was used in 85% of lessons at all four schools in my study and as a form of visual attention, the assemblages surrounding the IWB could be contrasted with the visual attention required in digital gaming. Here I was particularly influenced by the work of Ash (2009, 2011), who was concerned with the nature of the image as an embodied event and how it creates spaces in videogaming (Ash, 2009, 2011). My exploration of technology intersected with my thinking about space which I considered and compared across classrooms, corridors and public

54  Becoming an assemblage ethnographer Table 3.1  Comparison of learning and gaming practices Classroom practice

Educational gaming practice

Dedicated Improvement and Reflection Time (D.I.R.T) sessions Standard Computing Game-informed lesson lesson (Cryptography) Minecraft Club organisation and participation patterns

Commercial gaming practice Game replay sessions

Rainbow Six Siege multiplayer gameplay sessions at home

spaces, lunchtime clubs as well as home and gaming spaces. The Minecraft game (technological software) itself was a key actant in my data, appearing in classroom spaces, lunchtime clubs and home spaces with the range of related data being drawn from interviews, video, observations, photographs and screenshots and audio commentaries. By ‘following’ Minecraft and other digital games as ‘actors’, I was able to explore their affordances and how capabilities and constraints shaped participants and the engagement of human subjects. For example, in the English lessons where Minecraft was a participant, the agency of students varied from the normal power relations between them and the teacher – they became experts if only momentarily (see Chapter 5). Hardware such as the iPad also afforded the students the chance to be ‘experts’ and changed the dynamic of the lesson. Students themselves, in the form of my five core participants Robert, Dylan, Stuart, Lincoln and Mark and the gaming and learning activities they were involved in, also provided a way to organise and play with data as I discuss in the next section. Much of the data I collected about digital gaming was directly related to my human participants Robert, Dylan, Stuart, Lincoln and Mark, who had been selected from the Minecraft Club at Farnswood School. I produced accounts around certain types of gaming or learning activity or classroom practice (Table 3.1), which could be compared to each other such as. The synoptic units in Table 3.1 form part of the discussion of my findings in the following chapters. Conclusion This chapter has explored assemblage ethnography as a methodology for understanding the role of affect in educational and gaming practices and the way in which affects such as boredom emerge and are experienced. Assemblage ethnography brings together affect and assemblage so that the researcher can become entangled in elements of that assemblage such as the field site, participants, objects and technology and experience ‘flows of affect’ first-hand, essentially co-creating the data being collected. Methods such as mobile phone

Becoming an assemblage ethnographer  55 recordings and touring interviews and ‘go-alongs’ have been described and analysed as part of the reconstruction of research stories such as this one. Assemblage ethnography also presents unique ethical challenges. If ethics are dependent on particular arrangements of elements in an assemblage and these elements are dynamic, local and specific to social and material phenomena, then ethical decisions must be ongoing and in the moment. However, traditional expectations of educational researchers such as informed consent and safeguarding co-exist with this new methodology, at least for the moment, and must be considered when staging interventions. In the following three chapters, I draw on the experiences I have described in this chapter, as an assemblage ethnographer in Farnswood School. I present some of the co-constructed data from my experiences to explore how boredom is emerging from schooling and gaming practices and how we might intervene in this process. In Chapter 4, I describe and explore the significant role that spatio-temporal boundaries play in shaping the affective experiences of students in schools and players of digital games. I compare the way that timetables and objects such as timers and clocks affect the sequencing of activities, pace, illusions of movement, participation and engagement in learning and gaming activity and evaluate the potential for boredom to emerge. The organisation of space, through seating plans, classroom layouts and gaming maps, is investigated. Whilst schooling spaces tend to be highly structured and offer a narrow range of affordances, gaming, in contrast, takes place in more varied spaces and contexts. Chapter 5 focuses more closely on two practices common to both classroom and gameplay experiences – feedback and modelling. Using the empirical evidence from my assemblage ethnography, I analyse how network effects such as boredom might be entrenched in feedback and modelling practices in formal learning and gaming situations and consider ways that we might intervene in this process. Finally, in Chapter 6, I turn to the concepts of ‘affective niche’ and ‘affective scaffolding’ drawn from Santuber et al.’s (2020) enactive approach to affect in learning to compare two vignettes: a cryptography lesson at Farnswood School and my participant’s home gameplay session in the game The Turing Test. I analyse how gaming practices can be incorporated and actively assembled to create an ‘affective niche’ which can be shaped to construct positive affect in formal learning situations. In contrast, gameplay experiences which have been affectively scaffolded to avoid boredom, such as The Turing Test, can still lack elements in the gaming assemblage, which lead to boredom emerging. Notes 1 DBS – Disclosure and Barring Service. 2 Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurological and developmental disorder that affects how people interact with others, communicate, learn and behave. Attention

56  Becoming an assemblage ethnographer deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a condition that includes symptoms such as being restless and having trouble concentrating. Attention deficit disorder (ADD) is a term used for people who have excessive difficulties with concentration without the presence of other ADHD symptoms such as excessive impulsiveness or hyperactivity. 3 Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. 4 Games Britannia Schools’ Videogame Festival was started in 2012 by a local school and taken over by Sheffield Hallam University between 2013 and 2022. Stuart, K. (2012). ‘Games Britannia video game education festival launches’. The Guardian (available online).

References Ash, J. (2009). Emerging spatialities of the screen: Video games and the reconfiguration of spatial awareness. Environment and Planning A, 41(9), 2105–2124. Ash, J., & Gallacher, L. A. (2011). Cultural geography and videogames. Geography Compass, 5(6), 351–368. Baker, R. S., D’Mello, S. K., Rodrigo, M. M. T., & Graesser, A. C. (2010). Better to be frustrated than bored: The incidence, persistence, and impact of learners’ cognitive– affective states during interactions with three different computer-based learning environments. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 68(4), 223–241. Bazzul, J. (2018). Ethics, subjectivity, and sociomaterial assemblages: Two important directions and methodological tensions. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 37, 467–480. Beddall-Hill, N., Jabbar, A., & Al Shehri, S. (2011). Social mobile devices as tools for qualitative research in education: iPhones and iPads in ethnography, interviewing, and design-based research. Journal of the Research Center for Educational Technology, 7(1), 67–90. Breidenstein, G. (2007). The meaning of boredom in school lessons. Participant observation in the seventh and eighth form. Ethnography and Education, 2(1), 93–108. Büscher, M., & Urry, J. (2009). Mobile methods and the empirical. European Journal of Social Theory, 12(1), 99–116. Costa, R. (2019). Iphone, iResearch. Exploring the use of smart phones in the teaching and learning of visual qualitative methodologies: Innovative teaching idea. Journal of Visual Literacy, 38(1–2), 153–162. Dennis, B. (2018). Tales of working without/against a compass: Rethinking ethical dilemmas in educational ethnography. In The Wiley handbook of ethnography of education (pp. 51–70). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118933732.ch3 Dockett, S., Perry, B., & Kearney, E. (2013). Promoting children’s informed assent in research participation. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(7), 802–828. Favero, P. S., & Theunissen, E. (2018). With the smartphone as field assistant: Designing, making, and testing EthnoAlly, a multimodal tool for conducting serendipitous ethnography in a multisensory world. American Anthropologist, 120(1), 163–167. Finkielsztein, M. (2021). Boredom and academic work. Routledge. Ghoddousi, P., & Page, S. (2020). Using ethnography and assemblage theory in political geography. Geography Compass, 14(10), e12533. Gray, C., & Winter, E. (2011). The ethics of participatory research involving young children with special needs. In D. Harcourt, B. Perry and T. Waller (Eds.), Researching young children’s perspectives (pp. 46–57). Routledge.

Becoming an assemblage ethnographer  57 Harcourt, D., Perry, B., & Waller, T. (2011). Researching young children’s perspectives: Debating the ethics and dilemmas of educational research with children. Taylor & Francis. Hawley, S. (2022). Doing sociomaterial studies: The circuit of agency. Learning, Media and Technology, 47(4), 413–426. Hein, W., O’Donohoe, S., & Ryan, A. (2011). Mobile phones as an extension of the participant observer’s self: Reflections on the emergent role of an emergent technology. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 14(3), 258–273. Hopwood, N. (2018). When coding doesn’t work, or doesn’t make sense: Synoptic units in qualitative data analysis. Retrieved 20 October 2022 from, https://nickhop. wordpress.com/2018/11/23/when-coding-doesnt-work-or-doesnt-make-sensesynoptic-units-in-qualitative-data-analysis Ito, M., Horst, H., Bittanti, M., Boyd, D., Herr-Stephenson, B., Lange, P. G., & ­Robinson, L. (2008). Living and learning with new media: Summary of findings from the digital youth project. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Jenson, J., & De Castell, S. (2010). Gender, simulation, and gaming: Research review and redirections. Simulation & Gaming, 41(1), 51–71. Lai, C., Huang, Y. X., & Lam, T. (2020). Teachers’ socio-spatial practice in innovative learning environments. Cambridge Journal of Education, 50(4), 521–538. Linden Lab. (2013). Second Life [Windows, macOS, Linux] Linden Lab LLC. Mahat, M., Bradbeer, C., Byers, T., & Imms, W. (2018). Innovative learning environments and teacher change: Defining key concepts. Technical Report 3/2018. Marcon, N. (2016). Exploring Minecraft as a pedagogical tool to motivate and enhance girls’ literacy practices in the secondary English classroom. Doctoral dissertation, Monash University. Militz, E., & Schurr, C. (2016). Affective nationalism: Banalities of belonging in Azerbaijan. Political Geography, 54, 54–63. Mojang Studios. (2011). Minecraft. [Windows, macOS, Linux] Mojang Studios, Stockholm; Xbox Studios. Moon Studies. (2015). Ori and the Blind Forest [Windows, XBox One]. Microsoft Studios. Mulcahy, D., Cleveland, B., & Aberton, H. (2015). Learning spaces and pedagogic change: Envisioned, enacted and experienced. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 23(4), 575–595. Mulcahy, D., & Morrison, C. (2017). Re/assembling ‘innovative’learning environments: Affective practice and its politics. In Educational philosophy and theory. Taylor and Francis. Page, D. (2017). The surveillance of teachers and the simulation of teaching. Journal of Education Policy, 32(1), 1–13. Playdead. (2016). Inside. [PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows, iOS, Nintendo Switch]. Playdead. Playground Games. (2018). Forza 4 [Windows, XBox One]. Microsoft Studios. Richardson, I., & Hjorth, L. (2017). Mobile media, domestic play and haptic ethnography. New Media & Society, 19(10), 1653–1667. Rudd, T., Gifford, C., Morrison, J & Facer, K. (2006). Futurelab: What if…? Re-imagining learning spaces. https://futurelab.org.uk/what-if-re-imagining-learning-spaces Santuber, J., Dremel, C., Owoyele, B. A., & Edelman, J. A. (2020). Building an apparatus: Disclosing affectivity in sociomaterial research. In Joey F. George, Souren Paul, Rahul De, Elena Karahanna, Suprateek Sarker, Gal Oestreicher-Singer (Eds.),

58  Becoming an assemblage ethnographer Proceedings of the 41st international conference on information systems, ICIS 2020, making digital inclusive: Blending the locak and the global, Hyderabad, India, Association for Information Systems. Schott, G. R., & Horrell, K. R. (2000). Girl gamers and their relationship with the gaming culture. Convergence, 6(4), 36–53. Sørensen, E. (2009). The materiality of learning: Technology and knowledge in educational practice. Cambridge University Press. Supercell. (2012). Clash of Clans [Android, iOS]. TenCent. Taylor, T. (2009). The assemblage of play. Games and Culture, 4(4), 331–339. TeacherGaming. (2011). MinecraftEdu [Window, Linux]. E-Line Media. Thomson, P., 2017. Play with your data. [Blog] Patter. Retrieved 24 May 22, from https://patthomson.net/2017/08/17/play-with-your-data/ Ubisoft Quebec. (2015). Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate (Standard edition). [XBox, Sony Playstation]. Ubisoft. Wherton, J., Greenhalgh, T., Procter, R., Shaw, S., & Shaw, J. (2019). Wandering as a sociomaterial practice: Extending the theorization of GPS tracking in cognitive ­impairment. Qualitative Health Research, 29(3), 328–344. Whyte, J. (2006). Research with children with disabilities. National Disability Authority. Retrieved 17 July 2009.

4 The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices

…schooling works by moving people and things along trajectories that ultimately situate them in spatial and temporal orders where only certain meanings, identities, and lines of action can be easily sustained. (Nespor, 2003, p. 98)

The face-to-face, ‘embodied’ experience of schooling is habitually assembled for students through a range of social and material elements – uniform, furniture, signage, resources, physical transportation from home to the school environment and transitions from the ‘playground’ into the school buildings. As the quotation above by Nespor (2003) suggests, these assemblages, which we label and recognise as ‘school’ and ‘classroom’, change relations between children and adults. Identities are assigned – children become students and adults become teachers. Humans are entangled with technology, objects and the physical school environment. Pedagogical spaces are also about the exercise of power – a spatial governmentality to regulate behavior. (Baroutsis et al., 2017, p. 1) The way that the elements come together in formal learning assemblages is a political act, that is to say, that power relations are inherently entangled in such assemblages (Baroutsis et al., 2017). Boredom (or engagement) in learning emerges from the activities and practices of schools and classrooms. In England, the National Curriculum (DfE, 2015) and external assessments such as Standard Assessment Tests (SATs), GCSE and A-level examinations exert a strong influence over the organisation of time in schools, creating a dominant narrative or imagined single trajectory for teaching and learning (Massey, 2005). Students learn what ‘matters’ in classrooms through the affordances and constraints available within such assemblages –what counts as participation, engagement and achievement and how it feels to experience learning within such assemblages. Classroom practices developed around education policy and assessment become difficult to challenge as they become mutually defining. DOI: 10.4324/9781003322689-4

60  The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices Relational approaches such as the assemblage ethnographic approach taken in this book challenge the perspective of learning as an isolated process happening within individuals or contained within specific educational settings. Instead, such approaches emphasise the importance of the relations between different elements and actors in this process. By including the material in educational practices, we can explore different modes of participation and shift our focus from affect as an individual’s emotional reaction, to affect as one element’s ability to affect another. By exploring how practices in classrooms and digital games are assembled and experienced, we can reveal how affects such as boredom are enacted. Spatio-temporal boundaries play a significant role in the shaping and influencing of affective experiences such as boredom. In schools, space and time are organised to perform relatively stable and patterned ways of enacting engagement. Predictability and standardisation are given high priority and artefacts such as seating plans and timetables ensure this by regulating movement and participation in lesson activities. The regulation of time in schools locates students, staff, technology and objects in particular relations. Currently, in schools, students, teachers, resources and location are organised to be materially present, at the same time in the same place, to acquire a specific body of knowledge in the shortest possible time. Presence is performed through the roles which human actors take in the classroom. Students within an assemblage perform their presence through their embodied participation, in physical attendance in the classroom or through the virtual presence of an avatar, in the case of digital gaming. In formal learning contexts, the enactment of presence and engagement is inextricably bound to the ultimate goal of achieving predictable outcomes. Sequencing and pacing are functions of visible pedagogy where the focus is on measurable student performance – knowledge must be acquired at a certain rate and content in the classroom is sequenced to meet age-related criteria. The power relations inherent in schooling structures and organisation and their influence on the regulation of time and space have a direct effect on the affective learning experiences of all students. Constraints on agency and opportunity for the classroom learning experience to be reshaped dynamically can create a sense of monotony and predictability, which can cause students to perceive their experiences as dull and monotonous. Some of the practices that entrench lack of dynamism in the shaping of students’ classroom experience such as feedback and modelling are explored in more detail in Chapter 5. As the shift to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated, when predictable outcomes such as GCSE and A-level examinations are disrupted, very different spatio-temporal organisation and regulation become possible for both students and teachers. Assemblages of technology, people and environment during COVID-19 lockdowns became highly mobile and unstable, with new affordances and constraints which were more similar to those in digital games. Spatio-temporal framings became much more complex and fluid, based around events rather than material artefacts such as timetables

The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices  61 and seating plans. Online spaces and practices tend to involve more simultaneous activity across multiple spaces and texts, which makes practices more difficult to fit into traditional schooling structures and practices. Indeed, (Leander, 2007) has argued that one of the problems of integrating digital technology into traditional face-to-face schooling practices has been not simply a matter of the material properties of technologies or human capabilities but rather spatial and temporal. The disruptive nature of COVID-19 lockdown schooling made researchers and teachers more aware of the spatial and temporal boundaries in face-to-face schooling as well as gaining an understanding of how differing modes of participation might contribute to the development of differing affective atmospheres, such as boredom or engagement. Gaming experiences, in contrast, do not generally rely on players, physical environment and gaming set up being assembled at the same time and in the same place for each gaming session. Nor do they rely on game activities occurring sequentially. Although many digital games use maps and overarching narratives or storylines to loosely organise activities, the game mechanics in most games allow the player to assemble their own game experience dynamically, or, as Consalvo (2005) suggests, players can create their own version of the game. This will be explored later in the chapter. In the next section, using Taylor’s (2009) suggestion that we explore the notion of assemblage with an ‘ethnographic sensibility’, I explore how the organisation of temporal frameworks at Farnswood School created affective intensities, which often caused boredom to emerge for myself and my participants. Temporal framings and affect in the classroom As has been discussed earlier, boredom is often described as an experience closely associated with perceptions of time, specifically with time passing slowly (Breidenstein, 2007). This can lead to students becoming bored and ultimately disengaged from classroom activities. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a phenomenon called ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991) describes experiences, particularly in video games, which are associated with immersion and with perceptions of time as being suspended or moving more quickly. Action and feelings of movement are seen as necessary for flow and optimal experiences of learning (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991). Interestingly, flow activities tend not to follow ‘clock’ time; they have their own pace and sequence of events. ‘Clock’ time is a concept borrowed from game studies which corresponds to real-world time, as opposed to internal game world time. In contrast to digital gaming, ‘clock’ time is very important in schooling contexts. The school day is dominated by ‘clock’ time, represented by the timetable, an immutable mobile, as Latour (1987) refers to such artefacts. The timetable organises not only the school day but the organisation of the curriculum and its content, which is heavily influenced by the demands of assessment regimes. Curriculum content is organised on several levels – by subject, by educational stage

62  The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices (age-related), by term but on a day-to-day level and by the lesson, a scheduled allocation of time for the delivery of a chunk of learning. During COVID-19 school lockdowns phrases like ‘learning loss’,1 students being ‘behind in learning’ and ‘every second is vital’ were prevalent in media discourse, highlighting the dominance of notions around speed and efficiency of transmission as crucial to progress and success, both for schools and individual students. Pace, or ‘the speed of delivery’ (Sangster, 2007), is seen as crucial for the maintenance of momentum in terms of classroom activities and delivery. Fast or brisk pacing of content delivery has also been associated with student engagement. Bernstein (2003), however, attributes the desire for strong pacing to the fact that it reduces pupils’ speech, instead privileging teachers’ talk. Teachers’ talk is assumed to ensure student attention and lower the likelihood of poor behaviour and improve engagement. Other researchers have pointed out that the relationship between pace, affect and attention is much more complex and nuanced (Lemov, 2015; Miles, 2013; Sangster, 2007), suggesting that pace should be a more dynamic concept, responsive to the needs of students and the nature of activities within a lesson. In digital games, where the delivery of content is not the central concern, pace tends to manifest itself primarily as movement impetus – that is the will or desire of a player to move forward through a game level. The way that pace is orchestrated is shared between the game structure and mechanics and the actions of the individual player, aspects I compare later on to the role of the interactive whiteboard (IWB) and PowerPoint in the classroom (Moss et al., 2007). In a digital game, a well-paced game level will have moments of action interspersed with calm (Davies, 2009). Davies uses music notation as an analogy to discuss pacing in games, considering concepts such as rhythm and flow. Too much calm becomes tedious, but too much action can cause the player to become desensitised to the action. Many of the examples Davies (2009) provides in relation to pace in games could apply equally to classrooms. He says that movement impetus can be created by three elements: threat, tension and tempo. Although classrooms are not ostensibly associated with the sort of simulated physical threats in many games, ‘threat’ is present in the form of various pressures such as the threat of censure from the teacher, ridicule from classmates, pressure to succeed and so on. Tempo, which Davies describes as the level of intensity of action and how much concentration is required to perform a task, is usually engineered by the teacher, perhaps through the introduction of time limits. In games, this is called ‘forced pacing’. Once planned, a game level is played repeatedly by huge numbers of players, making such planning time and cost-effective. Details are fixed, such as the architecture, physical options and visual features. However, the main principles, those of encouraging movement impetus and ensuring moments of action and calm, are principles which are often included in a well-planned lesson. Within the classroom, assemblage material artefacts such as timetables and calendars, whether digital or physical, play a role in regulating time (Davies, 2009; Moss et al., 2007; Wajcman, 2019; Zagal & Mateas, 2015) and

The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices  63 orchestrating all kinds of human and non-human actors, including physical spaces such as buildings and rooms. Timetables and calendars adopt a linear representation of time. This reinforces the sequential organisation of time referred to by Bernstein (2003) and the ‘systematic regimentation of human bodies moving in space to an x-axis measured in time’ (p. 10). Interactive whiteboards also play a key part in organising and managing the passage of time in the classroom. Multimedia presentations (often PowerPoint) and features such as timers, countdowns and visual cues keep students aware of time constraints for tasks and assignments. Digital PowerPoint slides are used as a linear organising structure for the lesson. The number of slides in a presentation can often dictate the pace as the teacher tries to ‘fit’ them into the time constraints of the lesson. Indeed, one teacher participant in my study commented: Well just pretty much every lesson … it could be like a slideshow that’s basically forty odd slides long… (Jackie, Geography teacher, School S, 2016) Moss et al. (2007) observed that the text design of the PowerPoint slides becomes a time management tool that controls class rhythm and pace. Student participation is structured by the teacher’s actions and the pre-planned design of the PowerPoint text and appears to play a crucial role in creating affect, whether positive or negative. Unlike digital gaming the flow of content/ resources is controlled by the teacher – the IWB screen is used to break down, link and connect elements of the lesson and its content. This plays a key role in determining the pace of the lesson as can be seen in Figure 4.1. On this slide, the activities in a Maths lesson are organised around a central concept, with related materials and different associated tasks in visual ‘blocks’. The tasks are organised by level of challenge rather than sequentially. However, the forward momentum is linear, moving on through the next slide in the presentation

Figure 4.1 Example of a pre-planned Mathematics PowerPoint slide.

64  The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices sequence. This forward flow of activity can both engage students and mitigate against their participation. In particular, Moss, Jewitt and Cardini mention differences between the shared use of the interactive affordances of the IWB and the teacher-regulated use of them. In one of their examples, students used slates (individual electronic boards attached to IWB) to participate in a collaborative problem-solving session. The embodied and verbal participation resulted in high engagement. Sociomaterial approaches regard the experience of time in a school as a ‘network effect’ emerging from the relations between students, technology, objects and the constraints and affordances of the environment. In such an approach, objects such as clocks, timers and regulatory artefacts such as timetables and ‘rounds’ in gaming all have agency in assemblages, producing specific affective experiences for the human participants. A significant contributory factor to boredom and the students’ experience of time in classrooms is their very lack of agency – timetables, clocks and school rules are immutable mobiles (Latour, 1987) that dictate the pace, duration and ability to act. Gaming, by contrast, tends to produce more complex affordances for participation and organise time and space in ways which mean embodied activity in the classroom is experienced differently. Digital gameplay can be experienced in multiple settings via mobile devices and through different flows of time such as real-world time, game world time, coordination time and fictive time (Zagal & Mateas, 2015). Zagal and Mateas’ (2015) relationist view of time in digital games, similar to Mulcahy (2012) and her concept of ‘affective assemblage’, sees human experience as organised through events. Events establish periods of play, the constraints on the availability of the game world, in-game actions and basic units of play such as a ‘round’, which are regulated by in-game timers. Game mechanics such as ‘rounds’ have agency in assemblages which produce specific affective experiences for the human participants, speeding up or slowing down perceptions of time in the game. Repetitive or over-regulated structures within gaming experiences can produce boredom in a similar manner to sequential formal learning tasks in schools, as I will illustrate later in this chapter. In the next section, I compare concepts of space and spatial organisation in classrooms and digital games and the implications they have for the creation of affective atmospheres from which boredom may emerge. Spatial organisation in formal learning Spatial theory frames education as spatial practice rather than taking place in any particular context. The spatial metaphor, prevalent in sociomaterial approaches, moves away from container-like notions of the classroom as ‘bounded contexts’ (Fenwick, Edwards & Sawchuk, 2015, p. 83). ‘Space’ is something which is always under construction, continually being constituted through interactions and embedded in material practices (Massey, 2005). Classroom materials such as books, exercise books and pencils have established practices associated with them which regulate the use of physical space and

The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices  65 encourage different forms of student participation. Seating arrangements, both the arrangement of furniture and the placing of students within that arrangement, are important factors in the generation of affective atmospheres. In most English schools, the object or artefact which organises where and with whom students sit in the classroom is the seating plan. Social relations are constrained and afforded through them. Ostensibly, seating plans serve various practical purposes in schools, including aiding lesson observations and OFSTED inspections; easy identification of class members for cover staff; management of behaviour; social engineering such as grouping by ability or gender; encouraging collaboration and enabling visibility of the IWB. However, Wannarka and Ruhl’s (2008) review of seating arrangements in schools reveals that the majority of studies in this area were concerned with minimising disruptive behaviour or maximising on-task behaviour during individual activities, rather than improving the quality of the student experience. Wannarka and Ruhl (2008) conclude that classroom arrangements such as seating plans work best if dependent on the nature of the activity that students are taking part in. Classroom arrangements such as seating plans are, in a sense, part of the sense-making framework just as genre is in digital gaming. Through the arrangement of furniture and bodies students figure out ‘what is going to matter (in the classroom), why and how it should matter’ (Andiloro, 2023, p. 561). At Farnswood School subjects such as Music had desks in rows facing the IWB, which invited students to pay attention to the teacher, a practice commonly associated with direct instruction. The more informal, individual workstations around the edge of the classroom provided students with personal access to electronic keyboards and computers affording them the opportunity to work more independently and creatively. The Music classroom also had direct access to small practice rooms, where students could compose or work together without disturbing activities in the main classroom. These differing seating arrangements suggested simultaneous but alternative participation within the physical space of the classroom similar to Burnett’s (2014) ‘nested spaces’. Science lessons, by contrast, had an arrangement of high tables and stools around a central workstation which afforded sitting or standing and which gave groups of students access to gas taps and electric points which were required for practical work. In Geography, English and Mathematics, subjects which do not normally require specialised equipment, desks were arranged in more conventional rows, facing the IWB and the teacher. All these arrangements are important for the opportunities they offer for individual participation and agency in the classroom. To aid my analysis of these spatial arrangements in classrooms, I draw on the work of Mol and Law (1994), Fenwick and Edwards (2010) and Sørensen (2009), who use spatial metaphors, such as region, fluid and network, which enable me to discuss different patterns of relation and participation. According to Sørensen (2009), regions take the shape of a container or field which is

66  The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices defined by the people and objects within it – content and field mutually define each other, and these regions have boundaries. Classroom arrangement and seating plans are regions with inhabitants such as teachers, students, chairs, and the IWB, which have the same regional identity. Black boxing stabilises practices and ways of participating in these regions such as lab practices in Science lessons, putting up one’s hand before answering a question or the arrangement of the classroom around the IWB whiteboard to fixate the gaze of students, with the lack of such a gaze emerging as a form of disengagement. Black boxing also discourages scrutiny and review because these stable practices begin to appear ‘natural’ and not open to intervention or innovation. In fluid space interrelations between elements such as mobile technologies in the form of tablet computers, virtual and physical space, students and teachers are ‘incomplete and shifting’, with actors being able to move in and out of the network, single components can be missed, relations being made and cut without the whole network being disrupted. Teaching and learning practices during COVID-19 are a good example of this as are digital gaming practices, something I will discuss later in this chapter. Fluid space should not be seen as necessarily preferable to regional space – elements inform each other but the way they do this may ‘continuously alter’ (Mol & Law, 1994, p. 664). In Sørensen’s ethnographical account of regional space, locations within the classroom are enacted as student or teacher zones through arrangements of furniture and technologies such as the IWB – they are often not flexible or optional to lesson activity, as locations might be in a video game such as Minecraft. Figure 4.2 shows a homogenous ‘teacher zone’ in different classrooms. Students can only be invited to the teacher zone by the teacher, as I discuss later. A second region is enacted as the ‘student region’, where students are seated looking towards the IWB. These zones create a one-to-many relationship between students and teachers, but also between objects, teachers and students. The IWB is often intrinsic to the creation of the ‘teacher zone’ in classrooms. It acts as an agent to focus students’ attention on the visual representation of learning in the classroom, as we have already discussed in our analysis of pace in the classroom earlier. The teacher zone is usually located at the front of the classroom, with the teacher standing or sitting in close proximity to it. Students expect the ‘content’ of the lesson to appear on the IWB, or at the very least, the teacher’s expectations for learning that day. To perform engagement satisfactorily, they are required to pay attention and comply with the performance of tasks laid out on the IWB or as instructed by the teacher. Not looking at the IWB signals lack of attention, which, in turn, is associated with boredom and disengagement. As one teacher commented in an interview, I think that someone who is disengaged is looking around, not paying attention [my emphasis] can’t answer a question that you ask them directly … can’t think deeply about things. (Ruth, English teacher, Farnswood School, 2017)

The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices  67

Figure 4.2  Teacher ‘zones’ in Science, Geography and Computing classrooms, Farnswood School, 2017.

In Mark’s Geography lesson, (seen in Figure 4.2 top right) in contrast, the teacher placed herself at the back of the classroom, behind the students, in a sitting position. Students were invited to go up to the IWB at the front of the classroom (ostensibly the teacher zone) and operate the slides revealing answers to a short quiz. This slightly novel arrangement could be argued to have distributed agency between the IWB, the students and the teacher since attention was divided between them at key points of the lesson. However, the teacher had not shifted relations by ‘joining’ the student zone. In essence, she had simply recreated the teacher zone around her new location – there was still the usual physical space between her and the students, and attention was focused on her voice. Despite her sitting position generally being regarded as less authoritative than standing, by sitting on top of the desk she retained her ability to see and control the whole classroom – students, IWB and teacher computer. However, the novelty of this spatial arrangement, the varied pacing, the greater affordances for student movement and the requirement to shift their gaze appeared to engage and interest both Mark, my participant, and a majority of the other students. As we discussed in Chapter 2, surprise and novelty are also seen as key elements in retaining engagement in digital games. In the classroom, teacher zones are not only created by the IWB (Sørensen, 2009) but also by other items. In Robert’s Science lesson, during the

68  The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices demonstration of an experiment, the teacher stood at an empty group of benches, with students standing or sitting around him. As usual, there were two spatially distinct zones, one for the teacher and another for the students, with attention focused on the teacher. The experimental equipment had its own space, the teacher’s equipment set up within the clearly designated teacher zone and the students’ equipment (Figure 4.3) physically separated on a side bench, away from the main writing activity taking place on the student bench groupings. Placing the experimental equipment away from the demonstration constrained the students’ participation. At the end of the teacher demo, the students were allowed to collect their own equipment from the side bench and take it to their own bench, maintaining the sequential flow of the lesson. A slide on the IWB reinforced the procedure for the experiment. In contrast, in digital gaming, a demonstration on Steam or YouTube often allows the player to ‘play’ alongside in their own copy of the game, as the demo is occurring and to experiment with the ‘tools’ they will require to perform particular actions in the game. I will discuss this in detail in Chapter 5. However, students were not always excluded from the ‘teacher zone’ during my ethnographical fieldwork. In other Science lessons, at schools in my pilot study, students were invited into the ‘teacher zone’ around the IWB (see Figure 4.4). Rather than sitting, they stood around the teacher, interacting with them and with the board, creating a sense of movement and activity rather than passivity. This generated a greater sense of active participation on the part of the students. Other kinds of spatial relations (Alirezabeigi & Decuypere, 2019) were established by individual technological devices such as PCs. Alirezabeigi and Decuypere’s (2019) study noted the spatial effect of one-to-one interaction with vertical screens such as PC monitors, where the ability to protect the screen with the body configures a semi-private space in the classroom. In Computing classrooms at Farnswood School, rather than facing the front of

Figure 4.3 Experimental equipment zones for teacher and students. Farnswood School, 2017.

The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices  69

Figure 4.4 Students and teacher gathered around the IWB/teacher zone in Science lesson, School P, Dec 2016.

the classroom each student sat alongside other students, perpendicular to the teacher and IWB. To perform engagement, students focused attention on their own screen rather than the IWB since lesson content was duplicated on both IWB and individual screens. There was no requirement to change their focus or engage with other students, in fact to do so would risk being identified as disengaged from the lesson task. An example of the relations generated by this classroom assemblage occurred in a Computing lesson which I and my participant Mark attended. The lesson content, which was a programming exercise in Python, appeared in OneNote Class Notebook both on individual student screens and on the IWB. Students had access to Python script driver on their individual machines, which they could use to test out code as they wrote it. This afforded a high degree of agency over their own learning, once the initial teacher input had been given. Mark was a very enthusiastic participant in this exercise until he needed to ask the teacher a question. Rather than providing the sort of ‘justin-time’ prompt that he would expect in a digital game, the Computing teacher Terry sat down alongside Mark, on a chair and in front of Mark’s individual screen. As can be seen in Figure 4.2 (top left), the student’s hand is used to maintain a barrier between himself and the teacher. The teacher’s arm is reaching across the student’s eye line to point at something on the student’s computer screen. During my ethnographic study, it was a relatively rare occurrence for the teacher to invade the student zone and use a one-to-one relationship to maintain hierarchical relations in this way. Instead of engaging Mark, the teacher’s actions made him uncomfortable and bored (as he confirmed later) because the close proximity of the teacher forced him to pay attention and engage in the lesson content through dialogue rather than being left to interact with it directly as he had been doing earlier in the lesson. This suggested that students may become bored and disengaged when they lose agency over their personal space, time or actions.

70  The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices Seating plans are associated with a set of desired sociomaterial relations, whereby off-task behaviours such as talking to peers, not focusing attention on the teacher and IWB at the front of the classroom and being out of seat without permission are easily identified. Compelling participation is not the same as engagement. Restrictions to movement and personal agency appeared important in the emergence of boredom with the participants in my study. Using techniques such as the S.L.A.N.T technique (Chapter 2) to contain students’ embodied responses may prevent distraction but also run the risk of creating boredom. Constraints on individual agency, the inability to take individual action and to vary levels and direction of attention all run the danger of interrupting ‘flow’, which as we have already discussed, is associated with engagement in learning situations (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991). However, seating plans and classroom layout arrangements also create affective atmospheres to which students become attuned. Science is assembled for students by the differing furniture and classroom layouts, by the experimental equipment and by the routines which are established. The ability to manipulate and handle objects in lessons appears to have a direct effect on the participation and affective engagement of students in lessons, as The Royal Society of Chemistry (in Dillon, 2008) points out: …studies have shown that practical and investigative work has a marked positive effect on pupils’ enjoyment and learning of science. (ibid., p. 48) There are particular constraints in Science where equipment (objects) can be dangerous, as well as potential affordances which might contain attributes of invisible pedagogy (Bernstein, 2003). These include implicit instead of explicit teacher control and more students’ ability to reorganise and explore experimental situations. OFSTED 2005 (in Dillon, 2008) commented on the potential for boredom, …where pupils only carry out instructions from worksheets to complete a practical activity’ noting that students were ‘limited in the ways they can contribute. (p. 38) My discussion in this chapter explores the possibility of boredom emerging from schooling assemblages, if those boundaries produce practices that become immutable and entrenched. Boredom is strongly influenced by how time and space is organised and experienced. For example, the delivery of content through the IWB tends to create a sequenced, linear and potentially inflexible classroom experience. The spatial metaphor of ‘region’ has been used in my analysis to examine how homogeneous spaces may contribute to negative affective atmospheres. In the next section, I will discuss how the arrangement of time and space generates affect during digital gaming sessions.

The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices  71 Game genres: assembling affect through spatio-temporal events Ash (2016) suggests that we conceptualise space in digital games as ‘a space internal to the screen, a space of the body, or as an assemblage of body and screen’. In contrast to Moss et al. (2007), who regard images on the IWB screen as visual stimulation and a means by which to break up, link and connect elements of the lesson, Ash (2009) explores how an image in digital games can be experienced as an ‘embodied event’, something constructed performatively in a moment rather than something we just observe. Ash and Gallacher (2011) take an assemblage approach in which events shape or produce different forms of spatiality and spatial experience. Interaction between the player, interface and location creates the world of the game – the world emerges through the practices of the players. Digital games such as Minecraft, which are commonly used in schools and indeed in my study, produce very different spatial experiences from a first-person shooter (FPS) like Rainbow Six Siege. As mentioned earlier, video game genres create a framework for players to make sense of their gameplay experience – they tell the player what matters in the game, why and why it should matter to us (Andiloro, 2023, p. 562). The materiality, practice and embodiment which constitutes players’ participation in the gameplay experience has major implications for the way in which affective experiences such as boredom or engagement emerge or are performed. My analysis in the following sections draws upon Andiloro’s (2023) analysis of video game genres such as FPSs, sandbox and puzzles as assemblages exhibiting ‘distinct affective intensities that players attune to’ (p. 568). To set the scene, I will explain the characteristics of each genre before describing, through vignettes, how my participants attune to the affective intensities generated by their gaming experiences in Minecraft, Rainbow Six Siege and The Turing Test (2016). First-person shooter games

A first-person shooter is a game that is played from a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of a protagonist who is armed and controlling the player character in a three-dimensional space. The player can usually see the weapon that their protagonist is equipped with and is expected to navigate through the game using the game controller. There is a heightened sense of immersion and embodiment as many FPS games include sounds of breathing, footsteps and a rocking motion to emulate walking and running. Freedom of movement and the speed and immediacy with which the game environment reacts to one’s actions (Mayra, 2008, p. 108) also add to these affective intensities. First-person shooter games are usually played in two modes – mission/quest mode or multiplayer mode. Mission mode is the default mode for a single player. In multiplayer mode, you play with other gamers who are participating

72  The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices via a network in a shared game environment. The multiplayer mode tends to offer set kinds of gameplay such as: • • • • • •

Deathmatches Capture the flag Team deathmatch Search and destroy Base (a.k.a assault or headquarters) Last man standing

(Rouse, 2011)

First-person shooter primarily refers to the perspective of the game. Ash (2013) notes that FPS games are designed to be ‘intense spaces’ which absorb the player’s attention, creating a positive affective atmosphere. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege is a tactical FPS game with an overarching storyline about recruits going through training to prepare them for future encounters with the White Masks, a terrorist group that threatens the safety of the world. The primary goal revolves around a battle between attackers and defenders over a single objective – a piece of territory, a weapon and so on. You play as a team and there are five ‘operators’ in each team. Each ‘operator’ or avatar has special gadgets and skills. By differentiating players in this way, the game incentivises teamwork. The secret of success is assembling a good team with the right gadgets and skills to achieve the mission objective. Like Minecraft there are different game modes: Situation Mode (single player tutorial mode), Terrorist Hunt Mode (play against game ‘bots’ rather than other live players) and Multiplayer Mode, where you play with four other players in three different scenarios, Bomb, Hostage or Secure Area. The participant in my study, Robert, played Multiplayer Mode almost exclusively. As described in Chapter 3, I used a participant activity called a ‘go-along’ (Richardson & Hjorth, 2017) in which I asked Robert to play a game in his own home and to provide ongoing commentary through audio. Robert made two audio recordings of different gameplay sessions, and I used them, alongside screenshots from the game to build up a ‘re-enactment’ of the experience. Robert played Rainbow Six Siege in his bedroom on an Xbox console with headphones connected but with his laptop computer alongside. The small voice recorder I had loaned him was plugged into the headphones so that I could hear his teammates’ voices as well as his commentary. My usual approach as an assemblage ethnographer was to hang out with my participants (Minecraft Club and lessons) maintaining an informal presence or co-presence during activities. In this situation, since I could not be physically present, Robert had to use his audio commentary to ‘hang out’ with me. In the home context, Robert enjoyed taking the role of a more knowledgeable peer. He seemed at ease and an expert on this particular game compared to when we chatted at Minecraft Club.

The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices  73 Vignette - Rainbow Six Siege

Robert starts the recording by announcing which game he has chosen to play. He is aware that I may not be familiar with Rainbow Six Siege so to help me contextualise what I am about to hear he explains that: it’s similar to Call of Duty ‘cept for Call of Duty is run around, kill. Rainbow you’ve got one life and there’s three rounds and Casual. (Robert, gameplay audio recording, 12th March 2018) After some explanation of the ‘rounds’ and gaming maps, one of Robert’s teammates comes online and is greeted by him. Their group decides whether to play the competitive version of multiplayer mode, called Ranked, where players are ranked at the same level, or Casual, where players can play a quick match together no matter how good they are. Robert explains that he has chosen to play a character called Ela and his friend will play Valk. These characters have different skills, weapons and types of ammunition so this choice is strategic. His team are taking a defensive stance in this game so when the round begins Robert gets his teammates to place cameras and take up positions. Once the gameplay begins, the audio records a running commentary of Robert’s actions. A countdown clock is regulating the length of each round of play. It tells Robert’s team how much of the three minutes of their round is left. There are audio messages coming in from fellow players: Team-mate: That third camera didn’t work R: Didn’t it, did it get destroyed? (Robert, gameplay audio recording, 12th March 2018) With environmental and incidental sounds such as gunfire, a record of the round being played, lists of team members on his and opposing teams, his weapon sights and the environment itself, around which Robert has to physically navigate his ‘avatar’ using his game controller, there is no time to be bored. Successful players are those who ‘attune’ to the game environment more quickly and can take necessary actions (Linderoth, 2012). Suddenly, in the midst of all the action, the gameplay is interrupted: What’s happened to the frame rate? What’s happened here? So, the frame rate’s completely gone for some reason. (Robert, gameplay audio recording, 12th March 2018) Among the ways in which video games express temporality is through frame rate, or the rate at which the video game’s visual interface is refreshed. According to Ash (2009), this produces ‘the physiological experience of spatial and temporal movement’ (p. 2113). The temporal dynamic produces a relation between the ‘lived duration’ of the player and the digital image on the screen

74  The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices which emphasises movement. Frame rate or time in digital games typically echoes ‘real time’ or the actions or movements of the player. Slow frame rates, or ‘lag’, materially affect the player avatar’s visual movements on the screen, occasionally slowing down to the point where meaningful actions on the part of the player are not possible. In this Rainbow Six Siege game session, an opposing team player deliberately induces a glitch, which leads the game to ‘lag’. ‘Lagging’ is identified as interfacing activity, that is, participation in terms of control of the game and physical action (Schoenau-Fog, 2011). Visual materiality is enacted by the student’s direct control of their avatar with no separation between digital avatar and human player, what Sørensen (2009) calls ‘virtual presence’ is expressed here by Robert: I can’t even walk in a straight line because of this … we’re about to lose teammate because we can’t pick him up, we’re lagging like mad because of them, this is how cheaters win the game [1] this is when it gets annoying… (Robert, gameplay audio recording, March 2018) What gives digital games their material properties are the capabilities they provide, which afford or constrain the action (Leonardi, 2010). The affordances of such a FPS game are to allow the player avatar to move in real time at the same speed as the player is operating the controls, or as Ash (2009) puts it: …spatial movement is based upon the temporal immediacy of events as they occur, and on reaction to affective, sensory, stimulus. (p. 2115) The sense of flow and immersion is lost when players become hyper-aware of time passing, of the gap between action and reaction and can result in frustration, boredom and potential disengagement. Robert’s teammate: I can’t even watch the replay. [4] I can’t even select on their names to report ‘em I’m still watching b****y replay cos it’s taking them forever to walk and that … this game can be stupid [my emphasis]. In classrooms, it is possible that students like Robert, who are accustomed to the ‘qualitative and excessive movement’ (Ash, 2009, p. 2115) which is promoted by real-time image refresh in video games, may experience time duration in learning activities in a similar way to ‘lag’ in digital gaming. Relations between material objects, teachers and students do not afford individual human subjects with the capabilities to take actions beyond those prescribed by the teacher, actions which might allow them to re-engage in the activity. The visual interface of Rainbow Six Siege allows Robert to identify that other players have caused the ‘lagging’ glitch, which opens the possibility of

The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices  75

Figure 4.5 Robert’s Rainbow Six Siege gaming ‘network’ during lagging glitch.

searching for a way to regain control of movement in the game space. However, the game is not designed to be responsive to this kind of experimentation. Gaming assemblages are constituted by the relations between technological systems and software, the player at the keyboard or on the game controller, the online space of the game, the game genre and the social worlds and emergent practices of gaming communities – many elements of a network which shape the game and our gaming activity (Taylor, 2009). The specific Rainbow Six Siege game assemblage in which Robert was playing (Figure 4.5) intersected with the wider gaming network, a more fluid space, which offered him greater affordances for re-engaging with the game. Using other objects in his gaming assemblage, such as his laptop, Robert could enlist the assistance of other participants, such as YouTube, to gain information about the lagging glitch. This gave him agency over the material practices of the game, direct control over not only his avatar but also the entire interface, the virtual environment. Although Robert’s attention is divided between his laptop and the gaming screen, he is cognitively and affectively engaged by this disruption because the information he accesses outside the game gives him agency over the material practices of the game. I’ll research up and see if I can find ‘owt on it. (Robert, gameplay audio recording, March 2018) Indeed, Ash (2009) comments that players’ behaviour comes to be controlled by the ‘continued production of affective experience’ (p. 2120).

76  The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices In this section, I have discussed some of the ways in which space and time create affective intensities in FPS games. The first-person perspective, the invisible avatar and the relationship between game time and real time all contribute to the positive affect and sense of immersion that players enjoy and expect in this game genre which emphasises movement and seamless relationship between player and avatar. In the next section, I explore how affective intensities are created and sustained through the affordances and constraints of the ‘sandbox’ game genre. Sandbox games The term ‘sandbox’ comes from the concept of children playing freely in a physical sandbox. There are several genres of sandbox games – adventure (Grand Theft Auto, Assassin’s Creed, Red Dead Redemption); building (Minecraft; SimCity, Second Life, Little Big Planet); space trading and combat games (Elite, Freelancer); and survival (Minecraft, Ark Survival). Although play is an integral part of early learning experiences at school, in the later stages of formal schooling pedagogical approaches such as direct instruction often dominate and tend to focus on teacher agency and student compliance rather than the affective experience of learning itself. This book has argued that such over-regulated and standardised approaches to learning may be leading to the emergence of boredom in classrooms. To avoid this, we might learn how to assemble more positive affective atmospheres through the analysis of digital gaming experiences and the way they are assembled, both socially and materially. Sandbox video games are designed to offer the player the opportunity for ‘free play’. According to Breslin (2009), good game design rewards ‘free play’ that allows players to explore ‘glitches’ like the one discussed in the previous section on FPSs, test the game’s limits, and set and pursue personal goals that were not intended by the game’s developers. Whilst sandbox games are specifically designed with such affordances in mind, FPSs, such as Rainbow Six Siege, have much more limited opportunities. Glitches, for example, often ‘break’ the game or change the gameplay for other players as Robert’s experience illustrated. It can even result in players being suspended from the game temporarily. Free play does not automatically engender positive affective intensities, however. As a game developer and historian, Steve Breslin points out that a sandbox game can be boring if it is difficult to master, lacks reward systems, or does not provide opportunities for developing gameplay techniques or a sense of progression by encountering different levels of difficulty. A child playing in a physical sandbox needs direction to gain enjoyment and parents need to provide a meaningful framework for children to help them achieve this (­Breslin, 2009). In the same way that teachers structure and scaffold activity in the classroom, game developers have a framework for presenting sandbox elements in the game world. Sandbox games often express their ordering process

The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices  77 through a reward system which can involve providing new areas to explore, more difficult game structures, more storylines being revealed or more missions becoming available. Although learning itself is not a ‘goal’ in Rainbow Six Siege, the incidental learning of game map layouts and operator capabilities greatly enhances the experience of playing and reaps actual rewards in the game. Learning becomes its own reward, as the more you learn the better you are able to perform in the missions (Paget, 2020). Although reward systems are present in formal learning contexts, they are often not linked affectively to a sense of progress or integral to the ongoing learning process. At Farnswood School official rewards come in the shape of ‘Merits’, which are recorded in student planners. When enough merits are collected, students gain an achievement certificate which is presented at an Achievement Certificate Award Ceremony. However, the separation between action and reward is often problematic. In Leander and Lovvorn’s (2006) study of literacy practices in gaming and schools, they discovered that network continuity is crucial to the emergence of positive affect and engagement with an activity. The way that time and space are organised in classroom activities means that continuity is cut and engagement is lost. In their study, the participant submits a project which they have been working on for several weeks. It is two weeks later before the student hears anything about the project or gains any feedback, diminishing the chances of a link between activity and affect. There are some integral if implicit ‘rewards’ in most teaching and learning structures, however. Mathematics seemed to offer rewards more akin to games than any other subject I experienced with my participants. Structuring tasks into difficulty levels to provide appropriate challenges seemed to be common across all the Mathematics lessons at Farnswood School. Students usually had a choice about the level of activity they tackled. On a PowerPoint slide used in one Mathematics lesson (Figure 4.1), students were provided with a core activity (white box) around the concept of area and a variety of activities which were like side missions in sandbox games. Some activities were more challenging than others. Hints were provided in the left column. Completion of these activities often led to extension activities, similar to the opening of new gaming missions or map areas. Students were encouraged to try different strategies to solve a problem and to discuss their rationale for selecting a strategy. In another Mathematics lesson I attended, the ‘reward’ came from the opportunity to engage the students in physical interaction with the learning material by using an embodied learning approach. Students were encouraged to use ‘manipulatives’ to understand the concept of shape and plans and elevations. They were given coloured blocks similar to Lego and asked to use plan drawings to construct different shapes. This exercise was intended to help them visualise how solid shapes are constructed through a physical ‘sandbox’ activity. The coloured blocks could be put together, turned around to check views from different perspectives and then undone to try again until the desired shape was achieved.

78  The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices Even when there are opportunities to engage in learning activities in an active and embodied way there can still be the potential for negative affect such as boredom. This method of visualising 3D shapes proved difficult to master for some participants, including myself. The girl with whom I was working quickly lost interest in the activity when she had to disassemble the blocks she was given before we could even begin. Despite her best efforts, she was unable to connect the diagrams on the paper instructions with the blocks she was holding because the exercise relied on the ability to physically turn the shape you had built to the correct orientation to make a comparison. By contrast, my participant Dylan, a Minecraft player, was very adept at the task and rapidly drew in collaborators as he would have done in a Minecraft building session. Minecraft provides what is called an ‘augmented embodied experience’ (Ioannou & Ioannou, 2020), where an avatar allows the player to build a shape, walk around it, fly above it and view it from different perspectives. In terms of functionality, allowing students to build these shapes in Minecraft does not appear to have any obvious advantages. If learning is remote, as it was during COVID-19 lockdowns, remote Minecraft Education Edition sessions do offer affordances which make such an exercise meaningful. However, in the physical classroom environment using manipulatives and building a shape in the virtual Minecraft environment offer similar affordances, allowing students to look at shapes from different orientations (Figure 4.6). The question we need to ask, therefore, is whether the affective atmosphere created in each case is the same.

Figure 4.6  Paper plan drawing, student manipulating blocks and Minecraft world blocks.

The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices  79 When students first enter the virtual world of Minecraft Education Edition,2 there is an initial impression of ‘free play’ since the teacher does not have a virtual presence in the form of an avatar. Fellow students, through their avatars, are co-present providing the possibility of unsupervised, collaborative activity which is not freely available in the physical classroom environment. Although there are ‘virtual chalkboards’ available in the Education Edition, there are no desks, chairs and other ‘schooled’ objects in the environment around you. Unlike the classroom, where students move the plastic blocks around to build shapes and then check progress against a template (see Figure 4.6), in the virtual environment the student is the moving object. Students pick up and place ‘virtual’ blocks by moving their avatars around the virtual environment. This ability to move freely, unrestricted by the seating plan and without disturbing others may give students a greater sense of agency than could be assembled for them in the physical classroom. However, it should be borne in mind that the technical features available in the Education Edition of Minecraft have been designed not for ‘free play’ but rather to mirror the classroom experience. Minecraft: Education Edition (2016) has a huge range of educational and subject-specific content, in the form of ‘worlds’ which can be downloaded for students to play in and/or teacher guides/schemes of work and worksheets. This version of the game is sold as an educational game, with learning as the primary focus. Microsoft Minecraft: Education Edition is accessed in schools through Office 365 subscriptions which many UK schools have bought into. There are several teacher tools available in this version of the game - a tutorial world, a minimap for navigation, a screen capture tool and a portfolio for students to keep a record o their Minecraft activities for teacher scrutiney (Figure 4.7). Indeed, as the teacher, you can even add an extra layer of control called ‘Classroom Mode.

Figure 4.7 Minecraft Education Edition tutorial world (left) and in-game portfolio. This screenshot was created under Microsoft’s ‘Game Content Usage Rules’ using assets from Minecraft Education Edition. Sources: © Microsoft Corporation. Used with permission.

80  The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices Teachers have virtual blackboards or chalkboards, controls that let them turn off chats, weather, manipulate day/night cycles, and freeze game activities to draw students’ attention, much as the teacher did in the physical classroom when they stopped students from making shapes and asked them to listen. There is a world map and a class roster so that the teacher can track the students in-world and teleport them to desired parts of the map. Lesson plans prescribe what students do in the world for example on a lesson plan for Area and Volume,3 under student activities it says: Students should write the answers on the nearby chalkboards and take a screenshot or use the in-game camera to document their work. To simplify this process, have students number the puzzles and write their answers on a piece of paper… By turning Minecraft into an educational game, many of the sandbox elements of the game have been lost. A classroom lesson is replicated in a virtual world, together with the standardisation required of educational resources. The commercial sandbox game Minecraft was created in 2011 and published by Mojang. This version of Minecraft provides an ‘empty’ world, albeit with biomes and digital resources in the form of blocks, but the structure and direction of play are left to the player and most importantly, there is no concrete goal or end to the game. Minecraft has many features of an emergent game structure because of the high level of player agency. Minecraft’s basic activity revolves around players building things with a variety of different ‘blocks’ in a 3D world. There are several gameplay modes, the two most popular being Survival and Creative modes. In Survival mode (the default mode) the player needs to collect resources to avoid dying either by being killed by monsters or by starving. In Creative mode the player already has unlimited resources with which to build and the ability to fly, which gives them a useful overview of the world they may wish to build in. Duncan (2011) suggests that it is the interplay between Minecraft’s two game mechanics, building and surviving, which prevents the game from becoming boring. The construction activities available can be very relaxing and absorbing but also become repetitive, time-consuming and gruelling. Survival mode, on the other hand, provides challenge and pace and requires varied responses but can also induce anxiety. Another key attraction of Minecraft is that the player worlds and realms (into which other players can be invited) are perpetual. When players build, particularly in Creative mode, they know that they can revisit the world at any time and pick up their activities from where they left off, whether solo or multiplayer. One of the features of emergent gameplay is the likelihood that the game will be played in ways the game designer has not predicted and modified by players to suit their own purposes (Juul, 2002). In Minecraft, the player is free to explore the vast game world, and there is a widespread culture of ‘modding’4 where players can create new gameplay mechanics, items and assets for

The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices  81 the game. A custom challenge map for Minecraft called ‘Feed the Beast’ (FTB) features a wiki which provides a downloadable client with a modpack, maps, textures and so on. Games as boundary objects We began this chapter by stating that spatio-temporal boundaries play a significant role in the shaping and influencing of affective experiences such as boredom. We have explored the ways in which these boundaries are organised in schools and digital gaming environments. In this section, we will consider Taylor’s (2009) suggestion that we might also consider games themselves as artefacts which cross multiple communities of practice and hold multiple meanings. Taylor posits that the notion of games as boundary objects is useful because we can then analyse how practices form around specific games and contribute to the emergence of affective atmospheres. Bowker and Star (2000) discuss digital games as ‘boundary objects’ which are flexible enough to adapt to different needs and constraints whilst maintaining their identity. Within my research assemblage, Minecraft (and MinecraftEdu) played such a role, acting as a boundary object which traversed the lunchtime Minecraft Club at Farnswood School, a series of English Intervention classes and became the gateway game to my participants’ home gameplay experiences. As a boundary object (Shields, 2013), rather than a tool, Minecraft could be seen as a way to engage students because it remains recognisable across different situations and allows them to connect knowledge acquired in school with knowledge acquired outside of school. For students, Minecraft provides a sense of continuity and cohesion, encouraging them to make connections between what they know for themselves and what they are being taught in the classroom. Within the formal learning network which dominates most school settings, students are rarely able to enact ‘expertise’ or have their gaming capital valued. Iacovides et al. (2014) posit that this has a significant effect on students’ interest, confidence and engagement. Minecraft, and potentially other similar games, enable students to play the role of experts in the classroom, disrupting the hierarchical relationship between teacher and student and encouraging students to make connections between their own knowledge and knowledge gained in the classroom. As part of the English Intervention classes at Farnswood School, Minecraft became part of the network space of school, through schooled devices (­Burnett et al., 2017) such as iPads and PCs. The Minecraft game software existed as an object embedded in a network of practices and spaces and enacted differently depending on the other objects in the assemblage, such as the lesson booklet and classroom environment (shown in Figure 4.8). In English lessons, which took place in a non-specialist classroom, the commercial version of Minecraft was accessed via the iOS app on a set of iPad devices. The teacher regulated access to both the iPad devices and the Minecraft virtual environment. In contrast, in Minecraft Club, students had open access to the MinecraftEDU

82  The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices

Figure 4.8 English Intervention network diagram.

The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices  83 software on PCs in a ‘computer lab’. At home, the participants were able to access other versions such as Minecraft Java Edition and Windows 10 Edition through Xbox, PS45 and PC which enabled them to manipulate the software by coding some of their own gameplay experiences. In the English lesson series, the iPad and Minecraft Pocket Edition provided students with different affordances to either the Windows 10 or MinecraftEdu versions which are played on a PC. The iPads, which students used to enter the Minecraft virtual world, became what Burnett et al. (2017) call ‘schooled devices’ (p. 20), just one amongst many objects which make up official school ‘stuff’ such as booklets, pens and exercise books, as illustrated. iPads helped constitute ‘schoolwork’ which generates material outcomes such as poems, worksheets and so on and physical embodiments of educational activity as ‘individual and sedentary’ (Burnett et al., 2017, p. 32). Rather than contributing to a more ‘fluid and emergent teaching and learning practice’ (Meyer, 2014, p. 19), through affordances such as mobility and tools such as camera, audio and so on, iPads tended to participate in and contribute to maintaining established ways of learning, acting as extended official class texts like the Minecraft booklet (Figure 4.5) used in these English lessons. Minecraft was able to exist within the network space of school because it was assimilated within the timetable and lesson structure. It also intersected the boundaries between regional and fluid space – students were the experts in the virtual Minecraft world – the iPads had the potential to contribute to students’ performance of authority in relation to the teacher. By including Minecraft in the formal classroom environment, the intention was to enable students to make connections between what they knew for themselves and what they were being taught in the classroom. In this situation students briefly had the illusion of more agency, taking on the role of experts. The affordances which enabled such expertise to be enacted included the iPad and touchscreen, the Minecraft virtual world and the students’ knowledge of gaming practices. Such affordances can create non-hierarchical relations between adults and children – what Sørensen (2009) would call ‘presence’ – and change the nature of affective engagement. Presence refers to the …spatial arrangement of social and material entities through which certain ways of participating are made available. (p. 138) In English Intervention lessons Minecraft did appear to act as a boundary object, disrupting hierarchical relations between teacher and student through the introduction of iPads, the Minecraft game and an unconventional seating plan. Students became the experts, bringing the knowledge they had gained about both iPad devices and digital gaming in out-of-school settings into the classroom. However, typical relations were quickly re-established through the agency of objects such as the lesson booklet, which emphasised the dominance

84  The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices of writing in the performance of engagement. The potential for boredom to emerge from framing Minecraft practices as writing was high – I discuss this in Chapter 5. Such a framing constrained performances of engagement because of the repetitive nature of the activity and was compared to similar activity in digital games, called ‘grinding’. Instead, an alternative model was offered where the affordances of the virtual Minecraft environment could become the focus of lesson activity rather than a means to an end. In comparison to Minecraft, the video game FIFA, which was played in an after-school club, was successful as a boundary object. In contrast to Minecraft, activity within the FIFA game was central to relations in the gaming club, not a means to achieve an educational goal. The lack of spatio-temporal constraints and established schooling practices enabled students to demonstrate expertise acquired out-of-school but create connections between in and out-of-school activities. In addition, much affective engagement was generated by the non-hierarchical relationships with teachers, which was possible in this alternative assemblage. The after-school Gaming Club took place on a couple of evenings a week, in two adjacent classrooms, one of which was used for the lunchtime Minecraft Club. It was organised by the Minecraft Club teacher, who brought a couple of PS4 consoles to the school specifically for club use. The purpose of the club was purely social, with competitive gameplay akin to the esports gaming tournaments which are popular worldwide, such as FIFA eWorld Club. Staff and students were invited to participate in a knock-out tournament playing the FIFA game (EA Sports). Markovits and Green’s (2017) remark on the role of such sports games in creating a social narrative which affects people beyond the playing of the actual game. FIFA, like Minecraft, acts as a boundary object, linking home and school through the creation of an affective assemblage of games, technology (PS4 consoles) school context, students and teachers. Each classroom was set up with a PS4 console at the front of the classroom and chairs for two players facing a large screen. The other participants (50 people approx.) could sit or stand behind the players to watch the action and await their turn to play. A leaderboard was pinned to the wall and was updated by the organiser as each game was played. The game graphics and mechanics are very realistic, which adds to the feeling of continuity between it and the real-life world of football. Similar to other sports video games, FIFA is often played in front of an audience, as it was on this occasion. The game enables two players to compete through their on-screen teams. The audience gives a heightened intensity of social relations between human actors with material elements such as the positioning of a large screen at the front of the classroom and chairs facing that screen contributing to this. Sports video games, and FIFA in particular, provide players with a huge amount of information about real-life players, clubs, managers, history and more. As a result, students are as likely to have extensive information about football and players as teachers and more likely to be expert players of the FIFA game. Unlike Minecraft in the English classroom, FIFA gameplay was

The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices  85 not supplanted by schooling practices. Despite the classroom environment in which the gaming club took place, students’ own knowledge, gained in out-ofschool contexts, was valued and acknowledged. The FIFA game itself remained recognisable in the school gaming club context, enabling students to maintain a sense of continuity and cohesion between their out-of-school social gaming practices and in-school extracurricular activities such as the gaming club. This enabled a re-configuration of relations between teachers, students, technology and games to emerge within the school network. Students were more likely to engage in the whole school experience when the network of school activities extended beyond the curriculum. Summary In this chapter, I have taken a relational approach to the organisation of space and time in schools. In such an approach boredom is regarded as a network effect which emerges from the relations between people, objects, technology and environment, relations which are dictated by current education policy and assessment requirements. As such, rather than regarding classrooms as ‘containers’ and learning as an isolated process, I have explored how the affective experience of formal learning is assembled through specific spatio-temporal practices and compared these practices with those of digital gaming. I have explored the dynamics of time, space and agency within the classroom context and compared them to gaming experiences highlighting how the organisation of time, pacing and spatial arrangements can shape affective atmospheres, affecting student engagement and potentially leading to boredom. The role of technological tools like IWBs and the distinction between fluid and regional space are explored, along with the impact of different seating arrangements on participation and agency. Sociomaterial approaches such as the one adopted in this book move away from space as a ‘bounded context’. Instead, space is constructed through interaction and material practices. The conceptualisation of space in digital games is compared with classrooms, primarily focusing on the spatial experiences in different game genres, particularly FPS games. Ash (2016) and Ash and ­Gallacher (2011) highlight the different ways space is understood in digital games – as a space internal to the screen, a space of the body, or as an assemblage of body and screen. This contrasts with Moss et al. (2007), who view images on IWBs as visual stimuli. In contrast, Ash and Gallacher explore how images in digital games can be experienced as embodied events rather than mere observations. Game mechanics allow players to dynamically assemble their own gaming experiences, which gives rise to various affective experiences such as boredom and engagement. Through a vignette of gameplay in Rainbow Six Siege I analysed how my participant attuned himself to these intensities through the material properties of the game and the capabilities it afforded. The Rainbow Six Siege vignette revealed different affordances or constraints which were capable of generating negative

86  The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices affect in the form of boredom. Temporal affordances usually allow player avatars to move in real time at the same speed as the player. When a deliberately induced ‘glitch’ caused ‘lagging’ in the game, perception of time passing slowed down, the ability to act was severely limited and the potential for boredom to emerge increased. However, Robert’s game assemblage included access to a laptop through which he was able to employ a ‘fix’ and re-engage with the game. The concept of assemblages is used to explain the interconnectedness of various elements, such as technology, software, player agency and social aspects, which contribute to the overall gaming experience. The comparison between formal classroom lessons and sandbox gaming experiences reveals the potential to create affective atmospheres in both contexts. In classroom settings, integrating rewards, challenge levels and embodied learning approaches can enhance student engagement. However, traditional classroom structures can disrupt the continuity required for sustained positive affect. Drawing on my experiences as an assemblage ethnographer, in Chapter 5 I  will explore how feedback and modelling practices are assembled in classrooms and digital gaming and the elements of these assemblages which appear to generate boredom. Notes 1 Learning during the pandemic: quantifying lost learning – GOV.UK (www.gov. uk). 2 This version of the game is sold as an educational game, with learning as the primary focus. Microsoft Minecraft Education Edition is accessed in schools through Office 365 subscriptions which many UK schools have bought into. 3 Minecraft Education Edition website, Lesson Plans, Area and Volume. https://rb. gy/5ag1l 4 Minecraft “mods” (short for “modifications”) are changes or modifications made to the game to alter the original gameplay. https://codakid.com/what-are-minecraftmods-a-quick-guide-for-parents/ 5 Sony PlayStation 4 games console, with game controllers, necessary for a full experience of FIFA game, where efficient movement is vital.

References Alirezabeigi, S., & Decuypere, M. (2019). Classroom spaces in the making: A sociomaterial account of digital screens in BYOD schools. In N. Vansieleghem, J. Vlieghe & M. Zahn (Eds.), Education in the age of the screen: Possibilities and transformations in technology (pp. 51–67). Routledge. Andiloro, A. (2023). Understanding genre as atmospheric assemblage: The case of videogames. Television & New Media, 24(5), 559–570. Ash, J. (2009). Emerging spatialities of the screen: Video games and the reconfiguration of spatial awareness. Environment and Planning A, 41(9), 2105–2124. Ash, J. (2013). Technologies of captivation: Videogames and the attunement of affect. Body & Society, 19(1), 27–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X11411737

The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices  87 Ash, J. (2016). Video games. In P. Adams, J. Craine & J. Dittmer (Eds.), The Routledge research companion to media geography (pp. 119–135). Routledge. Ash, J., & Gallacher, L. A. (2011). Cultural geography and videogames. Geography Compass, 5(6), 351–368. Baroutsis, A., Comber, B., & Woods, A. (2017). Social geography, space, and place in education. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Retrieved 19 September 2022, from https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.115 Bernstein, B. (2003). The structuring of pedagogic discourse (1st ed., Vol. 4). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203011263 Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (2000). Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. MIT Press. Breidenstein, G. (2007). The meaning of boredom in school lessons. Participant observation in the seventh and eighth form. Ethnography and Education, 2(1), 93–108. Breslin, S. (2009). The history and theory of sandbox gameplay. Game Developer. Retrieved February 2023, from https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-historyand-theory-of-sandbox-gameplay Bulkhead Interactive. (2016). The Turing Test [Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows] Bulkhead Interactive, Square Enix Collective. Burnett, C. (2014). Investigating pupils’ interactions around digital texts: A spatial perspective on the “classroom-ness” of digital literacy practices in schools. Educational Review, 66(2), 192–209. Burnett, C., Merchant, G., Simpson, A. & Walsh, M. (2017). The case of the iPad: ­Mobile literacies in education. Springer. Coldwood Interactive AB. (2018). Unravel 2 [Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, XBox Cloud Gaming]. Electronic Arts. Consalvo, M. (2005). Rule sets, cheating, and magic circles: Studying games and ethics. The International Review of Information Ethics, 4, 7–12. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience / Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Harper Perennial. Davies, M. (2009). Examining game pace: How single-player levels tick. Game Developer. Retrieved March 2022, from https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/ examining-game-pace-how-single-player-levels-tick Department for Education. (2015). National curriculum in England: Primary curriculum. Retrieved 9 December 2022, from https://www.gov.uk/government/­ publications/national-curriculum-in-england-primary-curriculum Digital Anvil. (2003). Freelancer [Microsoft Windows] Microsoft Game Studios. Dillon, J., 2008. A review of the research on practical work in school science (pp. 1–9). King’s College. Duncan, S. C. (2011). Minecraft, beyond construction and survival. Well Played: A Journal on Video Games, Value and Meaning, 1(1), 1–22. Fenwick, T., & Edwards, R. (2010). Actor-network theory in education. Routledge. Fenwick, T., Edwards, R., & Sawchuk, P. (2015). Emerging approaches to educational research: Tracing the socio-material. Taylor & Francis. Frontier Developments. (2015). Elite Dangerous [XBox One, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, macOS] Frontier Developments plc. Iacovides, I., McAndrew, P., Scanlon, E. & Aczel, J. (2014). The gaming involvement and informal learning framework. Simulation & Gaming, 45, 611–626.

88  The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices Ioannou, M., & Ioannou, A. (2020). Technology-enhanced embodied learning. Educational Technology & Society, 23(3), 81–94. Juul, J. (2002). The open and the closed: Games of emergence and games of progression. In F. Mäyrä (Eds.), Proceedings of computer games and digital cultures conference. Tampere University Press. Latour, B. (1987). Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Harvard University Press. Leander, K. M. (2007). You won’t be needing your “laptops today”: Wired bodies in the wireless classroom. In M. Knobel, & C. A. Lankshear (Eds.), New Literacies Sampler (Vol. 29, pp. 25–48). Peter Lang. Leander, K. M., & Lovvorn, J. F. (2006). Literacy networks: Following the circulation of texts, bodies, and objects in the schooling and online gaming of one youth. Cognition and Instruction, 24(3), 291–340. Lemov, D. (2015). Teach like a champion 2.0: 62 techniques that put students on a path to college. Jossey-Bass. Leonardi, P. M. (2010). Digital materiality? How artifacts without matter, matter. First Monday, 15(6). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v15i6.3036 Linden Lab. (2013). Second Life [Windows, macOS, Linux] Linden Lab LLC. Linderoth, J. (2012). Why gamers don’t learn more: An ecological approach to games as learning environments. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 4(1), 45–62. https://doi.org/10.1386/jgvw.4.1.45_1 Markovits, A. S., & Green, A. I. (2017). FIFA, the video game: A major vehicle for soccer’s popularization in the United States. Sport in Society, 20(5–6), 716–734. Massey, D. B. (2005). For space. Sage Publications Ltd. Maxis. (2014). SimCity [Microsoft Windows] Electronic Arts. Mayra, F. (2008). An introduction to game studies. SAGE Publications, Limited. Media Molecule. (2008). LittleBigPlanet [PlayStation 3] Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe. Meyer, B. (2014). iPads in learning: The web of change. In M. B. Nunes & M. ­McPherson (Eds.), The international conference on e-learning. Proceedings of the multi conference on computer science and information systems (MCCSIS), Lisbon, Portugal (pp. 13–20). International Association for Development of the Information Society. Miles, J. (2013). Managing pace in lessons: Some reflections and suggestions. Available online: Managing pace in lessons: some reflections and suggestions | joannemilesconsulting (wordpress.com). Mojang Studios. (2011). Minecraft. [Windows, macOS, Linux] Mojang Studios, Stockholm; Xbox Studios. Mol, A., & Law, J. (1994). Regions, networks and fluids: Anaemia and social topology. Social Studies of Science, 24(4), 641–671. Moss, G., Jewitt, C., Levačić, R., Armstrong, V., Cardini, A., & Castle, F. (2007). Interactive whiteboards, pedagogy, and pupil performance: An evaluation of the schools’ whiteboard expansion project (London Challenge). Mulcahy, D. (2012). Affective assemblages: Body matters in the pedagogic practices of contemporary school classrooms. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 20(1), 9–27. Nespor, J. (2003). Undergraduate curricula as networks and trajectories. In R. E ­ dwards & R. Usher (Eds.), Space, curriculum and learning. IAP. Paget, M. (2020). Rainbow Six Siege review - Breaches and cream. Retrieved 16 February 2023, from https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/rainbow-six-siege-review2020-breaches-and-cream/1900-6417459/

The assembling of boredom through spatio-temporal practices  89 Richardson, I., & Hjorth, L. (2017). Mobile media, domestic play and haptic ethnography. New Media & Society, 19(10), 1653–1667. Rockstar Games. (2013). Grand theft auto V [PlayStation 3/4/5, XBox series, Microsoft Windows] Rockstar Games. Rockstar North. (2018). Red dead redemption [PlayStation 4, Xbox One] Rockstar Games. Rouse, M. (2011). What is First Person Shooter (FPS)?. Techopedia. https://www. techopedia.com/definition/241/first-person-shooter-fps Sangster, M. (2007). Reflecting on pace. Mathematics Teaching Incorporating Micromath, 204, 34–36. Schoenau-Fog, H. (2011). The player engagement process-An exploration of continuation desire in digital games. In DiGRA Conference. Shields, R. (2013). Spatial questions: Cultural topologies and social spatialization. SAGE Publications Ltd. Skookum Arts. (2017). The Pedestrian [Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, XBox One, Xbox series]. Sørensen, E. (2009). The materiality of learning: Technology and knowledge in educational practice. Cambridge University Press. Studio Wildcard. (2015). Ark Survival Evolved [Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4/5, Xbox One, Xbox series] Studio Wildcard. Supercell. (2012). Clash of Clans [Android, iOS]. TenCent. Taylor, T. (2009). The assemblage of play. Games and Culture, 4(4), 331–339. Ubisoft Montreal. (2015). Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege [Playstation 4/5, Windows, XBox series]. Ubisoft. Ubisoft Quebec. (2015). Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate (standard edition). [XBox, Sony PlayStation]. Ubisoft. Wajcman, J. (2019). The digital architecture of time management. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 44(2), 315–337. Wannarka, R., & Ruhl, K. (2008). Seating arrangements that promote positive academic and behavioural outcomes: A review of empirical research. Support for learning, 23(2), 89–93. Zagal, J. P., & Mateas, M. (2015). Analyzing time in videogames. In P. Lankoski, S. Björk & E. Al (Eds.), Game research methods: An overview (pp. 37–55). Lulu.com.

5 Practices, participation and agency Feedback and modelling

Introduction Feedback is typically regarded as ‘a binary, dialogic relationship between feedback giver and recipient’ (Gravett, 2022, p. 1). However, in formal learning contexts, accountability frameworks such as inspections and exam results have influenced feedback practices resulting in a power imbalance within the process, which restricts opportunities for active participation and agency of learners. Gravett’s (2022) perspective relies on views of agency not as something restricted to individuals but as distributed amongst all elements in an assemblage and embedded in action. She asks us to consider how materials influence feedback dialogue and to explore the constraints and affordances of different contexts such as online environments versus face-to-face. The way in which material artefacts, technology and environment participate and have agency in assemblages can shape individuals’ experiences of feedback and determine the potential for boredom to emerge. Feedback

Feedback has been defined as ‘…information provided by an agent (e.g., teacher, peer, book, parent, self, experience) regarding aspects of one’s performance or understanding’. (Hattie & Timperley, 2007, p. 18). Feedback is not neutral, however, but embedded in power dynamics that can shape affective experiences such as boredom. The authority and position of the feedback provider, the institutional context and the perceived fairness of the feedback process can impact learners’ affective responses. Power imbalances within the feedback assemblage can contribute to different affective intensities. In digital gaming, the purpose of feedback is to enrich the player experience, foster engagement and develop skills. Feedback provides players with information about actions, decisions and consequences of the choices they make during their gameplay. In formal learning contexts, the emphasis is on the improvement of learning outcomes. Feedback tends to be conceptualised within a transmission-oriented framework such as direct instruction. It is the DOI: 10.4324/9781003322689-5

Practices, participation and agency  91 ‘performance’ of learning, usually in written form, which often becomes the focus for feedback. Schools in the UK operate in the context of accountability, which tends to take the form of school inspections and examination results. This framework influences the kinds of feedback provided and the ways in which students can participate in the process. There has been a tendency in education policy in England to place undue emphasis on outcomes and assessment criteria. Mansell et al. (2009) suggest that the scope of assessment purposes has become too wide. Although low-stakes assessment or formative assessment can be a valuable tool for promoting future learning, schools are under increasing pressure to use formative assessment to predict future outcomes and lower the risk of a poor inspection or poor league table rankings (Page, 2017). The emphasis on external assessment criteria has trickled down into the feedback and reflection practices prevalent in secondary schooling. Many secondary schools in England use a process called D.I.R.T or Dedicated Improvement and Reflection Time. It should be noted that these sessions are a mixture of formative assessment and what Schön (1983) called ‘reflection-on-action’, that is reflection which happens after the event and leads to changes in the future. Torrance (2017) argues that formative assessment such as this is heavily influenced by external assessment criteria and therefore is more concerned with how these criteria can be met than a genuine opportunity for learning from mistakes. Feedback can be stimulating and positive and foster intrinsic motivation – it can be a ‘reward’ for effort, for example. However, as Hattie and Timperley (2007) conclude: Most current assessments provide minimal feedback, too often because they rely on recall and are used as external accountability thermometers rather than as feedback devices that are integral to the teaching and learning process. (p. 104) Feedback itself can be understood as an assemblage, providing not only explicit information to students about their performance but also the surrounding context, relationships, power dynamics and material artefacts involved with learning or gaming situations. The affective intensity produced by feedback is not solely dependent on the content of the feedback but also on the affective atmospheres created through social interactions, power dynamics and the material forms in which feedback is delivered. Feedback can be embodied in bodily gestures, facial expressions or vocal intonations, which carry social and emotional cues. By providing opportunities for physical interaction with the learning material and providing hands-on activities, embodied learning approaches assume a direct connection between the mind and the body. Material aspects of feedback, such as written comments or visual representations, influence student responses and subsequent

92  Practices, participation and agency actions. For example, artefacts such as forms or coversheets can constrain or afford opportunities for students to engage with feedback. Highly standardised processes and procedures such as D.I.R.T are used by many schools in the UK. The purpose of D.I.R.T is two-fold – to provide evidence of the feedback cycle for lesson observations and OFSTED inspections and to teach students how to meet assessment criteria. As school accountability procedures and assessment criteria specify the goals of D.I.R.T sessions, students and teachers alike often find the process boring and repetitive, and often fail to make the connection between completing proformas and ‘correcting of work’ and future learning. At Farnswood School (as well as at the other schools in my study), D.I.R.T sessions took place every six weeks and focussed on standardisation and data collection. As a result, an individual student might experience the repetition and monotony of the D.I.R.T activity several times in one school day, as was the case for several of my participants. Repetitive activity is acknowledged to generate boredom (Macklem, 2015) whether this be as part of gameplay or classroom activity. Writing itself is a repetitive activity, the principal means through which students are measured and assumed to be making progress in formal learning. Progress is often recognised and represented through the amount and quality of the writing produced in handwritten form. Handwriting is seen both as an end in itself – that is to become skilled communicators – and as the performative enactment of understanding, learning and engagement. In D.I.R.T sessions, students receive their work (usually a handwritten response) back from the teacher and are encouraged to reflect, write targets and make improvements to that piece of work. In principle, this sounds ideal – dedicated classroom time in which students are encouraged to focus attention on particular aspects of their work, reflect and improve it. In practice, this experience can be very different, depending on the way that the activity is assembled. Affect emerges from the relations between students and between students and teacher, the objects and materials available in the D.I.R.T assemblage and the constraints and affordances provided. In many schools, including Farnswood, there can be an undue emphasis on material elements such as proformas and the use of different coloured pens (Figure 5.1) for annotating work (Chiles 2021; Sherrington, 2023). By directing students’ attention towards selected aspects of the feedback exercise such as pens and paper proformas rather than the content of the feedback, it can easily become a formulaic, meaningless and boring process for both teachers and students. The key difference between D.I.R.T sessions and feedback in games is that D.I.R.T sessions are triggered by the teacher returning assessed work according to a clearly defined set of criteria. In a game, player action tends to be triggered by self-recognition of failure to achieve a goal or acquire a skill in a digital game. Visual and aural feedback is continuous. In schools, rather than students focusing on their perceived misunderstandings or shortcomings, the teacher uses a set of assessment criteria, usually based on national standards for Key Stages 3 and 4,1 to produce a list of weaknesses that the student is

Practices, participation and agency  93

Figure 5.1 ‘Purple pens of power’ poster - wall display, Farnswood School, 2017.

encouraged to address on a proforma. These responses to teacher feedback are required in a form that ‘readily translates into performance indicators…’ (Bernstein, 2003, p. 213). In the four schools I worked with, D.I.R.T lessons were identified by teachers as ‘hard work’ and potentially boring due to the constraints of the assessment criteria, the proforma and the formulaic nature of the lessons: …students need to know where they are, how they’re learning … how they’re achieving, what they need to do to improve but do they actually need a form for them to write it down, for them to get a green pen out and to respond to something I’ve said that … do they actually need that? (Teacher Interviews, PhD research data (unpublished), June 2016) In the following section, I analyse two D.I.R.T sessions, in which boredom was observed to emerge. I accompanied my participants, Lincoln, Stuart and Mark, to D.I.R.T lessons in English and Information and Communications Technology (ICT), respectively, as part of their normal school day at Farnswood School.

94  Practices, participation and agency The first session described here was an English D.I.R.T, for my participant, Lincoln, who was a Year 72 student. The students in this class were seated around tables in small groups. Their poems from an earlier lesson, which had been annotated by the teacher (Figure 5.2 middle), were returned to them. According to the original task sheet (Figure 5.2 left), the students had been asked to take on the role of a pilot or soldier and write a poem, giving readers an idea about their experiences and feelings. They were reminded to think about:

• • • •

choosing the best words and techniques to have an effect on your reader staying in the role you’ve been given (a pilot or soldier) using punctuation and sentence structure for effect proofreading your work to check for errors

For this D.I.R.T session, they were expected to use the teacher’s written comments and annotations, which were linked to the assessment criteria (see ­Figure 5.2 middle – 5.9, 5.1, etc.), to rewrite their poem. I immediately noticed a conflict between the affordances offered by the seating arrangement, which invited collaboration, and those of the paperwork, which invited individual focus and response. This conflict was demonstrated through the differing student responses. Lincoln, my study participant, worked individually, going through the motions of correcting spellings in his poem, using the dictionary placed on the central table. Another student on his table spent a lot of time trying to find alternative vocabulary for his poem, reading the poem aloud with new words added to see how they fitted in and asking group members for their opinion, just as the task sheet had suggested. However, this kind of response was very much the exception. The feedback practices were largely entrenched through the paper proformas (Figure 5.2), which exercised the most powerful agency over sociomaterial relations in D.I.R.T sessions. Students were directed to use a purple pen to respond to teacher comments, which were written in green on students’ written work and a separate feedback sheet (Figure 5.2 far right). The pens and the allocation of specific colours for teacher and student (Figure 5.1) demonstrate the belief in a direct relationship between input and output, within a closed system (Biesta, 2015), where teacher input can be demonstrated to have influenced student output in a measurable way. This demonstrated reflection and feedback as a performative and entrenched practice and emphasised the power relations in play. When different feedback practices organise and constitute space time in unique ways, these relations have consequences for learners’ agency, engagement and identity, effects that can be examined empirically. As Leander and Lovvorn (2006) comment: We treat engagement, agency, and identity as ‘relational effects’ (Thrift, 1995, p. 35) that are produced through the associations that … networks make possible.

Figure 5.3 Computing lesson – student website and OneNote evaluation proformas.

Practices, participation and agency  95

Figure 5.2 English lesson D.I.R.T proforma (left to right).

96  Practices, participation and agency The materiality of using a pen and paper to respond is prescribed in minute detail in many schools (Sherrington, 2023 and Figure 5.1 – Purple Pens of Power). Students following these guidelines are seen to be materially ‘engaging’ or participating in learning. Although it is possible to participate in a learning ‘event’ or activity without adhering to these guidelines, to lack more than one or two of these components would enact boredom and disengagement, as an interviewed teacher commented, …someone who’s engaged will … be writing an answer to the thing they’ll be studying or creating something that’s linking to the thing we’re doing. (Ruth, English teacher, Interview 1, 2017) As Fenwick and Edwards (2010) point out, ‘material things are performative; they act, together with other types of things and forces, to exclude, invite and regulate particular forms of participation’ (p. 7). Gravett (2022) also considers the impact of artefacts such as feedback forms in inhibiting or supporting students’ engagement with feedback. In the English D.I.R.T session described, opportunities for students to participate meaningfully in the feedback process were constrained by formulaic, repetitive and essentially meaningless actions such as using the correct pen, filling out proformas, cutting them to size and pasting them into exercise books. Oral responses were not encouraged, at least not initially. The proforma did not invite students’ own reflections on their poems. The overwhelming requirement to document the feedback process also limited the teacher’s participation; their main activity was to sit at the guillotine and cut proformas to exercise book dimensions. Students queued to have their proformas cut, using it as a way to relieve the boredom of monotonous activity, an opportunity to stand up and move out of their seats legitimately. Students were able to reassert their agency in the feedback assemblage, by avoiding written feedback whilst continuing to perform compliance. Earlier, I mentioned that an oral activity evoked more positive affect in a student who actively experimented with word choices. At the end of the English D.I.R.T session, the teacher encouraged students to read their ‘corrected’ poems aloud. The potential to create positive affect through the authentic audience reaction of peers was lost because it was treated as a rushed afterthought. There was no time for a genuine discussion of how changes and improvements might affect the possible audience reaction. Institutional agency was reinforced socially and materially, through the structure, pace and materials used in this D.I.R.T lesson. The criteria-based feedback, the use of the proforma, the necessity to produce a handwritten response and the use of a timer all combined to produce a negative affective atmosphere, primarily boredom. Students were restless, disinterested and eager to find other activities to escape the monotony of the feedback process. A large contributory factor in the creation of negative affect was that students’ anticipated embodied participation in the D.I.R.T feedback process was

Practices, participation and agency  97 constrained to handwriting. In the next section, I look more closely at the affective intensities produced by handwriting for several of my participants. Embodied participation – handwriting

Handwritten responses are the preferred method of demonstrating participation and providing the teacher with feedback on learning in formal contexts – they are the materialised product of the learning process, which is open to measurement and assessment. In the feedback cycle described above (­Figure 5.2), both the teacher and the student have to provide handwritten responses. In my study, this preference for written responses was constantly emphasised, through classroom displays and by the numerous objects associated with this activity in schools, such as exercise books, worksheets and so on. It was particularly noticeable, among three of my five core participants with poor handwriting, that constraining students to handwritten responses produced negative affect. Poor handwriting usually manifests itself by poorly formed letters and a non-cursive style (Figure 5.4). In the case of Stuart and Dylan, their handwriting was often illegible, to themselves and others. …when I ask him to read it back he can’t even read his work back sometimes. (Sylvie, Dylan’s key worker, Farnswood School, October 2017) Students who had identified themselves as having particular needs, such as Dylan and Lucy (both dyslexic), could even find the physical act of holding a pen painful over a sustained period of time: …if you just continuously just writing essays … you have to stop in the middle cos your hands always hurt so it’s easier … if you use computer… (Lucy, Minecraft Club interview, School E, June 2017, Appendix 11c, l.93–94) This lack of choice over the material means of participation greatly hampered their ability to participate in the prescribed manner required in the majority of lessons. Despite the value attached to handwriting, some teachers I interviewed acknowledged that the act of writing, to the exclusion of other ways of enacting learning, can be boring and disengaging for students. Teachers across the four schools made similar comments: I do feel sorry for my Year 11s because they are pretty disengaged, and I think it’s because it’s repetitive use of writing over and over and over again… (Ruth, Interview, Farnswood School, April 2017)

98  Practices, participation and agency

Figure 5.4 Examples of handwriting - Dylan’s (top) and Mark (bottom).

Practices, participation and agency  99 and Writing long passages disengages but we have to do that for exams… (JT, Interview, School S, June 2016) Conversations with two of my study participants revealed different ways to participate: Dylan: Erm … some lessons … like today … I had RE, and we was allowed to do some er … sketches of [1] of this person … and that – and that’s helping me with my mind and it’s getting me into like a happy – happy mood cos this morning I wasn’t because … I just had a load of boring lessons [my emphasis]. (Dylan, interview, Farnswood School, March 2017) And Stuart directly commenting on alternatives to handwriting: Stuart: … in English everybody could be writing a page and I could be writing three sentences … I’m not very fast, I can’t keep concentrated, all stuff like that and I find it harder. Researcher: Right and do you think it’s, it’s because a lot of it’s to do with text, text-based things rather than… Stuart: Yeah because in the lesson if they gave me a computer I could write two paragraphs in a lesson … handwriting it I can only do a few sentences. I can type faster [my emphasis]. (Stuart, interview, Farnswood School, March 2017) These students were not ‘boredom prone’. Their psychological attributes were not contributing to boredom in their lessons as demonstrated in their comments quoted above. Both students wanted to be involved and when given opportunities to participate in alternative ways, for example, through the computer or through drawings, they were keen to do so. Boredom emerged from the relations between elements in lesson assemblages which constrained agency and embodied participation. In contrast, in Stuart’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) lesson, a bespoke reflection activity created by the ICT staff in OneNote Class Notebook seemed to produce less boredom than the English D.I.R.T sessions. Rather than paper proformas, students were asked to complete an on-screen scoresheet, to self-evaluate their own website designs (Figure 5.3). The affordances offered by the digital scoresheet were similar to the in-game replay session in many digital games. In a game replay, the player watches their own actions as they happened, identifies their own weaknesses and mistakes from the direct consequences on the screen and can select appropriate

100  Practices, participation and agency resources and tactics for an immediate re-run of their activity. Agency remains with the player and the effect of any corrections made is immediately visible on the screen, generating positive feedback and affect. In the ICT lesson, Stuart had the means to identify weaknesses in his own website design and take immediate action to improve it. However, students were using externally imposed performance indicators to evaluate their design rather than their own judgement. Nevertheless, the distributed feedback assemblage (Figure 5.3) – digital checklist – student – digital artefact (website) – did provide the opportunity for more active participation and reflection. Importantly, there was no requirement for a handwritten response. Stuart commented that although he still found the activity challenging, the affordance of the keyboard rather than the pen ensured it was much more achievable and engaging. Even though the ICT D.I.R.T activity retained aspects which are often associated with boredom, such as passivity, repetitiveness and formulaic proforma, students had a wider range of affordances and ways to demonstrate their participation. In contrast to Stuart and Dylan, Lincoln and Mark were generally regarded by their teachers as academically engaged students and had much better handwriting (Figure 5.4). Their letters are well formed, clear and consistently sized, sometimes cursive and, most importantly, legible. Both were noticeably more engaged in classroom activities which required written responses. It may be worth considering, therefore, whether the many objects related to handwriting within the classroom assemblage, such as exercise books, paper proformas, posters and the assessment criteria which ascribe value to written responses, are creating sociomaterial relations which in turn produce boredom. In particular, do narrow restrictions on embodied means of participation and engagement heighten the likelihood of boredom emerging? As the example from Stuart’s ICT lesson demonstrated, technology can provide alternative opportunities for responding to feedback just as oral responses might have done in the English lesson. In the next section, I present an extended vignette which demonstrates further the role of written responses in feedback processes. As discussed in Chapter 3 as part of my assemblage ethnography of Farnswood School I took part in a series of ‘intervention’ lessons for Year 9 English students. The ‘intervention’ was designed to improve specific forms of writing – instructional, descriptive and persuasive writing for students who had gained low scores in internal assessments in this area. A key element of the intervention lesson series assemblage was the lesson booklet, which was co-designed by me and the English teacher responsible for Key Stage 3. The problems of the co-design process and the conflict between Key Stage 3 assessment criteria have already been mentioned, for example, the emphasis on handwriting in the design of the booklet and my attempt to incorporate more digital literacy elements in line with the focus on the game Minecraft (2011). In the following section, I will explore how the affective intensities produced by the agency of the Minecraft lesson booklet in English Intervention lessons had the potential to create boredom for students because of its immobilities and restricted opportunities for student participation.

Practices, participation and agency  101 Vignette – English Intervention as feedback

As Hattie and Timperley (2007) point out, feedback can also be ‘detected by a learner without it being intentionally sought’ (p. 82). The concept of ‘Intervention’ lessons in themselves, are a form of unintentional ‘feedback’ to students. By disrupting the spatio-temporal boundaries of the normal school day for the selected students and reassembling their English lesson in non-specialist classrooms with non-specialist English staff, the potential for negative affect to emerge was heightened. Students who were interviewed had a limited understanding of the purpose of the Intervention: Student: English Intervention was … (puzzled face) … what have I done wrong? You could tell what I’d done in Maths cos like it was stuff that generally people had done wrong and then English I’m like, but I already know this… [my emphasis] (English Intervention student interview, Farnswood School, May 2017) In the highlighted section of the quotation, the student is anticipating a repetition of content which they have already covered. The constraints in the design of materials such as the lesson booklet for the Intervention lessons (described in Chapter 3) also contributed to the growing sense that this ‘intervention’ represented ‘more of the same’, rather than an exciting new experience. The attitude of the children in the English class has changed from excitement and anticipation to weariness and acceptance as they’ve realised that the ‘intervention’ is just more of the same kind of activity they presumably do in their normal English lessons. (Field note, March 2017) Minecraft, rather than being assembled through the gameplay experience, had been created within the pages of the booklet as a means to achieve instructional goals – a game for learning. The stated goal for the English Intervention Minecraft lesson series was as follows: By the time, the end of the cohort, they should be able to use paragraphs, use discourse markers in their writing and also organise their thoughts and words in a piece of writing for effect, as well. (Ruth, Teacher interview 2, Farnswood School, April 2017) As an actor in the lesson assemblage, the booklet was the ‘focusing feature’ which exerted the most power in the network. The booklet, as a material entity, acted together with the physical context, the seating arrangement, the iPad and Minecraft game, peers and the teacher ‘to exclude, invite and

102  Practices, participation and agency regulate particular forms of participation’ (Fenwick et al., 2015, p. 3). It generated a material outcome and as Burnett et al. (2017) cites Dixon (2011), it was the physical embodiment of educational activity which is seen as ‘individual and sedentary’. In Sørensen’s (2009) study of the materiality of the classroom, she comments on the role of the exercise book in classroom activities. In her study exercise books, similarly to the English Intervention booklet, were each identical in format, immutable and therefore predictable. The booklet in my study was a homogenous region enabling the relationship between the teacher and the students to be in a ‘one-to-many’ relationship, so that she could ensure the production of writing from individual students, as can be seen in the description of one lesson below. In the first 15 minutes of the English Intervention lesson the students are sitting in pairs, with iPads and have entered the virtual world of Minecraft. This is their first opportunity to explore the Minecraft world and experience the constraints and affordances it offered. Some are experienced Minecraft players and immediately began to build houses or explore the terrain available, others rely on guidance from their peers, which plays well into the lesson objective - to write a series of instructions for a newbie Minecraft player. The teacher, playing the role of the newbie Minecraft player, is offline, in what Sørensen (2009) calls a one-to-a-half relationship. She constantly draws them back to the classroom practices by asking them questions about their actions and making a series of verbal references (7), …Good lad - are you rewriting these… …Right maybe you should write that down… …That’s quite a good one that, might be something you could write down … which culminates in the comment: Teacher:  Can I ask you, maybe, how many bullet points have we all done? Have we all managed to do about 6? (Lesson audio recording, Farnswood School, 14 March 2017) The clash between the material practices of the classroom and those of the virtual Minecraft world is demonstrated in this interchange: Student:  (to partner) Tyler, move out the door. Teacher:  What else can you tell me about…. Student:  it’s raining I’m going to shut the door. (Lesson audio recording, Farnswood School, 14 March 2017)

Practices, participation and agency  103 Whilst students’ attention is focussed on the material aspects of feedback from the virtual environment (the door, the rain) and affectively engaged in exploring the Minecraft environment, the verbal feedback they are receiving from the teacher refers constantly to the embodied act of writing. Although their avatars enact engagement through their virtual presence (Sørensen, 2009) and verbal comments, the teacher is looking for evidence of learning (feedback) in their paper booklets. Ironically, despite the emphasis on the quantity of writing and the reflection points indicated after every activity, the physical space constraints of the booklet (Figure 5.5) did not enable sustained or lengthy written responses. The strict time constraints on exploration of the Minecraft virtual environment and the heavy emphasis on written responses created boredom and disinterest. Similarly to the ICT lesson described earlier my original intention, when co-producing the Minecraft English booklet with the Farnswood teacher, was to allow students a greater range of affordances and ways to participate in the writing activities. Instead of relying on handwritten responses in paper booklets, I wanted to draw on students’ knowledge of digital literacy practices such as blogging, storyboarding, screenshots and photographs and in-game builds. However, the very specific literacy goals of the six-week English lesson series were at odds with the nature of activities and participation usually associated with the playing of Minecraft.

Figure 5.5  Extract from the English Intervention Minecraft booklet, Farnswood school.

104  Practices, participation and agency In my original booklet design, options were provided for responses to take the form of online blog entries, storyboards and in-game builds (Figure 5.5). The blog software (Office365 SharePoint) afforded fellow students the ability to provide peer feedback by leaving comments, likes or other emoticons on other students’ writing, from home as well as in the classroom. Very limited use was made of the blogging facility with virtually no peer reaction or comments. Ironically, the teacher’s feedback in the comments section of the blog was framed in conventional assessment discourse, rather than genuine audience reaction: Fantastic use of similes to create a beautiful image. Well done. I like that you have used the senses to help create a strong image as well. (Teacher comment to student blog entry, Farnswood School, March 2017) Although habitual Minecraft players are very familiar with online feedback mechanisms such as blogs, the more mobile practices of digital literacy were somewhat lacking in this context. The concept of writing for a real audience, in this case their peers, was not appreciated by either the students or the teacher. Unlike student blog entries, the written format within the booklet did not afford immediate formal feedback on progress. There was some rudimentary feedback through ‘pointers’ called ‘Success Criteria’ in the booklet, which reminded students what should be included. Teachers also provide feedback through the booklets by removing them from students and returning them to them later. This break in continuity between responding and receiving feedback is cited by Leander and Lovvorn (2006) in their comparison between digital literacy practices in video games and formal learning. Digital games, on the other hand, can provide immediate feedback on whether the repetitive activity or work of gaming is resulting in the skills or progress required to achieve the ‘reward’, promotion to a higher level or more peer status as a player. The reward for completion of writing activities in English Intervention lessons, rather than gaining peer status or access to new and interesting areas of learning, was often more repetitive work of a similar kind, at a similar level. Large language model-based chatbots such as ChatGPT have the potential to provide students with more immediate feedback on their writing, in a similar way to games – I discuss this later in this chapter. It should be remembered that the purpose of these English lessons was to improve the descriptive, information and persuasive writing skills of the students involved. When students were asked to build a house in Minecraft and describe it in a blog entry, it was their descriptive writing ability which was being assessed rather than the Minecraft house builds themselves. In the Intervention lesson today, students happily built something in the Minecraft world for 15 mins. After prompting by me they took

Practices, participation and agency  105 screenshots of their activity as evidence of their work. The teacher asked them to write a short description of their Minecraft builds in their booklets, with three paragraphs - the outside of the house, the inside of the house and their favourite bit of the house. The students were asked to type up these written descriptions of their Minecraft builds (with screenshots as prompts) on their blogs for homework. I suggested to the students that they take photos of their stories on their phones so that they didn’t need to take their booklets home. (Field notes, 28th March 2017, my emphasis) By substituting a screenshot of the student’s game activity, I circumvented this purpose since screenshots do not provide feedback on learning in a form that could be used to evaluate their performance. Verbal descriptions of Minecraft builds were also ‘unassessable’. By their nature, verbal discussions lacked literary descriptive features such as similes which were redundant in the co-present virtual environment. Female student: Leave my bed. Male student: where am I? Male student 2: Outside Male student 3: in the wall (Lesson audio recording, Farnswood School, March 2017) Writing about gaming experiences and sharing them with peers is unusual, but verbal descriptions are more common. This was demonstrated by Dylan (Chapter 6) and Robert (Chapter 3) when they were asked to provide audio commentary for me during their gameplay sessions. Despite not being engaged or interested in writing, as we discussed earlier, both students demonstrated a real awareness of audience when asked to narrate their actions. They addressed me directly and used descriptions to help me understand what was happening: Dylan: okay the start’s being at the base … what I’m seeing right now, it’s on the learner screen but I can see it looks like a briefcase and it looks like it’s in a training centre or something like that I’m not quite sure but hopefully it works … I can’t move around a lot but you’re hearing me clicking … I am in outer space I wish you could see what I can see but I see stars… (Dylan home audio recording, Oct 2017) Whilst Dylan attempts to recreate what he is seeing on the screen, Robert contextualises the upcoming multiplayer gameplay by explaining the game genre and mechanics to me in advance: Robert: Right I’m going to be playing Rainbow 6 Siege - Rainbow 6 Siege is a strategy game, it’s similar to Call of Duty ‘cept for Call of Duty

106  Practices, participation and agency is run around, kill … so it’s a strategy game and you’ve got one life every round so if you die you’ve just got to give call outs of what cameras so there’s maps and every map has cameras you can shoot out the cameras if you’re an enemy side and kill people - so I’m just going to be playing a bit of that. (Robert home audio recording, Oct 2017) This is not to say that discussion played no role in the feedback process in English Intervention lessons. On the contrary, the teacher consciously tried to aid the writing process by taking on the role of the newbie Minecraft player, providing the students with a ‘live’ audience for their instructive writing. Students’ agency was emphasised by the teacher enacting a ‘non-expert’ role in relation to the students and technological elements in the classroom such as the iPad device and the Minecraft game screen. By attributing the role of expert to students, the Minecraft game altered the pattern of participation and power relations – the technology, in the form of both iPad and Minecraft virtual environment, created an alternative assemblage which students found more engaging. An alternative regional space was created, not by the interactive whiteboard (IWB) or teacher zone, as I discussed in Chapter 4 but by the teacher inhabiting the physical world of the non-player and non-expert and students in the virtual world of Minecraft. The students were afforded the authoritative role of the expert, in both the virtual Minecraft world and through their control and knowledge of the iPads used to access the game. This experience was closer to students’ recreational gaming, where parents position themselves as learners and allow children to assert authority in gaming interactions (Gee et al., 2017). Whilst other adults do participate in interest-based gaming groups outside of school, they are ‘not automatically resident experts by virtue of their age’ (Ito et al., 2008, p. 2). However, they do have an important part to play – young people see adults as experienced peers rather than authoritative figures, people who have influence in setting ‘learning goals’ (ibid, p. 3). In the context of informal learning and recreational gaming, young people benefit from apprenticeship relationships in gaming affinity groups (Bricker & Bell, 2012; Kupiainen, 2013). Charlie, one of the students in the English lesson, remarked on such an apprenticeship relationship with his grandfather, I’m one of those people who like tinkering with things so … I used to spend quite a lot of time with my Grandpa … he was always in the shed and I used to help him quite a bit… linking this to his preferred teacher–student relationship, …Computer Studies it can be quite hard and like complex so they’re always there … if you need help, they understand … [my emphasis] (Charlie, School E, Interview July 2017)

Practices, participation and agency  107 Ito et al.’s (2008, p. 1) research raises similar questions about how young people’s practices around gaming and new media might change the dynamics around learning and authoritative knowledge. Using Minecraft in this English lesson disassembled the feedback assemblage if only temporarily – agency was distributed between teacher, students, booklet and Minecraft. This re-distribution briefly created different affective intensities, enabling students to become immersed and engaged in the experience of exploring the virtual world and empowered by the opportunity to demonstrate their own knowledge. As the lesson progressed beyond the ten minutes allocated to the online Minecraft experience, the lesson booklet re-asserted agency within the classroom assemblage and students became reluctant to participate, exhibiting signs of boredom. Instead of Minecraft acting as a ‘boundary object’ which could adapt to the different needs and constraints of an English lesson, existing literacy practices, especially those associated with writing and handwriting, appeared to be so stabilised and entrenched that adding different elements to a lesson assemblage, such as the iPad and Minecraft game, was not enough to alter practices, avoid boredom and promote engagement. A different lesson series could have made the gaming experience more central rather than Minecraft simply becoming the vehicle for the teaching of writing structures. By scaffolding a series of building activities and avatar roles in Minecraft, with a narrative scenario such as an apocalyptic event with a few survivors, students could have developed individual and collective narratives. These narratives could have been both performative and representational – that is, they could have taken the form of traditional written stories, accounts and instructions, as required by the assessment regime but also have been performed through building and collaborative activities in the Minecraft environment itself. By focusing on the material and embodied responses afforded in a virtual game environment, different affective intensities would have been created which may have prevented boredom from emerging. Feedback in digital gaming

As discussed earlier, the primary purpose of feedback in digital games is somewhat different to its purpose in formal learning contexts. Feedback is a vital and intrinsic part of the gameplay experience and plays a crucial part in the creation of affective atmospheres. The intention of the game designer is to inform, guide and engage players; to enhance their experience and to encourage them to continue to play. Although researchers such as Gee (2003) argue that games are rich learning environments, Linderoth (2012) argues that much of the gameplay experience is about making sense of the game world and becoming attuned to the game environment by making distinctions between different types of feedback. He argues that players can gain the illusion of learning from the affordances designed into the game when in reality, the progression structure of the game affords a feeling of success.

108  Practices, participation and agency Rather than evaluating the potential for learning in digital game environments, however, my interest is in how games use feedback to generate different affective experiences. Ash (2012) argues that game designers use game mechanics to modulate affect in games such as the speeding up and slowing down of time, an aspect already discussed in relation to Rainbow Six Siege and the lagging glitch encountered by Robert. To maintain player attention and continuing play feedback needs to operate in an ‘optimal bandwidth – a space between over-stimulation and boredom on the other’ (p. 18). In Chapter 4, I described how some of the participants in my study became ‘attuned’ to the ‘distinctive affective intensities’ presented in different game genre assemblages (Andiloro, 2023). In the following section, I analyse some of the specific ways in which feedback is assembled in digital gaming and how affects such as boredom might emerge from these assemblages. Tutorial and instructional feedback

The early stages of a game often include tutorials that provide feedback to help players understand the mechanics of a game. These tutorials can highlight on-screen prompts, tooltips, or instructions to guide players through the initial learning curve. In the Introduction to this book, I described my own experience of the game tutorial in Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. Many digital games begin with similar tutorial levels. In the adventure game Call of the Sea (2020), the player is exposed to the typical experience of the full game but given feedback in the form of ‘just-in-time’ textual and visual prompts about how to access information, how to navigate the environment and how to succeed (Figure 5.6). Players can practise what they have learnt immediately, in a low-stakes but authentic game environment until the player feels confident that they have mastered the key game mechanics. After the tutorial they can progress into the full game experience when they feel ready – the pace of such progress is dictated by the player in a way that is not usually possible for a student in the classroom. In the game Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, the Situation Mode is designed to provide a similar tutorial experience. Situation Mode allows the player to learn some challenging skills in ‘single player’ mode without the embarrassment of letting down their team members or performing badly in front of the opposing team in the Multiplayer mode. The first mission in Situation Mode is called CQB or Clear the Base (of enemy combatants). A briefing is given where you watch as a player moves through the game map and the commentary advises you of key things to remember such as Check Corners and Reduce Exposure. When you start to play, the Mission objectives are on the screen, at the top of the screen It tells you how many enemies remain, what weapons you have used, a compass to map your direction and so on. Game bots play the role of your ‘team’ and will shout helpful instructions. At the end of the ‘round’, you are given a debriefing on how you have done. Building on this initial

Practices, participation and agency  109

Figure 5.6 Call of the Sea tutorial screen. Source: © Out of the Blue Games. Permission granted.

feedback you can then attempt the next level, which is Suburban Extraction where a new set of objectives and skills are needed. The interesting aspect of these tutorial rounds is that although you are given some ‘instructions’ they are limited and you are immediately plunged into a situation where you must try out what you have been told. Most of the learning is done by playing the round, rather than relying on the input given in the Briefing. In contrast, although demonstrations and modelling are common in classroom situations, there are often constraints on students’ individual ability to rehearse what they have been told in real time. The ability to manipulate and handle objects in lessons appears to have a direct effect on the participation and affective engagement of students in lessons, as I discussed in Chapter 4. Being deprived of the ability to actively manipulate their own experience was associated with boredom and lack of enjoyment (Dillon, 2008). In a teacher interview in School S, I asked the teacher to give me an example of a lesson in which students had experienced a high degree of positive affect, of engagement. The teacher, Tom, described a Year 7 lesson in which students were encouraged to design their own experiment, to prove that acid rain damages plants and animals. The process included a degree of ‘trial and error’, an approach which is common in digital gaming. The acid rain lesson generated a positive affective atmosphere because the elements in the assemblage included an outside location and afforded immediate access to materials, such as a range of scientific equipment and natural materials in the physical setting. The students were

110  Practices, participation and agency affectively and cognitively engaged by the opportunity to participate with objects such as rocks, plants and insects. There were multiple ways to perform engagement and by implication, less ways to perform disengagement or to become bored. Visual, audio and haptic feedback

Sweetser and Wyeth’s (2005) review of the literature on usability and user experience in games identifies feedback as one of eight core elements of player enjoyment and immersion in games. These core elements overlap closely with the elements of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991), a concept associated with enjoyment and positive affect. Feedback in first-person shooter games such as Rainbow Six Siege visually and aurally notify the players of their status – player health, weapon ammunition status, direction of enemy fire and interactive elements in the environment. Players also get updated feedback on their mission objectives and goals (Sweetser et al., 2017). The avatar is a key affordance in providing feedback to the player – it extends the boundary of the player’s body, giving them agency in the game world. It is not just learning about how to navigate on the screen but also controlling physically what you do with your hands on the game controller. Most game consoles or PC games have specific buttons or keys which control different actions on the screen. On a PC, this is usually the W, A, S and D buttons on the keyboard. Figure 5.7 shows the buttons you need to learn to operate on a Microsoft Xbox One controller when playing Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege.

Figure 5.7 Xbox One controls for Rainbow Six Siege. Sources: https://rainbowsixsiege-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Controls

Practices, participation and agency  111 Some controllers or smartphones have haptic feedback capabilities that provide physical sensations to players (haptic feedback), enhancing the overall gaming experience. Embodied feedback such as ‘rumble’ in game controllers ensure that a game’s controls feel responsive, it is crucial to provide feedback to player input as close as possible to the window of simultaneity (Söderström et al., 2022). Automated processes in commercial sandbox games enable the concept of ‘directed responsiveness’, which Breslin asserts is essential to engaging sandbox play because it engenders this very sense of player agency whilst the game still controls the framework. Sandbox games make these automated responses interesting to the players by giving them the sense that their reaction to a stimulus is closely followed by a response from the game. In digital games, this is called an ‘emergent behaviour’. For example, in Minecraft, if the player breaks a ‘sand’ block this action can lead to several outcomes. The game can respond by causing a collapse of other blocks underneath it – the ‘sand’ reacts as sand would do in the physical world. The action of breaking a sand block also causes the game to add that block to your ‘inventory’, a virtual space for storing resources in the Survival mode of the game. If the player places several sand blocks on a ‘furnace’ block, the game gives you a glass block in return. From glass blocks you can make windows and transparent screens. Through directed responsiveness, you as the player, have agency over materials you encounter in the game world – there are multiple ways for both you and the game to participate in the gameplay experience. A fairly common way of helping players to see affordances in a game environment is to graphically highlight the things you can interact with. In Figure 5.8 from a click-and-point adventure game called Empress of The Deep 2: Song of The Blue Whale (2011), areas of the screen image are surrounded by sparkling lights which indicate that the player should click there for instructions, parts of the game to be revealed or objects to be collected. When the player clicks on a collectible object, a sound indicates that they have acquired it for later use or that they have reached a goal like acquiring more health. Similarly, in the bottom right of the picture, a magnifying glass allows the player to look more closely at an area of the map. The use of hints is also common in this game genre but usually on a timed basis – once the player has used a hint, there is a set time period before the HINTS area becomes available again. Hints are specific to either the puzzle you are playing or the area of the map you are in. This affordance provides the player with help to prevent frustration but discourages wholesale ‘cheating’ with the use of the timer. Other scaffolding includes a Strategy Guide, which takes you through different areas of the map, giving you an overview of the actions to be performed. A diary, or logbook in the bottom left of the screen, keeps track of the overarching narrative and stores information gained which may be used to solve later puzzles. Sound is also an important aspect of game feedback, particularly for generating affect. By alternating and signalling calm and action-packed sequences

112  Practices, participation and agency

Figure 5.8 Empress of the Deep: Song of the Blue Whale tutorial screen. Source: Used with permission.

with music, the player gains information but also a sense of tension necessary to avoid the game becoming boring and monotonous – I discussed this in Chapter 4. Performance and progress feedback

Progression feedback is crucial to motivate players to keep playing. Progress bars, level completions, achievement notifications and ranking systems all contribute to keeping players engaged and feeling accomplished. In competitive games, performance feedback is essential for players to gauge their skill level and compare it with others. Leaderboards, match statistics and post-match summaries are examples of performance feedback. This sort of feedback is also common in schools, in the form of league tables and performance data. In gaming, when repetitive activity is required to make progress in the game it is referred to as ‘grinding’ – undertaken to achieve a skill or access to the next level of the game. Players are known to become bored and frustrated by this process, enacting their disengagement by ‘cheating’ in order to bypass such systems (Consalvo, 2009), or even leaving the game entirely, just as the bored students described here used the cutting and pasting of proformas into exercise books to avoid the boring evaluation and feedback exercise. In  extreme

Practices, participation and agency  113 circumstances, students have been known to physically leave the classroom or refuse to attend school although there are significantly more restraints to this option in schooling networks, both socially and academically. There are important differences in the relations between instructions, players and gaming environments – replays afford more agency to the player – they can be slowed down, paused and reviewed at will, something discussed in more detail later in this chapter. Unlike the instructions slide in the Science lesson, game players can tailor just-in-time information to their individual needs, for example, using audio or video instructions rather than written instructions. Similar affordances were offered by the online lessons provided by Oak National Academy, an online learning website widely used in the UK during COVID-19 lockdowns (Figure 5.9). Technology and objects can play a part in allowing students to pursue their curiosity, through online information, videos and expert forums. In the classroom, access to information is controlled by the teacher and distributed as representational knowledge through the IWB, textbooks and teacher talk. Little use is made of other methods such as ‘googling’, which are commonplace in out-of-school contexts. Feedback and student reflection on learning seem to have taken on a high level of standardisation and repetition in many schools. Unlike games, where feedback tends to be specific, visual and in-the-moment, reflection on learning in schools tends to consist of standardised and formulaic written responses, overly focussed on material elements such as pen colour and proformas and the decontextualised reference to assessment criteria, with the potential to render the process meaningless. More flexible and imaginative ways to reflect on learning are essential if we are to prevent the emergence of boredom in feedback and reflection cycles in formal learning contexts. The lack of external assessment, in the form of formal examinations and tests during COVID-19 lockdowns, has given us the perfect opportunity to think again about our classroom practices and share new ideas about how to make the feedback process more effective and motivating for both teachers and students. …I just find them (D.I.R.T lessons) hard work … its hard work to engage students on a feedback style … cos it’s so black or white with what we’re feeding back on … you put, it was wrong, this is what you should have put. I don’t think they learn anything by writing it down in green pen. (Teacher interview, School S, June 2016) Technology can provide affordances in the feedback assemblage, which gives students more agency and prevents the breaks in continuity, which leads to boredom and frustration. In the next section, I discuss how AI in the form of a large language model-based chatbot such as ChatGPT might have been incorporated into the writing process in the English Intervention lessons we discussed earlier in the chapter.

114  Practices, participation and agency

Figure 5.9 Consecutive PowerPoint slides from Oak National Academy online History lesson. Sources: © Oak National Academy History PowerPoint slides (permission granted).

ChatGPT – model answers As part of the English Intervention lessons described earlier in this chapter, students built a house in the virtual Minecraft world and wrote a description of it which included ‘sequencing connectives’, a recently taught feature and part of the Key Stage 3 assessment criteria. As a homework assignment, students were asked to duplicate their handwritten versions as online blog posts. Feedback on these blog posts was separated from the writing activity itself because peers or teachers had to sign into each student’s blog to comment. As an

Practices, participation and agency  115 alternative to this form of teacher feedback, students could be trained to use a large language models-based chatbot, such as ChatGPT, which would provide immediate, targeted and personal feedback in the same way that digital games do. The student might be more likely to engage with this feedback since they actively sought it out, thus lessening the chances of boredom or frustration emerging from the discontinuity of conventional teacher feedback processes. Large language models such as ChatGPT work best when given very precise tasks. Initially, I simply requested feedback on the good and bad points of a participant’s descriptive writing, but the feedback was provided in language which an average 12-year-old would not have found easy to engage with. Simply adding an age group to my prompt yielded much more helpful formative feedback: I am 12 years old. Please can you tell me what the good and bad points of this writing is and ways to improve it: firstly, the front of the house is like a firey glowing entrance to the house with a forest theame beside the underground club. Gaint trees in the background in the night sky glowing in the distance. ChatGPT provided feedback which directly addressed the student and used informal language, Of course! Let’s review the good points and areas for improvement in your writing. It began by highlighting the positive aspects of the writing provided and then broke down areas for improvement into helpful categories such as clarity, sentence structure, spelling and punctuation. Specific improvements were mentioned first moving on to more general advice about good descriptive writing (excerpt from feedback provided below). Good points: Descriptive language: You use descriptive words like ‘firey glowing,’ ‘forest theme,’ and ‘giant trees’ to create a vivid image of the front of the house. This helps the reader visualize the scene and sets a mysterious atmosphere. Areas for improvement: Clarity and sentence structure: The sentence ‘the front of the house is like a firey glowing entrance to the house with a forest theme beside the underground club’ is a bit long and could be divided into smaller, clearer sentences. For example, you could start with ‘The front of the house is a fiery glowing entrance’ and then describe the forest theme and the underground club in separate sentences.

116  Practices, participation and agency Ways to improve: Provide more details: While you mention a forest theme and giant trees, consider expanding on these elements to provide a richer description. Describe the colors, sounds, and specific features of the trees and the forest to immerse the reader in the scene. Modelling and demonstrations

Modelling, as a form of feedback on learning, involves demonstrating a specific behaviour, skill or thought process for learners to observe and emulate. This type of feedback is particularly effective in a learning context as it provides learners with a tangible example to follow, allowing them to see the correct execution of a task or concept. Learners can observe the step-by-step process and understand the thought patterns behind the actions, making the model a form of empowerment and autonomy. Just as the countdown timer provides momentum and a sense of progress towards a goal imposed by the teacher or game, the demonstration (in school) or game walkthrough (in games) ensures that momentum or progress is maintained by showing students/players the ‘correct’ sequence of events needed to perform an action. In the ‘demo’, a teacher will demonstrate a practical activity such as a Science experiment, how to play a piece of music or how a piece of code might be written and operated. This tends to happen in a regional space, in a one-to-many relationship. Students participate by focusing their attention on the teacher and objects under the teacher’s control. Modelling as a form of feedback on learning bridges the gap between theory and practice. It encourages observation, cognitive mapping and social learning to enhance learners’ understanding, performance and confidence. Observing a model allows players, or indeed learners, to imitate and then replicate what they have seen. They can compare their own actions or understanding with the model and identify areas of improvement. On the other hand, the existence of a perfect model can sometimes divorce learners or players from action and agency as the Science lesson vignette previously described demonstrates. As Fenwick (2012) suggests, participation as a concept in educational practice is under-theorised and is often seen as merely activity, engagement or ‘doing’ on the part of students or teachers. Such an emphasis ignores the material considerations of participation and the specific forms of participation which hold together practices such as feedback and modelling and from which boredom emerges. School activities are highly linear, sequential and regulated by the teacher. The affordances presented to students through teacher demonstrations limit their agency and their ability to engage with relevant material and manipulate it to suit their needs. Activities in games can generally be tackled in any order as the player wishes. In my fieldwork, no student was ever observed to ask a teacher to repeat part of a demonstration or to clarify any aspect of the procedure. This is where digital gaming has a lot to offer to the discussion. In digital games, the emphasis is on the player experience. Robert’s playing partner in

Practices, participation and agency  117 Rainbow Six Siege, J, expresses his dissatisfaction when the replay affordance is compromised, J:  I can’t even watch the replay (Robert’s game commentary, 12th October 2018) In a game walkthrough or streaming game session which other players post on YouTube, Discord3 or other gaming platforms, space is fluid – players are present both physically and online and can choose to watch a section of the game being played by a peer, either in advance of playing it themselves; after playing the game but failing in a task; or simultaneously alongside their own play session. Because these walkthroughs are performed by peers, they are less intimidating than the teacher demo, and they are also framed as suggested rather than prescribed ways to tackle an activity. Demos in formal learning sessions such as Science, Computing and Music lessons were framed as the ‘correct’ way to tackle an activity and were not available in advance or to be ‘replayed’ after the lesson. For example, Robert’s Science lesson demonstration was a regional space, with separate teacher and student zones and a one-to-many relationship between teacher and students. During the practical activity in this lesson, there was clear evidence of affective engagement from students, although more constrained in its performance. Constraints to movement and action on the part of students included lack of access to the experimental equipment until after the teacher demonstration and explicit instructions about the procedure to be followed. However, the greater scaffolding, such as the teacher demonstration; access to in-context information in the form of experimental instructions displayed on the IWB and direct instruction could also be seen as affordances which students could take advantage of, just as gaming walkthroughs give players the ability to watch an activity before attempting it themselves. Watching others play games on platforms such as Twitch, Steam and YouTube is a popular form of entertainment, as well as a way of learning more successful gameplay practices. The collectivity of the viewing experience enables players to improve their own gameplay skills. Many students use YouTube specifically to learn building techniques in Minecraft and to post their own content as was confirmed in interviews with participants: ND: So, what sort of things, when you watch YouTube yourself, what sort of things do you watch? Dylan: I watch these people called FunkBros (right) and they, they’re really nice ND: So are they just showing you things … or are they teaching you how to do things or… DP: They just … mess around but like as you can see like Minecraft modded TNT was, that’s for like PC and all that … (Interview, Dylan, Minecraft Club)

118  Practices, participation and agency Replay mode and reflection in digital gaming

The ability to access Replay mode is an affordance offered by most digital games and provides feedback through direct observation. Replay mode gives players the opportunity to learn both from their own mistakes as well as the expertise of others. Abrams and Gerber (2013) call this feature a ‘do-over’, commenting on the opportunities players must learn from their mistakes and become ‘self-assessors’ of their own learning. A ‘replay’ visually captures past actions performed by the gameplayer who can choose to watch the replay at a time of their choosing, can slow it down, stop it at certain sections and repeat them until they have worked out where they went wrong. They can also watch other game players play the same section of the game and learn from different approaches to the same task. Rather than passively receiving written feedback based on external success criteria, players are able to implement new ‘strategies’ into their ongoing gameplay session. The digital game Clash of Clans is a useful example of how replay is used to provide feedback which helps players to make progress and be successful in the game. Replay provides players with the affordances to actively participate in the feedback cycle, create their own goals and decide which parts of the feedback to implement in future gameplay.

Vignette: replay in Clash of Clans

Clash of Clans4 is an online multiplayer strategy game in which players form communities called clans, train troops and attack other players to earn resources. There are four types of resources in the game. Gold and elixir can be used to build and upgrade defences and traps that protect the player’s village from other players’ attacks and to build and upgrade buildings. Elixir and dark elixir are also used to upgrade troops and spells. Gems are the most valuable currency. Attacks are rated on a three-star scale and have a maximum timed length of three minutes. The goal of the game is to use your resources to be part of a winning ‘clan’. There are levels of play and leaderboards for clan wars. You accumulate resources by making successful attacks on other players’ villages. Successful attacks are made by having superior troops but also by understanding the defences of other players and deploying your troops effectively. After an attack, you can watch a replay to see how other players have exploited your defences and work out how to use your resources more wisely. The replay mode can also be used to review your own attacks on other players and evaluate which troops have been most valuable and might be worth investing in. Before watching the Replay in full, you can review which troops and how many (see Figure 5.10) were used in the attack on your village. Sometimes this will be enough information without watching the ‘action replay’ but if you need to strengthen your defences – better walls, troops, etc., the action replay is better. Replays afford more agency to the player – they can be slowed down, paused and reviewed at will. Unlike the instructions slide in Robert’s Science lesson

Practices, participation and agency  119

Figure 5.10 Clash of Clans replay screen. Sources: Clash of Clans Twitter feed, 2013.

demonstration, game players can tailor just-in-time information to their individual needs, for example, using audio or video instructions rather than written instructions. During COVID-19 lockdowns some of these affordances were offered in online recorded lessons, for example, Oak National Academy (Figure 5.9). Conclusion In this chapter, I have discussed the significance of feedback and modelling practices in both classroom education and digital gaming, highlighting the impact of power dynamics, material elements and assessment criteria on affective experiences like boredom. Through a series of vignettes, I have drawn attention to the differences between gaming feedback and educational practices, particularly D.I.R.T sessions, and their potential to elicit different emotional responses from learners. The interplay between material practices, modes of participation and affective experiences highlights how specific material constraints can lead to boredom in educational contexts like D.I.R.T sessions. Alternative modes of participation, particularly those enabled by technology, have the potential to mitigate boredom and enhance engagement. Much of my argument revolves around the clash between conventional written practices in education and the potential for engagement offered by digital and gaming elements. The mismatch between instructional goals and the opportunity for active participation ultimately contributes to the emergence of boredom among students. I have explored differences and potential improvements in feedback mechanisms between gaming and formal education, highlighting opportunities to avoid boredom through more dynamic and contextually relevant feedback methods such as replay mode in digital games, which promotes active learning, self-assessment and adaptation based on observed actions. As part of the consideration of potential improvements to feedback in formal learning, I described an example of students’ writing to demonstrate the

120  Practices, participation and agency potential of AI chatbots like ChatGPT to enhance the feedback process in education, drawing parallels with the engaging and flexible feedback mechanisms seen in gaming. In Chapter 6, Santuber et al.’s (2020) concepts of affective niche construction and affective scaffolding are employed to analyse how we might intervene in the creation of negative affective states such as boredom by actively shaping and modifying the surrounding sociomaterial environment. Notes 1 In UK secondary schools, the key stages are: Key Stage 3 – ages 11–14 (Years 7–9) and Key Stage 4 – ages 14–16 (Years 10–11). 2 Year 7 – In England, Year 7 is the first year of secondary education and students are aged 11–12 years. 3 Discord is a freeware instant messaging and VoIP application and a digital distribution platform specialising in text, image, video and audio communication between users in a chat channel. It is used heavily by the gaming community. 4 Clash of Clans × Supercell.

References Abrams, S. S., & Gerber, H. R. (2013). Achieving through the feedback loop: Videogames, authentic assessment, and meaningful learning. The English Journal, 103(1), 95–103. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24484067 Andiloro, A. (2023). Understanding genre as atmospheric assemblage: The case of videogames. Television & New Media, 24(5), 559–570. Ash, J. (2012). Attention, videogames and the retentional economies of affective ­amplification. Theory, Culture & Society, 29(6), 3–26. Bernstein, B. (2003). The structuring of pedagogic discourse (1st ed., Vol. 4). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203011263 Biesta, G. (2015). On the two cultures of educational research, and how we might move ahead: Reconsidering the ontology, axiology and praxeology of education. European Educational Research Journal, 14(1), 11–22. Bricker, L. A., & Bell, P. (2012). “GodMode is his video game name”: Situating learning and identity in structures of social practice. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 7, 883–902. Burnett, C. (2017). The fluid materiality of tablets: Examining ‘the iPad Multiple’ in a primary classroom. In C. Burnett, G. Merchant, A. Simpson, & M. Walsh (Eds), The case of the iPad. Springer. https://doi.org/ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/10.1007/978-98110-4364-2_2 Chiles, M. (2021). Feedback pendulum: A manifesto for enhancing feedback in education. John Catt Educational Limited. Consalvo, M. (2009). Cheating: Gaining advantage in videogames. MIT Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991). Flow : The psychology of optimal experience/Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. New York: Harper Perennial. Dillon, J. (2008). A review of the research on practical work in school science. King’s ­College, pp. 1–9. Fenwick, T. (2012). Matterings of knowing and doing: Sociomaterial approaches to understanding practice. In Practice, learning and change: Practice-theory perspectives on professional learning (pp. 67–83). Springer.

Practices, participation and agency  121 Fenwick, T., & Edwards, R. (2010). Actor-network theory in education. Routledge. Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Computers in Entertainment (CIE), 1(1), 20–20. Gee, E., Siyahhan, S., & Cirelli, A. M. (2017). Video gaming as digital media, play, and family routine: Implications for understanding video gaming and learning in family contexts. Learning, Media and Technology, 42, 468–482. Gogii Games. (2011). Empress of the Deep: Song of the Blue Whale, [Microsoft W ­ indows, Big Fish Games, Steam] Strategy First. Gravett, K. (2022). Feedback literacies as sociomaterial practice. Critical Studies in Education, 63(2), 261–274. Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112. Ito, M., Horst, H., Bittanti, M., Boyd, D., Herr-Stephenson, B., Lange, P. G., Pascoe, C., & Robinson, L. (2008). Living and learning with new media: Summary of findings from the digital youth project. D. John & T. Catherine (Eds.). MacArthur Foundation. Kupiainen, R. (2013). Dissolving the school space: Young people’s media production in and outside of school. Policy Futures in Education, 11, 37–46. Leander, K. M., & Lovvorn, J. F. (2006). Literacy networks: Following the circulation of texts, bodies, and objects in the schooling and online gaming of one youth. Cognition and Instruction, 24(3), 291–340. Linderoth, J., (2012). Why gamers don’t learn more: An ecological approach to games as learning environments. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 4, 45–62. Macklem, G. L. (2015). Boredom in the classroom: Addressing student motivation, self-regulation, and engagement in learning (Vol. 1). Springer. Mansell, W., James, M., Baird, J., Black, P., Daugherty, R., Ecclestone, K., Gardner, J., Harlen, W., Hayward, L., Newton, P., & Stobart, G. (2009). Assessment in schools: Fit for purpose? A commentary by the Teaching and Learning Research Programme. Economic and Social Research Council. TLRP Commentaries, 13. Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP). http://www.tlrp.org/pub/documents/ assessment.pdf Mojang Studios. (2011). Minecraft. [Windows, macOS, Linux] Mojang Studios, Stockholm; Xbox Studios. Raw Fury (2020). Call of the Sea. Out of the Blue Games. [PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X and Series S, Amazon Luna]. Page, D. (2017). The surveillance of teachers and the simulation of teaching. Journal of Education Policy, 32(1), 1–13. Santuber, J., Dremel, C., Owoyele, B. A., & Edelman, J. A. (2020). Building an apparatus: Disclosing affectivity in sociomaterial research. In Joey F. George, Souren Paul, Rahul De, Elena Karahanna, Suprateek Sarker, Gal Oestreicher-Singer (Eds.), Proceedings of the 41st international conference on information systems, ICIS 2020, making digital inclusive: Blending the locak and the global, Hyderabad, India, Association for Information Systems. Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner. Temple Smith. Sherrington, T. (2023). The view from the back: The trouble with ‘green-penning’. Teacherhead blog. Available online at: The View From The Back: The Trouble With ‘Green-Penning’ (Corrections). Söderström, U., Larsson, W., Lundqvist, M., Norberg, O., Andersson, M., & Mejtoft, T. (2022). Haptic feedback in first person shooter video games. In Proceedings of the 33rd European conference on cognitive ergonomics.

122  Practices, participation and agency Sørensen, E. (2009). The materiality of learning: Technology and knowledge in educational practice. Cambridge University Press. Supercell. (2012). Clash of Clans [Android, iOS]. TenCent. Sweetser, P., & Wyeth, P. (2005). GameFlow: a model for evaluating player enjoyment in games. Computers in Entertainment (CIE), 3(3), 3–3. Sweetser, P., Johnson, D., Wyeth, P., Anwar, A., Meng, Y., & Ozdowska, A. (2017). GameFlow in different game genres and platforms. Computers in Entertainment (CIE), 15(3), 1–24. Torrance, H. (2017). Blaming the victim: Assessment, examinations, and the responsibilisation of students and teachers in neo-liberal governance. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural politics of Education, 38(1), 83–96.

6 Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming

Introduction Throughout this book, I have discussed boredom as an affective experience that arises from the embodied practices of assemblage which, in turn, can create negative affective intensities. As an assemblage ethnographer I have used vignettes to demonstrate how this re-imagining of boredom evolved from ‘moments of affective encounter’ (Militz & Schurr, 2016, p. 61), and by describing the learning and gaming experiences of myself and my participants, I aimed to ‘trigger an affective experience in the reader’ (p. 57). These vignettes have focused on key practices such as feedback and modelling in school and analysed how time and space are regulated and organised. In this chapter, I use Andiloro’s (2023) theorisation of video game genre as an atmospheric assemblage to compare the way in which affect is enacted in the ‘puzzle game’ genre through two vignettes – a Computing lesson on Cryptography and a ‘go-along’ gaming session in The Turing Test. To analyse how affective intensities develop in each scenario and compare how engagement and boredom can arise from them, I borrow two concepts from Santuber et al. (2020), ‘affective niche construction’ and ‘affective scaffolding’, which draw on an enactivist approach to affect (Colombetti, 2017). Affective niche construction describes the way that a sociomaterial environment can be actively shaped to enact an affective state such as boredom or engagement. For example, in schools, where the desired focus of attention might be the teacher, distracting wall displays might be removed, chairs may be arranged to face the teacher, objects may be removed from desks and so on. Kneebone (2020) refers to this same phenomenon in medical contexts, which he calls a ‘mise-enplace’, where surgeons customise their workplace to fit how they prefer to work. As Yeoman (2018) explains, we need to understand the properties and spatial configuration of assemblages which encourage phenomena such as engagement or boredom to emerge. Understanding how actions, material properties and the way they are configured produces affect and enables an agent, an object, a technology or a person to orchestrate or introduce affordances into a situation. In the first vignette, the Cryptography lesson, the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003322689-6

124  Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming teacher is the agent or actor who orchestrates and shapes the sociomaterial to resemble a game genre called an ‘escape room’. Affective scaffolding, by contrast, relates to the way that affects such as boredom are triggered by particular elements already present in a sociomaterial environment such as a gameplay assemblage. In the second vignette, I explore how affective scaffolding in the video game The Turing Test triggers boredom for Dylan through the particular relations of objects, technology and environment in his gaming assemblage. It is important to note that even though puzzle games are common to both vignettes, the way in which puzzle games are assembled determines how they are experienced by participants. The Cryptography lesson uses a sub-genre of the puzzle game, called an ‘escape room’. The teacher assembles his lesson by integrating ‘escape room’ practices into a formal learning situation in the Computing classroom. He actively chooses and constructs the way that elements of the game genre are incorporated to manipulate the experience for the students. Conversely, Dylan’s gameplay experience is affectively scaffolded for him by his choice of game and the affordances available to him at home. Before I move on to the vignettes themselves, it helps to understand a little about the puzzle game genre itself. Puzzle games Puzzle-games are widely used in school education; they are domain-neutral, develop critical and logical thinking and makes the learning process more interactive and enjoyable. (Antonova & Bontchev, 2019) As Antonova and Bontchev (2019) point out, puzzle games are already intrinsic to school activities. Puzzle games, as a game genre, come in several forms. Although other genres of digital games such as adventure games contain puzzles, a true puzzle game focuses on puzzle solving as the primary gameplay activity. Puzzle games usually offer a series of related puzzles, a variation on a theme. My own experience with puzzle games includes Unravel 2 (Coldwood Interactive AB, 2018) and The Pedestrian (Skookum Arts, 2017). They are puzzle platformers, 2D games which require/demand the player to move up, down, left or right on the screen, encountering puzzles which must be overcome to progress to another level or another part of the ‘game map’, in other words, a progression structure. The Turing Test, which Dylan plays in the vignette, is a 3D puzzle game that has a similar progression structure but is arguably more embodied and allows for more movement and exploration. Unravel has a solo player version and a two-player or co-op’ game, Unravel 2. The two-player game relies on both characters, called Yarnys, working together to climb over or avoid obstacles. Many of the game’s mechanics are based on physics, with the Yarnys pushing, pulling, swinging and hoisting their way through the levels (Figure 6.1). Both characters are connected by their

Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming  125

Figure 6.1 Tutorial screens from The Pedestrian and Unravel 2. Sources: © SkookumArts (used with permission) and Unravel 2. Used with permission under Game Content Usage Rules.

yarn, so while you can still swing using your string, you can also use one another as an anchor point to reach seemingly unreachable platforms across far greater distances. Once one player has reached a high point, the other can use their position to ascend a cliff face by climbing their own yarn to the very top. Although the game is playable by a single player, solving the puzzles together is easier and more satisfying. The Pedestrian game requires the player to arrange ‘rooms’ (Figure 6.1) from unorganised jumbles into navigable levels. The player must reposition and connect the ‘signs’ within a chamber. When done correctly, a path is created from one end to the other. A door on the left side of one room must be connected to a door on the right side of another room, with objects like keys and power switches having to be collected and used along the way. Although 2D side-scrolling games provide less stimuli (visual, aural and haptic) and may not be as immersive as 3D, first-person or RPG games such as The Turing Test, both The Pedestrian and Unravel 2 have very visually attractive backgrounds which change as the characters progress through the puzzles. In The Pedestrian, puzzles are presented on a series of ‘boards’ representing rooms, in a variety of realistic settings, such as road signs, factory walls, pavements and so forth. The Yarnys in Unravel 2 travel through countrysides, across water, through cities and inside buildings encountering situationally appropriate ‘obstacles’ such as progressing across lily pads on a lake as a giant fish tries to eat them up. The sense of uncertainty and the level of challenge require a high level of player concentration and the changing backdrops provide a sense of progression and atmosphere and stop the player from becoming bored by the repetitive nature of some of the puzzles. Like most puzzle games, learning to play is dealt with by tutorials at appropriate times. In Figure 6.1 a screenshot shows The Pedestrian tutorial stage, where the computer screen (bottom left) shows the player how to move the boards around and link them to allow the game character to move from one ‘room’ to another. In Unravel 2, a sparkly light moves across the screen to show you the route you should take through and over obstacles in the

126  Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming landscape. Other instructions, for example, which buttons to press on your game controller (if on a console), are shown in text at the bottom of the screen. These tutorials demonstrate how games affectively scaffold gameplay – providing a level of support by making players aware of the affordances and constraints in the game before play commences. This is reinforced by feedback, which in both games is situational and immediate – if you try to navigate the route differently you reach a dead end. For example, in The Pedestrian if you take the ‘wrong’ route, your character ends up back at the beginning of the ‘maze’. In Unravel 2 if you fail to clear an obstacle you fall or die and reappear. Researchers such as Linderoth (2012) might argue that the immediacy of this feedback negates the need for a tutorial since the player can learn the game through trial and error, using failure to work out the correct actions to take. The level of agency available in trial-and-error situations can not only be motivating, as the acid rain vignette in the previous chapter demonstrated, but also help participants build their own knowledge and develop their own strategies. In puzzle platformers such as The Pedestrian and Unravel 2, as in most games, players do not have full autonomy over how to complete tasks since the goal is to progress by solving the puzzle (which usually has a restricted set of solutions) and advancing to the next area on the game map. Unlike The Pedestrian, Unravel 2’s co-op version actively encourages cooperation and collaboration, and the gameplay makes it necessary at times. This is unusual for a puzzle game, because they are normally solo games, as I describe later in this chapter in my description of Dylan’s experience playing The Turing Test. The next section discusses the Escape Room, a sub-genre of the puzzle game that is the core of a Computing lesson at Farnswood School described in a later vignette. Escape rooms in education

The concept of ‘escape rooms’ began in Japan in 2007 (Nicholson, 2015) as a single-room game for small teams of players and draws on elements from various video game genres such as point-and-click adventure games, puzzle hunts and live-action role-playing. It is variously defined as …live-action team-based game where players discover clues, solve puzzles, and accomplish tasks in one or more rooms in order to accomplish a specific goal (usually escaping from the room) in a limited amount of time. (Nicholson, 2015, p. 1) and Centered around a shared experience (e.g., a night at the museum) or problem (i.e., obtaining an antibody that stops a zombie apocalypse), they present a focused, timed account of human and more-than-human interaction. (Wargo & Garcia, 2023)

Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming  127 Although initially conceived as a recreational activity, the educational applications of escape games were soon recognised (Stone, 2016). Much of the research about the educational uses of escape rooms tends to focus on higher education (Fotaris & Mastoras, 2019) rather than schools (Veldkamp et al., 2020) and is concerned with improved knowledge acquisition, content mastery and motivation rather than focusing on the dynamic nature of the student experience as they encounter challenges and try to overcome problems in these situations. However, in a more recent study, Wargo and Garcia (2023) specifically set out to understand how affect emerges from escape room assemblages and suggest that a non-linear approach is essential. They conclude that in escape room situations ‘learning, affect, interaction and play are designed entangled, felt and understood’ (p. 16). This allows a reframing of participation, from mere attendance and completion of tasks to more complex responses such as collaboration, teamwork and so on. From the wider opportunities for involvement, a range of different learning practices become possible and affect becomes dynamic and emergent. According to Veldkamp et al. (2020), common game design elements for escape rooms include the use of a game narrative to contextualise the knowledge required to play the game; the assigning of student roles; unambiguous feedback, rewards and progressive challenge to scaffold learning process and a sequential structure for the activities which are called ‘puzzles’. These common elements can be selected and orchestrated by teachers to construct an affective niche for students. Feedback mechanisms are a key part of this process and can take the form of a challenge, solution and/or reward in the form of the code for a lock or information for the next puzzle. The inclusion of ‘hints’, as I mentioned in Chapter 5, is also a very common feature of puzzle and escape rooms and can be an important part of the affective scaffolding, as I discuss in Vignette 2, later in this chapter. Hints can be presented through a technological interface such as a tablet or laptop (as I will describe in the Cryptography vignette), by printed cards in the physical environment or provided verbally by the teacher. Sometimes the hints must be earned, but others are provided as ‘just-in-time’ learning, as required. Fixed and finite time limits are utilised to configure all escape room scenarios since the goal is to escape within the given time, typically 60 minutes. Time itself can be materialised through timers or clocks, either in the virtual space or physical clocks in the escape ‘room’ itself or through verbal prompts from the teacher. Temporal affordances and constraints regulate pace and contribute to the affective atmosphere in an escape room assemblage. As I have already established, perceptions of time passing slowly are strongly associated with negative affects such as boredom. It is, therefore, interesting to consider whether boredom might be less likely to emerge in the shared, timed group experience of the escape room situation. As we have already discussed in Chapter 4, puzzles and codes are at the heart of many video games and play an intrinsic part in the way affect is created. Cryptography is the art of writing or solving codes. In the context of the English Computing curriculum students are required to understand the nature

128  Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming of encryption as part of computer system security. Choosing this topic to develop a ‘game-based lesson’1 (teacher’s words) rather than a ‘gamified lesson’ reduced the temptation to embellish a traditional lesson with superficial features such as points or badges. Game-based lessons refer to learning activities which are designed as games, such as the Cryptography lesson described here. Gamification, on the other hand, refers to the addition of superficial game elements such as points, badges and leaderboards to an existing learning activity. Indeed, as I will describe in a later section, the context, resources and scaffolds in this lesson had been specifically selected and orchestrated by the teacher to allow students to experience the topic they were learning in a meaningful way. The key elements which make this a game-based lesson rather than a gamified lesson relate to pacing and time, movement and use of technology, rather than points and badges. Before describing the experience, let’s take a closer look at the digital version of the ‘escape room’ scenario. Digital escape rooms (DER)

Although recreational escape rooms began as physical locations from which a group of people had to escape, educational escape rooms have embraced the use of digital materials and interfaces to overcome the limitations of classroom teaching in terms of space and time (Huang et al., 2020). Digital technology also allows escape rooms to be upscaled to include whole classes rather than being restricted to small groups. (Veldkamp et al., 2020). Technology is used to structure the game, support the narrative and enhance immersion, as I will demonstrate in the Cryptography vignette which follows. However, the creation of affective niches, which combine physical escape ‘rooms’ with virtual or digital materials, on tablets or PCs, enable participants to have embodied, ‘hands-on’ experiences which enhance immersion and positive affect. The digital elements of the Cryptography escape room activity I describe in this chapter were experienced through Microsoft OneNote. OneNote is a digital notebook which allows users to gather notes, drawings, video and audio, making them accessible on the Internet and/or over a computer network. With OneNote Class Notebook, teachers can create a class notebook that contains individual student notebooks, as well as a Content Library where teachers can add content that cannot be edited by students and a Collaboration Space that can be edited by both students and teachers. The Cryptography escape room activity was contained in the Content Library and available to all students. Farnswood School’s Computing Department used the Class Notebook widely for most of their classes as a kind of textbook/student portfolio. Through it, teachers were able to configure interactive content for students that they could complete individually, but teachers could always monitor what was going on, add new content and set up group work in the Collaboration area. The Cryptography lesson scenario involved a bomb in a nuclear plant. The students had a specific amount of time (60 minutes) to solve the clues and stop

Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming  129 >>EAS ALERT >>The United States Federal Government has issued an >>EMERGENCY ACTION NOTIFICATION >>Do not turn off your TV at this time. >>Important information to follow >>> Computer hackers have forced their way into the systems on board HMS Vigilant. This submarine is famous for carrying some of the United Kingdom’s nuclear weapons known as Trident. The missile codes for these weapons of mass destruction have been cracked and the launch procedure is imminent......

Figure 6.2 Narrative prompt from the Computing OneNote notebook used in the Cryptography escape room.

the bomb (Figure 6.2). In the Year 9 curriculum, Cryptography was a key topic, covering Cryptography and Cybersecurity and incorporating the concept of staying safe from hackers. The stated learning aims of this topic were to develop problem-solving skills, resilience and computational thinking skills. In this vignette, students were taught encryption and decryption concepts by solving codes presented in OneNote and by solving clues in the physical school environment. OneNote Notebook’s structure (Figure 6.3) was similar to what Ash (2009 quoting Juul, 2002) calls a ‘progression structure’, where game designers control the sequence of ‘predetermined challenges and events’ (p. 323). According to the teacher, the goal was not necessarily to reach the end and escape the room but to engage students in the process of gaining practical experience in various types of cryptography. The next section describes my participation in the Cryptography escape room. The invitation to attend came from the teacher who was in charge of the Minecraft Club I discuss in earlier chapters. The vignette is based on field

Figure 6.3  Example from the Cryptography escape room activity in OneNote notebook.

130  Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming notes taken during the lesson, feedback from students through an online lesson evaluation and the OneNote Class Notebook, which served as the interface for the Cryptography ‘game’. Vignette 1 – The cryptography lesson

I arrived at the classroom at 8:50 a.m. and waited outside with the students. Despite acknowledging my presence, the teacher provided me with no further information about the upcoming lesson, leaving me in the same position as the other participants. Since I did not have an assigned seat, I sat at the front of the classroom where I could see as much of the classroom, the interactive whiteboard (IWB) and computer screens as possible, but sat to one side so that I did not interfere with classroom activities. Students accepted my presence, initially not acknowledging it but rather moving straight into what appeared to be a well-established practice in Computing lessons. Each student took their assigned place at a computer and opened their individual OneNote notebook. In the first few minutes, the lesson assemblage was typical of most lessons, with established pedagogical practices like the taking of the register and the presenting of a starter activity on the IWB (unrelated to the main Escape Room activity). Usually, these practices are an enactment of institutional authority or as Bernstein (2003) terms it, visible pedagogy. In most escape room studies, on the other hand, the teacher usually takes part in the escape room narrative or observes unobtrusively (Veldkamp et al., 2020). Nevertheless, the teacher began the lesson in the traditional instructor role, which may have indicated some discomfort with the deviation from typical classroom practices. For the first activity, he used competition between students to motivate them to solve a Morse code puzzle actively discouraging collaboration or movement around the room. At first glance, competition between individual students might appear to be a gamified feature as exemplified by scores on a leaderboard, but in schools, competitive activity is often used to ensure attention and control ‘aberrant behaviour’ as it was in this classroom escape room. As Csikszentmihalyi (1991) argues, ‘Competition is only enjoyable when it is a means to perfect one’s skills: when it becomes an end in itself, it ceases to be fun’ (p. 50). Generally, non-educational escape rooms involve competition between groups rather than individuals (Veldkamp et al., 2020). Since many tasks required students to leave the classroom, the initial model of working individually and competitively soon fell apart and the teacher relinquished authority, allowing students to approach tasks as they saw fit. Most students worked cooperatively in groups, dividing the tasks among them. After the first clue (Morse Code) was solved, subsequent clues were discovered by physically retrieving them from various sites around the school building (Figure 6.4) such as the Assistant Head’s office and the Core Area (linking different wings of the building together). Once retrieved, clues could be used to unlock or decrypt the next online section in their OneNote Notebook

Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming  131

Figure 6.4 Cryptography lesson/escape room assemblage.

(Figure 6.4 bottom right) in a similar way to a puzzle game where different parts of a map are revealed. By structuring the escape room activity to offer the affordances of physical movement and interaction with the school building itself, relations between objects, technology and context were re-organised and regulated and desired affective states such as engagement and immersion were shaped. Regardless of the role students chose to take during the process, students were encouraged to actively participate in the process and had to physically interact with the materiality of the OneNote Class Notebook (Figure 6.3) to progress. Just as in other digital puzzle games, they had to click on links and enter information. The students were not limited to collecting this information individually, as they were in traditional lessons. As in gameplay outside of school, where cheats, walkthroughs and playthroughs are commonly used to solve problems, they were free to share information and help each other. By removing the requirement to engage through hand-written responses, the teacher had introduced affordances which enabled students, who would normally be disadvantaged by their handwriting ability, to demonstrate engagement in other ways, as we have already discussed in Chapter 5. The teacher’s selection of game design elements, such as time limits and the freedom to explore and collaborate shaped and orchestrated the experiences which different students had and enabled them to participate differently based

132  Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming on the way each student engaged with the lesson activity (Ash & Gallacher, 2011). The desired affective state, that of engagement, flowed from the affective niche created by the flexibility to move beyond the classroom wall, whether or not the student chose to do so in this instance. Student feedback, on a teacher survey in OneNote Class Notebook, confirmed that engagement was both affective and cognitive. Students commented favourably on the materiality of the lesson, calling it ‘practical’ and ‘fun’, and were able to use terms like ‘encrypt’ and ‘decrypt’ with understanding, both during the lesson and in the feedback. Offering more ways to participate in the learning experience, however, also resulted in other affective states such as boredom emerging from the Cryptography lesson assemblage. According to Duncan (2016), game-based learning can run counter to the expectations and desires of many students. During this lesson, some students were less than enthusiastic about participating in an activity that encouraged them to use a less efficient and more challenging method of learning cryptography. For the same results, they had to work through a series of challenging activities rather than having access to visible pedagogical structures such as teacher assistance and direct instruction. Normally, the teacher holds the most prominent position in a lesson assembly, but here he played the role of gamemaster, regulating the timing and offering verbal reminders to inject pace. It was difficult for some students to accept such a change in agency and disruption to such a stabilised and entrenched practice as teacher-led instruction. They expressed their dissatisfaction by asking for help frequently, giving constant verbal feedback on their lack of progress and making comments about not knowing where to go next. Satisfying participants’ expectations can be part of creating an affective niche. In the same way that objects and technology can be added or removed in an affective niche, altering the role of adults made it harder for some students to recognise the instructive elements of the lesson, subverting their expectations, which as we discussed earlier, can be a key part of creating positive affect. The change to the teacher role also drew attention to the way in which power relations are normally entrenched through visible pedagogical practices. Since I was the only other adult in the room, students could have looked to me to fulfil the teacher’s role. However, this did not happen. In effect, the students attempted to shape their own affective niche. Those who were aware of my gameplaying interests attempted to recruit me into their activities as a collaborator. I was seen by them as an experienced peer rather than a replacement authority figure in their ‘interest group’ of game players. In contrast, the teacher neither presented himself as a learner, as in the English Intervention lesson described in an earlier chapter, nor as an authority figure. This ambiguous teacher role opened the possibility for a more flexible and negotiated teacher–student relationship (Gee, Siyahhan & Cirelli, 2017), where teachers and students might orchestrate future escape room activities together.

Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming  133 In the next section, we move on to look at Santuber et al.’s (2020) concept of affective scaffolding. As I discussed earlier, in contrast to affective niches, affective scaffolding describes how game genres such as ‘puzzle games’ and the wider gameplay assemblage act as triggers for different affective states. The following vignette recounts Dylan’s gameplay experience, shared with me as an audio commentary in a similar way to Robert’s Rainbow Six Siege sessions. Both Robert and Dylan had mentioned that they enjoyed making similar commentaries for fellow gameplayers on YouTube and their confidence and ease were apparent. Since Dylan’s gameplay experience includes high levels of visual and aural stimulation, it might be expected that it would generate similar affective intensities to the Cryptography lesson. Dylan chose a single-player puzzle game called The Turing Test, described thus: The gameplay of The Turing Test consists exclusively of solving puzzle rooms using the Energy Manipulation Tool (EMT) - a gun that transfers energy to and from different conduits. These conduits open doors, move platforms, provide power to giant magnets and so on. While the EMT is the primary tool, as the game progresses other objects can be used in the environment to aid in tasks such as cameras and little robots that can also transfer energy. (The Turing Test Review, Gamespew, 2016) Reviews of this game rated it as ‘hard’, with the skills level required rising rapidly (Metacritic.com, 2016). If the level of challenge is too high in a game there can be the potential for a negative, affective experience. My role as an assemblage ethnographer was to reconstruct Dylan’s journey through the game by listening to his audio recording as I played the game. Dylan addressed me directly while playing, enabling me to capture relevant screenshots (Figure 6.5) and helping me become part of his gameplay assemblage. Dylan recorded the 24-minute commentary in his bedroom where he keeps most of his gaming equipment – an Xbox and a WiiU. Dylan’s gameplay experiences were significantly influenced by this assemblage, alongside his self-identified dyslexia and autism spectrum disorder. In school, his key worker reports that he struggles with group work, which may explain his choice of a single-player game. According to Dylan, he finds it difficult to concentrate on games or lessons if there is a lot of noise or a lot of people around. At Minecraft Club, I asked him how playing Minecraft at home differs from in school, and he explained why he preferred it at home: Yeah, because – cos I can just let my mind go loose but like in here, I have like – [1] I have people around me so I can’t – cos I have people talking people shouting I can’t get focused. (Dylan, Interview in Minecraft Club, May 2017)

134  Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming

Figure 6.5 Author created screenshot reconstruction of Dylan’s home gameplay in The Turing Test. Vignette 2 – The Turing Test

The first comment Dylan makes on the recording is to tell me that he is on the ‘learner screen’. As we discussed earlier in this chapter, game tutorials are common in puzzle games, scaffolding gameplay by making the player aware of the affordances and constraints of the virtual gaming environment. The 3D game environment of ‘The Turing Test’ ‘mobilises the users’ bodily modes of attention, orientation and spatial navigation’ (Ash, 2009, p. 2113). Dylan has a first-person perspective, similar to an FPS game – there is no visible avatar on-screen. I’m walking right now … right … get me here a … hey, I’m looking at a computer… (Dylan, Gameplay commentary, March 2018)

Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming  135 Dylan’s sense of embodiment and affective engagement within the game is mirrored in his verbal and physical reactions – when he comes to a large drop down a shaft, he reacts with alarm, as if he is really in danger of falling. There is a real chance of boredom developing when he arrives at a door and waits for over a minute for a new section of gameplay to open up. His perception of time passing slowly is heightened, but his curiosity and previous knowledge of gaming practices and functionality (affective scaffolding) enable him to anticipate future activity and set up a set of expectations, which, in turn, trigger his affective engagement. …it’s gonna be a puzzle [4] so yay. (Audio recording, Dylan, Nov 2017) Upon reaching the next section of the gameplay, Dylan is confronted by a series of obstacles and mini-puzzles that must be solved in order to proceed. The first room he reaches has a closed door with a container inside. To progress, Dylan must figure out how to pick up and carry the container to the entrance of the next door. Without scaffolding or instructions, the closed door and lack of instructions create the potential for boredom or frustration, as it did in the Cryptography lesson described earlier which followed a similar progression structure. Normally, students in a formal learning situation expect to receive instruction and/or just-in-time assistance before attempting tasks. To overcome this lack of scaffolding, students in the Cryptography lesson worked together as a group. In The Turing Test, the AI character’s voice provided commentary on Dylan’s location and what he was observing in the game environment. Players progress and are affectively engaged by recognising affordances provided by objects in the game, a process which Linderoth (2012) terms ‘attunement’, the ability to make distinctions between different types of feedback, as discussed in Chapter 5. Ash (2009) builds on this idea of different kinds of feedback by emphasising the importance of colour and light in shaping how players engage with images, providing sensory confirmation of their actions. In an interview, Sylvie, Dylan’s key worker, pointed out that Dylan does not often play games of this genre and has difficulty differentiating colours, which may lead to problems when he tries to ‘attune’ to the game environment. … (1) struggles with green uh whites, you know anything that isn’t colour. (Sylvie, Dylan’s key worker, Interview, April 2017) This may have made it more difficult for him to recognise the affordances of these particular puzzles. At 20 minutes into the game, Dylan stops making progress – there is a four-minute silence on the recording after which he admits to struggling with the puzzles. Research suggests that boredom tends to occur when skill levels exceed challenges (Sweetser et al., 2017). If Dylan does not

136  Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming solve the puzzles, he will not be able to influence the outcome of the game in a meaningful way. His ability to take action and experience positive affect are restricted by the affordances provided in the puzzles. There are few options for ‘movement impetus’ (Davies, 2009) trapping Dylan in his virtual room. He can replay previous sections or stop the game. Dylan exits the game and gives up play, physically disengaging from it by closing down the game. In earlier conversations, Dylan admitted that one of the ways he avoided boredom, when he felt he was not making progress, was to switch games. … I can spend as much time as I like on a game and then I can move on to a different game if … I’m getting bored of one. (Dylan, interview in Minecraft Club, May 2017) Finkielsztein (2021) recognises this technique for avoiding boredom: …boredom (is) essentially as a state of inattention/disengagement prompted by a sense of meaninglessness, being a suspension between two activities/engagements in which one is simultaneously listless in the current situation and restless to find a relief from it. [my emphasis] (p. 78) Dylan’s difficulties in maintaining attention were not so easily solved in formal learning situations where there is no option to move to a more desired activity, I do get side-tracked in learning because … I have problems … It’s just that there’s more stuff to get me distracted… Dylan’s failure to progress through The Turing Test puzzles was at best boring and at worst deeply frustrating. Dylan could have shaped and influenced the gaming assembly to achieve his desired affective state if he had recognised the affordances available in his home gaming environment to create his own affective niche, as we saw in the Cryptography lesson. Such affordances were available – to persevere with the puzzles, to look for online help, to ask others for assistance, etc. In his case, he chose not to take advantage of these opportunities, probably because he wasn’t particularly attracted to The Turing Test game. In a classroom environment such as the one described in the Cryptography lesson, Dylan would have had the benefit of peer and teacher support and scaffolding such as that provided in the OneNote Notebook, to help him when puzzles were too challenging. In The Turing Test gameplay assembly, a negative affective experience emerged. Dylan’s single-player experience lacked peer support, unlike multiplayer games where social motivation is strong. Rainbow Six Siege, a multiplayer, online game, did provide Robert (another of my participants) with peer support. To overcome emerging boredom and frustration caused by a ‘lagging glitch’, he used YouTube and the Internet to find information to overcome a ‘lagging glitch’.

Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming  137

Figure 6.6 Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege map guide: Bank – SiegeGG and a screenshot of player perspective. Sources: © Ubisoft. All other rights are reserved by Ubisoft Entertainment.

Students’ experiences in the Cryptography lesson and Robert’s experiences playing Rainbow Six Siege (2015) multiplayer mode shared several other similarities. There are several short missions in Rainbow Six Siege that can be played as a group or alone, with the player able to take part in different gameplay modes such as hostage rescuing. In addition to visiting several virtual rooms, Robert also had the option of roaming around the game environment (Figure 6.6) and manipulating objects in his physical and virtual environments – using his game controller, chair, remote control; placing cameras and bombs; and collaborating with other players – albeit online players – in a similar way to the Cryptography lesson participants who had the freedom to roam the physical location of the school. It was Robert’s ability to break away from his online activities, to get involved in ‘cheating’ while playing Rainbow Six Siege, that made his experiences different from those of the Computing lesson participants. Furthermore, he did not have any overarching learning objectives, such as having knowledge of Cryptography, imposed by an external authority like his teacher, even though this authority was invisible to the Computing students themselves. Rainbow Six Siege does give players a certain amount of freedom, but they must perform predefined moves to progress. Conclusion In this chapter, I have discussed the concept of boredom as an affective experience within the context of assemblage theory and its application to educational settings and video games. I used vignettes to analyse how affective intensities are triggered through the concepts of affective niche construction and affective scaffolding, demonstrating the interplay between active shaping of environments and the triggering of affects based on pre-existing elements. The Cryptography lesson vignette illustrates how educational content and affordances can be adjusted to create an affective niche, within which a desired affective state can be enacted. Digital Escape Rooms in educational settings demonstrate how digital technology and immersive experiences can be integrated into educational contexts and enable roles to be reconfigured – the way

138  Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming in which the teacher became part of the background, the effect of foregrounding Microsoft OneNote and the way the school infrastructure became part of the structuring and enhancing of an affective niche. In the second vignette, I explore Dylan’s gameplay experience in ‘The Turing Test’, highlighting the role of affective scaffolding in a ‘puzzle game’ assemblage, where an aversive affective state of boredom is created through the constraints and affordances of game mechanics and the wider gaming assemblage Dylan is part of in his home environment. The role of different sub-genres within the puzzle game genre and their assembly in inducing distinct affective experiences is also discussed. The educational potential of escape rooms is explored, particularly in relation to the creation of affective niches through game design elements and the impact of time constraints on affect in shared escape room experiences. Note 1 Game-based learning and gamification are concepts related to the direct use of games in a learning context and the use of some game mechanics in the classroom. Some excellent discussion of gamification here Can’t Play, Won’t Play (kotaku. com).

References Andiloro, A. (2023). Understanding genre as atmospheric assemblage: The case of videogames. Television & New Media, 24(5), 559–570. Antonova, A., & Bontchev, B. (2019). Exploring puzzle-based learning for building effective and motivational maze video games for education. In EDULEARN19 Proceedings (pp. 2425–2434). IATED. Ash, J. (2009). Emerging spatialities of the screen: Video games and the reconfiguration of spatial awareness. Environment and Planning A, 41(9), 2105–2124. Ash, J., & Gallacher, L. A. (2011). Cultural geography and videogames. Geography Compass, 5(6), 351–368. Bernstein, B. (2003). The structuring of pedagogic discourse. Routledge. Bulkhead Interactive. (2016). The Turing Test [Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows] Bulkhead Interactive, Square Enix Collective. Coldwood Interactive AB. (2018). Unravel 2 [Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, XBox Cloud Gaming]. Electronic Arts. Colombetti, G. (2017). Enactive affectivity, extended. Topoi, 36, 445–455. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper Perennial. Davies, M. (2009). Examining game pace: How single-player levels tick. Game Developer. Retrieved March 2022, from https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/ examining-game-pace-how-single-player-levels-tick Duncan, S. C. (2016). “Games with learning”: Adpositions and the lusory attitude. On the Horizon, 24(3), 246–256. Finkielsztein, M. (2021). Boredom and academic work. Routledge. Fotaris, P., & Mastoras, T. (2019). Escape rooms for learning: A systematic review. In Proceedings of the European conference on games based learning (pp. 235–243).

Creating affective atmospheres in classrooms and digital gaming  139 Gee, E., Siyahhan, S., & Cirelli, A. M. (2017). Video gaming as digital media, play, and family routine: Implications for understanding video gaming and learning in family contexts. Learning, Media and Technology, 42(4), 468–482. Huang, S.-Y., Kuo, Y.-H., & Chen, H.-C. (2020). Applying digital escape rooms infused with science teaching in elementary school: Learning performance, learning motivation, and problem-solving ability. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 37, 100681. Kneebone, R. (2020). Expert: Understanding the Path to Mastery [Kindle iOS version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com Linderoth, J. (2012). Why gamers don’t learn more: An ecological approach to games as learning environments. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 4(1), 45–62. https://doi.org/10.1386/jgvw.4.1.45_1 Militz, E., & Schurr, C. (2016). Affective nationalism: Banalities of belonging in Azerbaijan. Political Geography, 54, 54–63. Nicholson, S. (2015). Peeking behind the locked door: A survey of escape room facilities. White Paper. Retrieved 20 May 2023, from http://scottnicholson.com/pubs/ erfacwhite.pdf Santuber, J., Dremel, C., Owoyele, B. A., & Edelman, J. A. (2020). Building an apparatus: Disclosing affectivity in sociomaterial research. In International conference on information systems, Hyderabad, India. Skookum Arts. (2017). The Pedestrian [Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, XBox One, Xbox series]. Stone, Z. (2016). The rise of educational escape rooms. Retrieved 6 May 2023, from http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/the-rise-of-educationalescape-rooms/493316/ Sweetser, P., Johnson, D., Wyeth, P., Anwar, A., Meng, Y., & Ozdowska, A. (2017). GameFlow in different game genres and platforms. Computers in Entertainment (CIE), 15(3), 1–24 Veldkamp, A., van de Grint, L., Knippels, M., & van Joolingen, W. R. (2020). Escape education: A systematic review on escape rooms in education. Educational Research Review, 31, 100364. Wargo, J., & Garcia, A. (2023). (Re)reading the room: The literacies of escape rooms. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 20(1), 14–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/155 05170.2021.1960224 Yeoman, P. (2018). The material correspondence of learning. In Spaces of teaching and learning: Integrating perspectives on research and practice (pp. 81–103).

7 Conclusion

Nobody is entitled not to be bored. Unless you find ways of accepting that, you’re likely to have a hard time. Yet in our climate of immediate gratification and continual stimulation, coping with tasks that are inherently boring is becoming a lost art. (Kneebone, 2020, p. 58) Re-imagining boredom The recognition that boredom is a pervasive phenomenon in schools is not new. Shernoff and Csikszentmihalyi (2009) quote Goodlad (1984) who found that school was largely a ‘passive, individualistic and teacher-controlled activity dominated by direct instruction’ (p. 134). Boredom researchers such as Finkielsztein (2021) have found that academic boredom arises when learning experiences cease to be personally meaningful. Although there is a school of thought that boredom is an inevitable part of the formal learning process (Breidenstein, 2007, p. 103), there is also an acknowledgement that boredom can lead to problems with motivation, attention and ultimately, achievement. Central to my argument in this book is the premise that formal learning and schooling should be meaningful experiences. As Csikszentmihalyi (2009) says, ‘The key element of an optimal experience is that it is an end in itself’ (p. 67). Where the student experience of learning in schools is considered, attention tends to focus strongly on the behaviour of other students, rather than the complexity of the classroom experience itself. In recent years much attention has been focused on behaviour management and the ‘safety’ of the classroom environment, as demonstrated by the UK government’s Behaviour Hub initiative announced in February 2020. Good behaviour is central to everything we want to achieve for students. It’s the difference between safe, calm schools where students and staff can flourish and learn, and schools where students endure disruption or worse. Tom Bennett, Department for Education’s lead behaviour adviser. (www.gov.uk, 2020) DOI: 10.4324/9781003322689-7

Conclusion  141 If we reduce the student experience of learning to a narrow focus on compliant classroom behaviour, restrict pedagogical approaches to DI and consider good exam results as the only important outcome of the formal learning process, there is no incentive to look deeply at experiences such as boredom and their possible consequences. I have argued strongly in this book that overly standardised, inflexible schooling practices may be contributing to student boredom and that digital gaming, which already plays a part in formal learning, might help disrupt the idea that current classroom practices are immutable and unquestionable. In the opening chapter of this book, my first-hand account of playing the digital game Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate demonstrated how affective experience is dynamically shaped and influenced by multiple elements of the gameplay assemblage, which are assembled by the players themselves. The affordances or opportunities for action present themselves not just through the game mechanics in the form of the narrative, feedback from visual, aural and haptic aspects on the screen but also from the wider assemblage the gameplayer is part of – the console they are playing on, the armchair they are sitting on, the leisure time they have available and the ability to participate in or break off their gameplay. Similarly, in schools the learning process is a complex, embodied experience which is constantly being assembled and re-assembled. The difference is that the wider network of accountability and assessment within which each learning assemblage comes together exerts different pressures and makes a narrower range of affordances and constraints visible to the participants. Space, time and curriculum content are organised and regulated to ensure maximum efficacy rather than optimal experiences. With such high levels of accountability, it is understandable that schools should react by ensuring consistency and predictability through standardised content and delivery and that teachers should organise their lessons to ensure that measurable outcomes will be achieved. Although it is understandable, this approach is not without risk, as we have demonstrated in this book. Bored students may either seek to escape their boredom by being disruptive, as we have described earlier, or they may appear to be compliant but become increasingly disengaged from learning. When educational outcomes are overemphasised, learning experiences and the learning process can be neglected. I am not suggesting that all experience of formal learning in schools is boring or that one should never be bored at school – far from it. As I have related throughout the book, many classroom practices experienced by myself and my participants provided embodied and positive affective experiences. Mathematics lessons, in particular, utilised features of gameplay such as ‘missions’ in the shape of tasks with graduated challenges, used manipulatives to give hands-on experiences of abstract concepts and used ‘cold calling’ to induce stress and concentrate attention. As Professor Roger Kneebone, Director of Surgical Education at Imperial College reminds us, in the quotation with which I began this chapter, ‘coping with tasks that are inherently boring’ is necessary.

142 Conclusion However, what Kneebone refers to here is the necessity of student doctors ‘doing’ things repeatedly in order to make skills second nature and to put prior knowledge in context. He emphasises that such repetition is essential for people to become familiar with ‘materials, tools and people who make up that world’ (p. 61), just as I have argued game players attune to the affordances of the game world and persevere by jumping over an obstacle over and over again in order to progress towards a goal and to acquire ‘jumping’ skills. He is not referring to the type of academic boredom that emerges from listening to standardised content being delivered in the same way, to every student, in every lesson and which runs the risk of creating a personally meaningless experience. Gaming assemblages are assembled by players. The player chooses the game, the console and the time to sit down and play, as well as how long to play and when the experience will end. So, should students organise their own learning in classrooms? As a former teacher, I firmly believe in the teacher’s role in the learning process. As Biesta (2012) advocates, the teacher has a key role in deciding what is educationally desirable. This decision can only be made in ‘concrete and always unique situations that emerge…’ (p. 39) and is a ‘matter of judgement, not of directives from elsewhere’ (p. 39). This is the crux of my argument, in this book. Actor–Network Theory and assemblage theory can help teachers (and researchers) recognise that affect emerges dynamically from the unique elements and characteristics of each learning situation. Students do not enter their classroom with an underlying propensity for boredom and neither are they the sole agents in the classroom experience. The role of the material needs to be accounted for. By recognising the role that all elements of a learning assemblage play in both learning and the affective experience of learning, teachers can develop more flexible practices based on their own dynamic judgement in the classroom rather than purely in response to policy or the practical demands of assessment. They can become assemblage ethnographers, sensing affective flows and orchestrating the classroom experience accordingly. The ability for teachers to shape and re-shape classroom sessions dynamically is becoming ever more difficult, with evidence that the use of scripted lessons is on the rise in schools (Hazell, 2017, TES). A well-known academy chain in the north of England uses standardised schemes of work across all of its schools, which includes a mandatory scripted element in Mathematics. The arguments being used in favour of these scripts echo Engelmann (1988), with the emphasis on efficiency and unambiguity. As I discussed in Chapter 1, research which demonstrates the effectiveness of direct instruction focuses on achievement scores rather than the quality of the student learning experience. Prioritising effective delivery of content at the expense of affective experience ignores the potential for monotony, predictability and, ultimately, boredom to emerge from the learning process. As Biesta (2015) points out, education is not a closed system where cause and effect are closely linked, where outcomes can be directly attributed to input. On the contrary, education is an open system which is in constant interaction with its environment.

Conclusion  143 The empirical evidence in this book suggests that we need to give more careful consideration to embodied approaches to learning and acknowledge the link between body and mind whilst recognising that subject content and activity need to be related. Kneebone (2020) describes how knowledge within a certain domain is built up: …knowledge isn’t just theoretical. It’s the knowledge of ‘doing’: the physicality of materials and bodies. It doesn’t come from books and you have to experience it for yourself, stocking an internal library of sensations, muscular actions and familiarity with your materials – especially when those materials are other people. (Kneebone, 2020, p. 65) Opportunities for ‘hands-on’ learning were mentioned positively by both teachers and students when interviewed for my study. In Mathematics, the use of plastic blocks to help students visualise plan drawings was both engaging and effective. The physical movement and concrete actions of the code-breaking activity in the Cryptography lesson corresponded to the lesson ‘narrative’. The use of ‘trial and error’ in Minecraft and the acid rain lesson allowed students to use experimentation to work out the properties of materials. Feedback mechanisms in education and gaming highlight how different modes of participation and material constraints influence boredom and engagement. Digital gaming provides feedback in a variety of stimulating, immediate and continuous ways that are difficult for classroom teachers to emulate. However, more flexible and imaginative ways to reflect on learning are essential with greater use of peer feedback, audio-recorded responses by teachers, model answers and online synchronous commenting on draft work, as well as the usual verbal feedback in lessons. I have explored the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT for enhancing educational feedback, drawing parallels with engaging feedback mechanisms in gaming. Effective peer feedback relies on the creation of learning spaces where peer support and collaboration are normalised and valued, which requires a greater tolerance for chatter and the acceptance that silence is not required in every lesson. Feedback on work produced should not always be tied to assessment criteria either, but to the impact it creates. For example, in English, there has always been a tradition of writing for real audiences on blogs and encouraging feedback from the wider public. International blogging initiatives such as Clusterblogging.net (see Twitter feed for @deputymitchell) both motivate and increase student achievement in writing. In Design Technology, artefacts can be created for use in school, with feedback from users, in the form of popularity and uptake in the use of a manufactured object. What was striking about some of the hybrid learning that occurred during COVID-19 school closures was the opportunity for students to gain embodied experiences without the disruption to school timetables, spaces and organisation (Dunnett, 2023). Students were able to make use of outdoor learning

144 Conclusion spaces, do individual science experiments with everyday materials and take part in musical performances to demonstrate or apply musical knowledge. The ability to organise their own time and orchestrate their own spaces for learning created ‘spaces’ otherwise unavailable to certain students who found the constraints of normal classroom learning frustrating – a student who had recently arrived in the UK and was able to take advantage of the greater flexibility to access specialist language support alongside online classroom activity and another student with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), who had a special interest and the time to pursue this (Dunnett, 2023). Spatio-temporal boundaries play a key role in shaping affective experiences in schools and gaming. The assumption of linear, sequential representation of time in face-to-face formal learning experience was turned on its head during COVID-19 lockdowns when the boundaries between synchronous and asynchronous learning, formal and informal learning and public and private spaces became blurred. Some schools resisted the temptation to replicate their face-to-face model by offering ‘live’ online lessons and instead took advantage of the new possibilities available to ‘orchestrate’ a different kind of learning experience. Online learning spaces and digital games can support multiple temporal frames which overlap as well as occur sequentially (Dunnett, 2023). Online learning and games can be experienced in multiple settings through mobile devices and different flows of time can be created. Online learning allows these flows of time to be varied without disrupting the sequential order of the classroom or losing contact with the central lesson content – it can create ‘space’ for students to learn at their own pace or on a topic of their choice as I discussed in the previous paragraph. Dunnett (2023) argues strongly that the hybrid learning model from COVID19 lockdowns has given us the opportunity not just to incorporate technology but to help generate different spatio-temporal relations which can help move away from the monotony and predictability of school timetables and one-hour lessons. Constraints on individual agency, the inability to take individual action and to vary the levels and direction of attention as gameplayers are able to do, all run the danger of interrupting ‘flow’, which as we have already discussed is associated with engagement in learning situations (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991). I am not suggesting that hybrid learning replace face-to-face learning, just as Engelmann (1988) reminds us that all learning experiences should not be through direct instruction. Instead, I am suggesting that we regard learning as an assemblage, that teachers are given control of how learning experience is assembled and that there is a place for hybrid learning within such a model. Learning from research Like Sørensen’s (2009) ethnography of the materiality of learning, rather than contributing to the discussion about sociomaterial theories and concepts, this book was intended to provide a series of insights into boredom through concepts developed using Actor–Network Theory and assemblage theory. ­ Current approaches to boredom often neglect the role of materials, preferring

Conclusion  145 to focus on students’ individual psychological attributes and on self-regulation as the solution. Actor–network theory and assemblage theory encourage us to understand classroom and gaming practices as ‘sociomaterial entanglements’ and through assemblage ethnographic approaches researchers and teachers can co-create data and experience first-hand ‘flows-of-effect’ such as boredom. Becoming an assemblage ethnographer (Ghoddousi & Page, 2020) allowed me to ‘hang out’ with my participants, to sense the ‘flows of affect’ within assemblages and to reconstruct the story of how boredom emerged through key ‘events’, which are described in the vignettes through the book. An assemblage ethnographer’s ethical actions are part of the process of research, and ethical actions are ongoing, but this more fluid approach to ethics-as-assemblage must work alongside existing ethical requirements such as informed consent, anonymisation and safeguarding issues in school until new ethical practices are established. This book draws inspiration from several key sources related to optimising learning experiences and addressing boredom in formal education settings. Csikszentmihalyi’s (1991) concept of flow and emphasis on optimal learning experiences inspired the ethnography on which the book is based and inspired me to explore how formal learning experiences can be transformed as well as to change attitudes that imply boredom is a necessary part of formal learning. Fenwick, Edwards and Sawchuk’s (2015) clear account of the value of sociomaterial approaches moves us away from the notion of context-as-container into an understanding of space as a material assemblage of people and objects that can create ‘affects’ like boredom. Approaches to classroom experiences are informed by Mulcahy’s (2012) explanation of affective relations in action in classrooms and how objects and humans participate in those actions. The overlap between participation and feedback is recognised by Gravett (2022), who proposes that feedback be viewed as an assemblage where agency can be constrained or afforded through material components and that we need to pay attention to what students are able to do with feedback in different contexts and environments. Finally, understanding digital gaming practices and the way they generate intensities of feeling would not be complete without considering the work of Ash (2009, 2012, 2013). I have drawn inspiration from his concepts of affective intensities, affective atmosphere and attunement for my own interpretations of games and how they captivate players. Andiloro’s (2023) theorisation of game genre as atmospheric assemblage and Santuber et al. (2020) concept of affective niche and affective scaffolding are very much aligned with Ash, in their emphasis on affect not only as a response to emotion but also as a capability for action derived from different assemblages. Final thoughts Increasing focus on accountability and examination results has resulted in an education system that is risk-averse and dominated by fear of unpredictability.

146 Conclusion This sense of ‘risk’ has spawned a surveillance culture, which has led to a performative approach to learning and teaching, or simulation as Page (2017) describes it. If teaching and learning practices are reduced to producing only one desired outcome – examination results – they are unlikely to change. Since schooling is an open system rather than a closed one (Biesta, 2015), it is important to resist the urge to simplify, standardise and quantify everything about the learning process for the sake of consistency. Scripted lessons, referred to earlier, run the risk of not only boring students but also disempowering teachers by reducing their expertise. Kneebone (2020) notes that experts adapt their knowledge to each set of circumstances by reading the material they work with and the people they serve (Kneebone, 2020, p. 238). Providing an optimal experience and avoiding boredom means that we might need to reconsider our plans and respond to the specifics of each situation. By taking the lesson as an assemblage, expecting slightly different outcomes each time and orchestrating both human and material elements, we can create learning experiences where even repetitive tasks become part of a process in which students are full participants and work towards personally meaningful goals. References Andiloro, A. (2023). Understanding genre as atmospheric assemblage: The case of videogames. Television & New Media, 24(5), 559–570. Ash, J. (2009). Emerging spatialities of the screen: Video games and the reconfiguration of spatial awareness. Environment and Planning A, 41(9), 2105–2124. Ash, J. (2012). Attention, videogames and the retentional economies of affective amplification. Theory, Culture & Society, 29(6), 3–26. Ash, J. (2013). Technologies of captivation: Videogames and the attunement of affect. Body & Society, 19(1), 27–51. Biesta, G. J. (2012). Giving teaching back to education: Responding to the disappearance of the teacher. Phenomenology & Practice, 6(2), 35–49. Biesta, G. (2015). On the two cultures of educational research, and how we might move ahead: Reconsidering the ontology, axiology and praxeology of education. European Educational Research Journal, 14(1), 11–22. Breidenstein, G. (2007). The meaning of boredom in school lessons. Participant observation in the seventh and eighth form. Ethnography and Education, 2(1), 93–108. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience/Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Harper Perennial. Department of Education. (2020). Experts to tackle poor behaviour in schools [Press release]. Available online at: Experts to help tackle poor behaviour in schools – GOV. UK (www.gov.uk) [Last accessed: 18 August, 2023]. Dunnett, N. (2023). Sociomaterial perspectives on hybrid learning in primary classrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic. In C. Burnett & K. Marsh-Davies (Eds.), Teacher identity and teaching practice post-COVID, (pp. 256–273). Routledge. Engelmann, S., Becker, W. C., Carnine, D. & Gersten, R. (1988). The direct instruction follow through model: Design and outcomes. Education and Treatment of Children, 11(4), 303–317.

Conclusion  147 Fenwick, T., Edwards, R., Sawchuk, P. (2015). Emerging approaches to educational ­research: Tracing the socio-material. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. Finkielsztein, M. (2021). Boredom and academic work. Routledge. Ghoddousi, P., & Page, S. (2020). Using ethnography and assemblage theory in political geography. Geography Compass, 14(10), e12533. Gravett, K. (2022). Feedback literacies as sociomaterial practice. Critical Studies in Education, 63(2), 261–274. Hazell, W. (2017). The rise of the scripted teacher. Times Educational Supplement (26th October, 2017). Kneebone, R. (2020). Expert: Understanding the path to mastery [Kindle iOS version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com Mulcahy, D. (2012). Affective assemblages: Body matters in the pedagogic practices of contemporary school classrooms. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 20(1), 9–27. Page, D. (2017). The surveillance of teachers and the simulation of teaching. Journal of Education Policy, 32(1), 1–13. Santuber, J., Dremel, C., Owoyele, B. A., & Edelman, J. A. (2020). Building an apparatus: Disclosing affectivity in sociomaterial research. In Joey F. George, Souren Paul, Rahul De, Elena Karahanna, Suprateek Sarker, & Gal Oestreicher-Singer (Eds.), Proceedings of the 41st international conference on information systems, ICIS 2020, making digital inclusive: Blending the locak and the global, Hyderabad, India, Association for Information Systems. Shernoff, D. J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2009). Cultivating engaged learners and ­optimal learning environments. In Rich Gilman, E. Scott Huebner & Michael J. Furlong (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology in schools (pp. 131–145). Sørensen, E. (2009). The materiality of learning: Technology and knowledge in educational practice. Cambridge University Press.

Index

Page number in italics refer to figures. accountability 1, 6, 17, 90–92, 141, 145 actor network theory (ANT) 6, 7–9, 32, 35, 142, 144–145; in games 28–30 ADD see attention deficit disorder ADHD see attention deficit hyperactivity disorder affect: in assemblage 92; emergent 127; enactive 123; gaming 71; material 74; participation 60; positive/negative 77–78, 86, 96–97, 109; role in research 36, 54–55; temporal 61–63 affective: see also atmosphere (s); assemblage 64, 84; component of boredom 15; engagement 83–84, 109, 117, 135; experiences 9, 29, 50–51, 64, 75, 119, 141–142; intensities 48–49, 71, 76, 97, 107, 145; niche 123, 127, 132, 136–138; objects 39; outcomes 19; responses 5, 90; scaffolding 123–124, 127–128, 133–134, 137–138; state 13, 24, 26, 131–133, 135–136, 138 affordances: definition of 17; for feedback 107, 110, 118–119; in games 29, 74, 111, 126, 135–136, 142; modes of participation 20, 59–61, 64, 99–100, 103, 114–119, 143; spatial 67, 74–75, 131; temporal 127 agency 36–37; classroom 85, 116; distributed agency 67; in feedback 90, 94–96; in gaming 64, 75, 111, 119; objects 83; student 69–70, 106–107 AI see artificial intelligence Andiloro, A. 65, 71, 123, 145

ANT see actor network theory artificial intelligence (AI) 19, 21, 23, 120; see also ChatGPT; Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) 27; in games 27–28 Ash, J.: concept of space in digital games 85; feedback 25, 135; image as embodied event 53, 71; spatio-­ temporal experience (in gaming) 73–75, 108, 134 Assassin’s Creed 4–5, 141; open world 28; sandbox 76 assemblage ethnography 35–58; ethnographer 72, 123, 133, 145 assemblage theory 7–9, 29, 142 atmosphere (s) affective 45, 48, 70–72, 78, 98; definition 8; role of feedback 91, 107 attention 2–3, 14, 25–26, 140–141, 144; attention deficit disorder (ADD) 37; attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) 14; distraction (of attention) 22, 29, 39, 70, 136; habits of 22; reduced/, withdrawal 17; student 66–70, 92; visual (in games) 53, 75 attunement 17, 70–71, 73, 85, 107, 135, 142 autonomy 2, 14, 18, 22; self-­ determination theory 14, 26 avatar 60; role/perspective 72–73, 134; as virtual presence/embodied experience 74–76, 78–79, 110 behaviour: boredom 2–3, 12; emergent 111; game 27; management 65, 130, 140–141; player 75; policies 22; self-­regulation 16–17; student 35, 39, 51, 65

Index  149 Bernstein, B. 18, 62–63, 93; see also invisible pedagogy; visible pedagogy boredom: academic 3, 12–13, 15–16, 140, 142; boredom coping 12, 26, 140–141; boredom-­proneness 3, 14, 24, 26; concept of 137; definition of 13, 15; state 13–16, 24, 26, 136; trait 13–14, 26 boundaries: boundary objects 81, 83–84, 107; regional 66, 83; spatio-­temporal 55, 60–61, 81, 101, 144 Building Schools for the Future (BSF) 2, 38–39, 42 Burnett, C.: ‘classroomness’ 6; participation 102; schooled devices 81, 83 Call of the Sea 108–109 ChatGPT 104–105, 114–115, 143; see also feedback Clash of Clans 118–119 closed system: education as 16, 18, 21, 94, 142 co-­design 47, 100 cognitive: cognitive-­affective 51, 132; cognitivist approach 16, 19, 21; cognitive load 5, 22–23 collaborative learning 19–20, 64, 79, 107 computing 69, 117, 123–124, 127–128, 130, 137 constraints: and affordances 20, 54, 59–60, 64, 85, 126, 134, 138; on agency 60, 70, 144; behavioural 22; material 47, 101–103, 143; spatio-­ temporal 48, 63–64, 84, 103, 127 COVID-­19 lockdowns 6, 8–9, 23, 60–62, 113–114, 143–144; see also hybrid learning Csikszentmihalyi, M. 3, 24–25, 61, 110, 130, 140, 144; see also flow Dewey, J. 16–17, 25 DI see direct instruction direct instruction 18–23, 76, 140, 142, 144 distraction see attention Dunnett, N. 21, 134 Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) see artificial intelligence emergent: agencies 7, 36; behaviour 111; ethics 36; practices 75, 83, 127 Empress of the Deep 111–112

Engelmann, S. 1, 18–21, 142, 144; see also Direct Instruction environment (s): classroom 64, 78–79, 81, 83, 136; club 45; gaming 14, 61, 71, 73, 110–111, 134–137; learning 14, 16, 18, 21, 35–36, 46; physical 15–16, 127–129; 3D 47; sociomaterial 123–124; virtual 23, 48, 75, 78–79, 84, 103–105 ethics 36–38, 46, 55; approval 42, 46; ethical 36–38, 145; ethics-­in-­ assemblage 36; issues 51 ethnography see assemblage ethnography experience (s) see affective; embodied 28, 59, 78, 141, 143; learning 1–2, 15–17, 36, 56, 132–134; optimal 2, 22, 57, 131–132, 135 Farnswood School 8, 41–42, 46–48, 54–55, 65–68, 77, 81, 92–93 feedback: assemblage 90–91, 96, 100, 107, 114, 145; aural/auditory 23, 92, 110 see ChatGPT; formative 115; gaming 107–108, 111, 141; haptic 28, 110; material 91–92, 96, 103; modelling/replay 100, 116, 118–119; see also modelling; peer 104, 143; performance 112; practices 95; process 96–97, 105; progression 112; reflection 114; sensory 23, 86; teacher 93, 104, 115; verbal 103, 132, 143; visual 110; written 100 FIFA 45, 84–85 Finkielsztein, M. 13, 15, 24, 51, 136 Firewatch 27–28 first person shooter (FPS) 25, 71–74, 110; perception of time 76; perspective 71–72, 76, 134 flow: activity/ies 3; experience 3, 14, 25, 74, 145; as time perception 24, 27, 61–62 Games Britannia 40 game (s): AI in games 27–28; as boundary objects 81–83; educational 79–80; see also environment; feedback; genre; game-­centred approach 26; mechanics 26–27, 40, 61, 80, 108, 110–111; rewards 27–28, 77 see relations; replay 99, 117–119; see also space; time 61–64, 127, 144

150 Index gameplay 72–73, 80, 125–126; assemblage 127, 133, 136, 141–142 genre (game) 71; adventure 108, 111; escape rooms 126–130; FPS see first person shooter; point and click 126; puzzle 124–127, 130–131, 133–138; sandbox 76–77, 80, 111; sports 84 handwriting see writing hybrid see learning, practices immersion 14, 25, 35, 71, 74, 110, 128; see also presence instruction see direct instruction interactive whiteboards (IWB) 53, 63–70 invisible pedagogy see pedagogy Intelligent Learning Environments (ILE) 19 iPad(s) 54, 81, 83, 106–107 IWB see Interactive Whiteboards Kneebone, R 123, 141–143, 146 large language models see ChatGPT learning see assemblage; collaborative 19–20; embodied 21–22, 77–78, 91; see also environment; experience 1, 16, 18, 40, 142, 144; hybrid 23, 134; formal 9, 59–60, 77, 90, 117, 135–136, 140–141; online 6, 23, 60, 113, 144; outcomes 14, 18–19, 90–91 Lemov, D. 22, 62 literacy: digital/online 47, 103–104; practices 77 materials 17, 64, 143–144; digital 128; learning 22, 92, 101, 109; materiality 28, 96, 131–132, 144 mathematics 22, 63, 77, 141, 143 McPherson, C. 1–2, 16–17 methods: audio recording 37–38, 44, 50–51, 72–75, 105; ethnographic 50–52; go-­along 46, 72, 123; hanging out 36, 42; research 7; touring interview 44, 55 Minecraft 8, 47–50, 54, 78, 80, 83; boundary object 81–83; club 42–45, 77, 133; as digital material 111; Education Edition 40, 78–79; intervention 100–107 modelling 116–118; see also replay motivation 14

Mulcahy, D 17, 29, 39; affective assemblage 64 narrative: gaming 4, 27, 61; as organisation 23, 50, 59, 84, 107, 128–130 needs: additional 37, 97; individual 62, 81, 113, 116 network: continuity 77; effect 23, 28, 55, 64, 85; gaming 75; see also space noise 39, 133 Oak National Academy 6, 113, 119 OFSTED 42, 65, 70, 92 online: feedback 104; see also learning; literacy 47; see also space outcomes 14; affective 19; educational 3, 18; see also learning; material 83; measured 1, 18, 21, 91, 141; predictable 60 pace see time participation: active 27, 70, 127; embodied 60, 96–100; gaming 64; modes of 9, 20, 45, 61, 65, 116, 119; material 17, 29, 116; player 27, 71; student 20–21, 68, 100 pedgagogy: 17–18; invisible 17–18, 65; visible 17, 56, 121 peer: feedback 97; interaction 17–18, 65, 96–98 perspective(s): cognitive 21; first person 71, 76, 134; psychological 13; sociological 15; sociomaterial 6, 8 player-­centred 26 practices: classroom/schooling 6, 9, 17, 21, 23–24, 39, 59–61, 141–142; digital literacy 103–104, 107; feedback/modelling 55, 91, 94, 114; gaming 7, 28, 45, 75, 145; hybrid 6; learning 6; material 64, 102; pedagogic 18, 38, 130 pragmatic 16 predictability 60, 141–142 presence 14, 42, 60, 72, 83; virtual 74, 79, 103 psychological see perspective Rainbow Six Siege 72–77, 85–86, 108, 110, 117, 136–137 reflection 47, 91, 94–96, 99–100, 103, 114 researcher 7 responsiveness (directed) 111 restlessness 15

Index  151 rewards 27, 76–77, 127 role of 37–38, 42–43, 46, 50–51, 54–55 scripted lessons 21, 142, 146 Second Life 39, 41 self determination theory (SDT) 14 self regulation 26, 29 sequence: gaming 27, 129; sequential organisation 24, 40, 63–64, 116, 144; teaching 18–19, 47, 60–64, 74 sociological approach 15–17 sociomaterial: approach 6, 17, 64, 85, 144–145; environment 123–124; relations 70, 100; perspective 8–9 Sørensen, E. 45, 65, 67, 74, 83, 102; see also space: fluid, regional, network space: fluid 60, 65–66, 75, 83, 85, 117; game 3, 54; network 65–66, 75, 81, 83; open-­plan 39; physical 6, 23, 64–67, 103; regional 66, 83, 85, 106, 116–117 surveillance 39, 47, 146 teacher (s): attitudes to learning 2; demonstration 116–117; feedback 93–94, 115; relations with students 17, 20–23, 66–67, 81–83, 92, 102, 107; role 18, 66–69, 102, 106, 130–132, 142; talk 62; zone 66–68 temporal: affordances 86, 127; see also boundaries; constraints 48; events 71, 74; see also flow; framings/ frameworks 60–61, 144; movement

73–74; organisation 59–61, 144; practices 85 The Pedestrian 124–126 The Turing Test 124–126, 133–136 time: clock time 25, 61; in digital gaming 62, 64, 74, 76, 111, 127; pace 27, 55, 61–64; perception of 24–25, 61, 127; regulation 60–63; timetables 23, 48, 52, 60–64, 143–144 trait see boredom transmission 16, 18–19, 62, 90; see also direct instruction Unravel 2 124–126 user-­centred 26, 28 virtual see environment; presence 60, 74, 79, 103; reality 28; world(s) 28, 41, 47, 79–80, 83, 106–107 visible pedagogy see pedagogy visual: attention 53; cues 25, 63; feedback 25, 100, 108, 110, 118, 141; interface 73–74; stimuli 71, 85, 125, 133 writing: as feedback 103–104; forms of 47, 100, 104, 114–115; handwriting 40, 47, 92, 97–100, 107, 131; as participation 41, 84, 92, 96–99, 103; story/creative writing 39–40, 47 YouTube 6, 44, 68, 75, 117