Verónica Basilotta Gómez-Pablos

Increasing interest has been shown in using video games as an educational resource due to their pedagogical possibilities and their current expansion as an entertainment activity. However, their use in schools is still far from mainstream practice, which could be because of the barriers such as the price of video games, schools' technological infrastructures and teachers' attitudes. This article focuses on pre-service primary school teachers' attitudes (future primary school teachers currently studying at university) towards collaborative learning with video games, which employs video games in collaborative learning activities. Because playing video games is a common form of entertainment for higher education students, we investigate whether pre-service teachers' attitudes are influenced by their experience of playing video games (taking into account the number of years they have played video games), the frequency at which they play video games and their gender. This study takes a quantitative approach, using a questionnaire with a 5-point Likert attitude scale. The results indicate that pre-service primary teachers have a positive attitude towards collaborative learning with video games. Furthermore, students who have played video games for more years, who play more frequently and the male students have more positive attitudes to using video games in collaborative learning activities. Overall, pre-service teachers have positive attitudes towards collaborative learning with video games, which could affect the use of these resources in educational practices. As the main characters in the educational process, both teachers and children need to be comfortable with new practices to achieve the objective of the educational system, which is the complete formation of children.

Resumen El movimiento educativo abierto hace referencia al software libre, la formación y los contenidos abiertos o accesibles y la ciencia abierta, considerando la educación como un derecho de todos y un motor de desarrollo social que debe tender a incentivar la construcción y diseminación universal del conocimiento. Con esta finalidad, se construye una Red de Grupos de Investigación consolidados denominada REUNI+D (Red Universitaria de Investigación e Innovación Educativa) (Ref. EDU2015-68718-REDT) que pretende promover, de forma coordinada, acciones de formación abierta y difundir los resultados de investigación e innovación educativa considerando los criterios de la ciencia abierta. En el texto se explican los objetivos, la organización, las acciones desarrolladas, así como el impacto y la valoración de la Red para la construcción conjunta de conocimiento por parte de los miembros implicados. La metodología, de carácter descriptivo, se basa tanto en la revisión documental como en la encuesta de carácter abierto. Los resultados muestran que la valoración de la Red es positiva, tanto para la construcción de conocimiento como para la formación y desarrollo profesional de los investigadores; poniendo de manifiesto que la existencia de REUNI+D ha resultado ser una estrategia clave para reforzar la actividad investigadora de los grupos que la conforman y la difusión de los resultados de la investigación, actuando como una comunidad de práctica y una red de aprendizaje y profesionalización docente.

Teachers’ attitudes and teacher training are two of the main factors to integrate a new technology or a new methodology in the classroom. In that sense, although there is a lot of literature about using video games in education and about their educational possibilities, teachers’ attitudes can influence the application of video games as an educational resource. For that reason, in this paper we are going to focus on teacher attitudes and teacher training, in particularly, of in-service primary school teachers. Also, we are going to focus on collaborative learning with video games, topic that is explained in the paper. Regarding specific objectives, they are the followings: (1) to know the attitudes of primary school teachers (in-service) towards collaborative learning with video games, (2) to know if they have received previous educational training about video games in education and (3) to know if there is any statistically significant difference due to the fact of having received training or not about this topic. To reach these objectives and to show the results, this paper has been divided into four parts. The first part, introduction, deals with literature about video games and education. The second part is about the method of our study, including the instrument and the process to collect data. The third part shows the results of the study and the fourth part includes the conclusions of our research. Finally, in summary, we can say that primary school teachers have a positive attitude towards collaborative learning with video games. However, most of them say that they have not received teacher training about video games and education and this fact is influencing their attitudes, so teachers who have received training about that have better attitudes that teacher who have not received this kind of training.