Gamification In A High School Curriculum Summary

Abstract (1/2 Page)

In the qualitative study, “Teacher Perspectives on the Implementation of Gamification in a High School Curriculum,” Jon McFarland examines secondary teacher perspectives on using gamification methods in their classrooms and the teachers’ perceptions towards implementing gamification in the classroom. In the introduction, McFarland discusses the study by explaining the lack of research on gamification in secondary setting, identifying what gamification is and is not, and discusses the theoretical frameworks behind gamification as well as the history of the method throughout the years. The two research questions McFarland attempts to answer are (1) What are high school teachers firsthand perspectives on using gamification

McFarland explicitly states that some of his data collections “adhered to some elements of grounded theory” (McFarland, 2017, p. 39). However, his overall research design is a phenomenological design because he is trying to gather, analyze, and understand the perspectives of his participants who use the gamification process. Convenience sampling and purposeful sampling were used to select his participants, which is acceptable for this type of research because his participants need to be specific people using gamification. His participants represent the target population because each teacher instructs a wide variety of children in AP, honors, college prep, and inclusion. Therefore, the study does not focus on an explicit type of student such as AP or honors, but includes all students. Throughout the process, McFarland collects and analyzes his data simultaneously through recorded one-on-one interviews, memo note-taking and electronic artifacts. His interviews are well documented and he includes his interview questions and interview protocol in the appendixes. I wish he would have included some copies of the actual interviews between the different participants in this section that way the reader could have reviewed them and compared his or her own analysis of the questions with McFarland’s analysis. In addition, I wish McFarland would have had better control over his extraneous variables. For example, he allows each of the

The grouping makes the results section extremely easy to follow and effective in strengthening his argument about using gamification as a valid pedagogical practice. Furthermore, McFarland deepens his results by discussion several elements of gamification such as leaderboards, point systems, badges, and leveling up in connection to the types of gamification his participants used in their classroom. McFarland explains his results by including exerts from his interviews with various participants regarding how their perspective on gamification changed as they used it, and how they saw changes in their students. McFarland uses a table to display his participants and the various elements of gamification that they used in class. Also, he places a smiley face icon by the most popular element. The graph is significant in assisting the reader in understand the interview data and which specific elements were effective to all of the participants. In addition, he includes samples of gamification methods teachers used such as a game board to demonstrate the power of gamification. The level of detail in the description and mix of descriptive and inferences definitely address the research problem and provides sufficient data for the reader to make an informed decision about the effectiveness of the