Reviews Situated Language and Learning: A Critique of Traditional Schooling James Paul Gee (2004) London: Rout- ledge ISBN: 0-415-31776-2 (pbk) d16.99 130 pp. I found Gee’s most recent book inter- esting and provocative. Basically, it expands his argument (Gee, 2003) that fast developing digital technologies and popular cultures have generated complex new uses of language and literacy, and that these are just as important as the academic literacy of school. In fact, Gee suggests that young people today are more likely to learn the skills that are important for success within the work environment of ‘new capitalism’ through computer gaming than through the school curriculum. The book draws on, and in some ways brings together, Gee’s previous writing on language and literacy as social practice, the New Work Order, and computer gaming. Its underlying premise – that educators have much to learn from children’s informal mean- ing-making around multimodal texts outside the school curriculum – is important (and is also being addressed by other contemporary New Literacies researchers). Gee’s writing style is accessible and his personal gaming zeal shines through. However, perhaps as a result of his desire to put things simply for a wide readership, or because he is an enthusiastic convert to the gaming world, a number of points about chil- dren’s use of video games are not addressed, raising questions to which I shall return later. At the heart of this book is a contrast between two kinds of learning. Gee argues that children learn literacy best through what he calls a ‘cultural pro- cess’, in other words in the context of becoming part of a family or social group where the more experienced members model literacy activities for the less experienced and children are given support and information when they ask for it (‘on demand’ and ‘just in time’). Becoming literate and belonging to the group is part of a desired identity and involves children emotionally as well as intellectually. This is how children in well-off educated families learn ‘early prototypes of academic literacy’, and their school education can be fitted into this process. Gee contrasts this kind of situated language and learning with literacy learning as an ‘instructed process’ in traditional schooling. This he charac- terises as the skill-and-drill practice of mental skills away from the contexts where they may eventually be used and the absorption of large amounts of content information unrelated to the learners’ current interests and preoccu- pations. Gee suggests that the current teaching of reading in US schools, and in particular the teaching of phonics, is experienced by the majority of children, especially those who have no proto- typical academic literacy to connect it with, as an instructed process. For these children, literacy learning in school does not involve desirable identities and is an undermining and potentially alienating experience. On the other hand, learning to play computer and video games, with their highly emotionally and cognitively in- volving scenarios, attractive player identities and cleverly designed trajec- tories is, for Gee, essentially a cultural process. Children and young people enter a multifaceted virtual world where players group together in ‘affi- nity spaces’ that are ‘‘based primarily on shared activities, interests and goals, not shared race, class, culture ethnicity, or gender’’ (p. 73). Experienced players and newcomers can participate to- gether at different levels and achieve status in a variety of ways. In good games players are constantly involved from the beginning, learning as they go, and able to access web sites and chat rooms for help and information exactly when they need it. Their individual skills and knowledge become part of a network of people, information and mediating devices. In this sense knowl- edge is distributed (in a much more democratic way, Gee suggests, than in school), and cognitive activity is situ- ated through game design that pushes players to the outer edge of their competence, providing the pleasure of mastery and then throwing in a new stimulating challenge. Gee argues that the kinds of learning processes embedded in computer games are much more consistent with contemporary learning theory than those in classrooms. Rather than learn- ing through accumulating abstract skills and conceptions, as children are expected to do in traditional schooling, research suggests we learn through storing dynamic images of previous personal experience, with all the emo- tions, attitudes and values involved, and use these to run mental simulations to prepare for future action. Not only is good gaming designed to mirror this process, but also the access systems for information and resources, and the opportunities to design identities, networks and affinity spaces, model the new ‘smart workplaces’ of the contemporary world. Learning to operate through these affinity spaces, Gee suggests, is important for the ‘shape-shifting portfolio people’ who are the successful millennial citizens of the future. While Gee revisits familiar ground in his discussion of learning theory and the home–school divide, his account of novel forms of virtual sociability through affinity spaces, and of the opportunities for new kinds of litera- cies, identities and knowledge-making which these provide, is compelling. He raises important questions about the ways in which learning is organised in classrooms. I was, however, disturbed by Gee’s lack of attention to the ‘emo- tions, attitudes and values’ embedded in the content of the games, which must, on the basis of his argument, underpin the desired identities and moral positions which are part of the players’ learning. Nor does he address the gendered nature of the games, or questions about children’s differential access to, and take up of, learning opportunities on the internet. The digital gaming world is not the neutral, democratic, potentially em- powering environment for children from all backgrounds, which Gee seems to suggest. It is, in fact, an American- ised and highly commercialised space where, as one commentator put it, it is easier to sell explosions than sensitivity. Indeed, Chaplin (2005) documents the close links between the US military establishment and digital game devel- opment in an increasingly militarised American culture. In Britain, Facer et al. (2003) found in their research on chil- dren’s use of the computer at home that the vast majority of games children played were about fighting and killing. They suggest that, while some girls enjoyed playing, these games were, on the whole, conceived and designed by men for men and boys. Facer et al. conclude that ICTs are just as likely to reinforce as challenge current social divisions because the digital divide is based not only on questions of access and technical mas- tery, but also on whether children and 58 Reviews r UKLA 2006. 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