ABSTRACT

This article discusses the role of play and imagination in three urban settings: an ELA classroom, a community organization grounded in civic participation, and a digital learning lab in a library setting. We draw on sociocultural theories of imagination to show that all of the affordances and constraints of the settings contribute to what could be imagined. All three settings were found to share the following overarching dimensions of engagement grounded in play and imagination: social actors have agency to act and transform signs and relationships as well as modify contexts in ways that change the problem space and their positions as meaning-makers; moreover, the emergence of unexpected meaning is developed in interactions of people, tools, and artifacts. The settings also point to differences in the nature of play and imagination related to other conditions of the setting. To determine these conditions, we developed an Activity System Observation Protocol that allowed us to analyze activity components such as objects, norms for action and interaction, tool use, distribution of labor, and the organization of community. We found that the object or purpose of each setting was integrally related to how play and imagination functioned in each.

摘要

本文讨论了游戏和想象力在三种城市环境中的作用：ELA 教室、以公民参与为基础的社区组织以及图书馆环境中的数字学习实验室。我们利用想象的社会文化理论来表明，环境的所有可供性和限制都有助于想象。发现所有三种环境都具有以下基于游戏和想象的参与的总体维度：社会行动者有能力行动和改变符号和关系，并以改变问题空间和他们作为意义制定者的立场的方式修改环境；此外，意外意义的出现是在人、工具和人工制品的互动中发展起来的。这些设置还指出了与其他设置条件相关的游戏性质和想象力的差异。为了确定这些条件，我们开发了一个活动系统观察协议，允许我们分析活动组件，例如对象、行动和交互规范、工具使用、劳动力分配和社区组织。我们发现每个场景的目标或目的都与游戏和想象力在每个场景中的运作方式密切相关。