ABSTRACT
The aim in this article is to reflect upon Gamification as a mediational means or pedagogic strategy in foreign language teaching and language teacher education programs, exploring the concept, presenting some game elements and bringing some learning principles which are inherent to good games (GEE, 2003GEE, J. P. What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2003. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/950566.950595
https://doi.org/10.1145/950566.950595...
), articulating theories from the field of Language, Psychology and Game Design. We illustrate the discussion by means of a gamified system designed for a course in a Master’s program in Applied Linguistics and then verify whether and how they appropriate the concept and use it in their classes, by examining their academic production. We problematize the use of a shallow model of gamification, based on a behaviorist, skinnerian view, arguing that it is advisable that teachers have a certain level of ludic/game literacy not only to work with games, but also to gamify.
KEYWORDS:
teacher education; language teaching; Gamification; cultural-historical perspective; dialogic perspective