Imagining critical digital game futures: a postdigital perspective

Digital games have become ubiquitous educational technologies, deployed across a range of contexts for the purposes of supporting diverse teaching and learning goals. This deployment has been underpinned by instructivist and constructivist learning discourses that employ imaginary visions that are overly deterministic and which risk inadequately preparing learners for critical engagement. This paper argues for conceptualising the relationship between digital games and learning in terms of more critical imagined digital futures. It explores a case study of game-centred school learning, whereby two Australian middle-schools replaced a print-centric curriculum with one focussing on digital games. Informed by postdigital theory, analysis of the entanglements that emerged from extensive teacher interviews reveals how critical perspectives can support breaking away from totalising theories and knowledge claims regarding digital game learning, while offering productive conceptual tools, such as critical digital game literacies, for imagining learning differently.