Papers by Suzanne de Castell
Mind, Culture, and Activity, 2001
Although it has been said that with rise of behaviorism, American psychology lost its mind(Brun... more Although it has been said that with rise of behaviorism, American psychology lost its mind(Bruner, 1986), it could also be argued that until the renaissance of sociocultural psychology, with the recent consolidation, as more or less mainstream, of the work of ...
Contemporary Sociology, 1999
Mind, Culture, and Activity, 2003
The goal of this research was to understand life with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Medical pra... more The goal of this research was to understand life with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Medical practice, based in biomedicine, focuses on physical aspects of illness. A sociocultural case studies approach was used to develop a" situated" understanding of life ...
AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
In early 2019, Overwatch professional player, “Ellie” quit playing just weeks after having been n... more In early 2019, Overwatch professional player, “Ellie” quit playing just weeks after having been named to one of the teams seeded into the professional league. The harassment cited as a reason to leave was related especially to whether or not “Ellie” was truly “female”. Not much later, Ellie was revealed (and confirmed by Blizzard, the parent company of Overwatch) to be an account created by a male player. This paper sets out to map the controversy that ensued from a self-styled “social experiment” of playing while female. This paper brings this current “revelation” into conversation with past, more fully embodied/manufactured identities to better understand why this case is particularly important to internet studies. To this end, we begin by briefly describing some earlier, more familiar cases of people revealed to be someone other than, in online spaces, they said they were. Then, we further outline the instance of Ellie: its uptake by mainstream media, prominent Youtubers and Twit...
In this paper we report on a 3-year, mixed-methods study of Massively Multiplayer Online games, f... more In this paper we report on a 3-year, mixed-methods study of Massively Multiplayer Online games, focusing on the ways in our lab-based studies were indeed sites of 'real' play, notwithstanding their limited ecological validity (Williams, 2010). We document the ways in which we observed players' real commitment to a play session that had few or no opportunities for follow up-investing considerable time and attention to, for example, naming and customizing their avatars, and selectively equipping them. We illustrate here some of the insights available through lab-based play that cannot be captured otherwise. We also draw attention to the ways in which relying on only one type of data can create a false and/or incomplete picture of a participant's level of engagement with the game. This research suggests that labs might well be a site where 'authentic' play is indeed possible, and can therefore offer rich potential for MMOG research as they can give significantly greater context than is possible from data that is generated by game servers.
Social Interactions in Virtual Worlds
This article explores the play practices of EVE Online industrialists: those primarily responsibl... more This article explores the play practices of EVE Online industrialists: those primarily responsible for generating the materials and equipment that drive the game’s robust economy. Applying the concept of ‘‘immaterial labor’ ’ to this underattended aspect of the EVE community, we consider the range of communicative and informational artifacts and activities industrialists enact in support of their involvement in the game—work that happens both in game and crucially outside of it. Moving past the increasingly anachronistic distinctions between digitally mediated labor and leisure, in game and out of game, we examine the relations of production in which these players are situated: to other EVE players, in-game corporations, the game’s developer, and the broader digital economy. Seen from this perspective, we consider the extent to which EVE both ideologically and economically supports the extension of capital into increasing aspects of our everyday lives—a ‘‘game’ ’ in which many play,...
Journal For Virtual Worlds Research, 2017
Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) have been a fruitful venue to study social interaction... more Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) have been a fruitful venue to study social interactions ranging from small temporary groups, to larger more permanent in-game social collectives such as guilds or clans. Much of this literature is focused on strangers becoming friends through MMOG play; comparatively, little is known about gameplay-based interactions between pre-existing romantic couples. To address that gap, this paper describes the methods used and subsequent results of an empirical investigation of the in-game actions and collaborations between couple and non-couple pairings as they played the MMOG RIFT. In our attempts to determine if couples display distinctive in-game behaviors, we found that players with a pre-existing relationship (friendship or romantic) behave in a similar manner while playing together. However, our findings indicate that avatar proximity is the key to distinguishing whether this pre-existing relationship is platonic or romantic in nature.
Conservation and Society, 2016
INTRODUCTION 'Community participation' has, over the past decades, become a key component in ecol... more INTRODUCTION 'Community participation' has, over the past decades, become a key component in ecological protection research and conservation initiatives. 'Participation', a term that signals the involvement of local actors and collectives in conservation practices, is central to recent Integrative Natural Protected Area initiatives (INPAs). Integrative conservation initiatives are based upon a socially-inclusive approach to biodiversity protection and are, in part, a response to formerly dominant policies of displacement-policy forms which have been widely criticised for disregarding the land rights, interests, epistemologies, and voices of local stakeholders and indigenous communities (Brooks et al. 2013; Durand and Jiménez 2010; Fraga 2006; Wilshusen et al. 2002). This shift in conservation policy toward community inclusion is salient in Latin America, particularly in Mexico, where Biosphere Reserves (BRs) have become important sites for biodiversity conservation, ecology research, and site-based community participation practices (Durand and Lazos 2008; Fraga 2006). BRs both reflect and enact wider global trends in conservation policy that seek to transfer responsibility for natural resource management from central governments to diverse constellations of actors, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs), scientists, consultants, and (in principle) local community members (Buscher 2013). This shift to more 'participatory' and 'integrative' approaches to conservation
Language and Literacy, 2010
Attention has been a focus of much of the work I’ve done over the last several years, and in part... more Attention has been a focus of much of the work I’ve done over the last several years, and in particular the ‘attentional economies’ (Lankshear and Knobel, 2002; de Castell and Jenson, 2005) involving teachers and learners in both classroom-based and non-formal educational environments. What has become very clear is the need to distinguish between attentional behaviours, and other, more complex, more demanding and more generally ‘educative’ kinds of attention. I’m drawn to the idea of ‘exquisite attention’, (Lather 2007:16) and particularly interested in the pleasures of attention, as well of course as its productivity. Maybe its exquisiteness, a pleasure of attention, can be related to its productivity. We have long known that attention can be productive indeed, all by itself, seemingly. Consider the Hawthorne Effect, notorious among researchers---as soon as I begin to pay attention to you, you get better at what you are doing. Having other people pay close and careful attention ...
The third issue of Loading… demonstrates the strong promise of an emergent, trans-disciplinary fi... more The third issue of Loading… demonstrates the strong promise of an emergent, trans-disciplinary field that is drawing on disciplinary work from philosophy, psychology, education, film studies, cultural studies, literary studies, drama, and ethnography, among others. The result is a collection of papers that challenges readers to think, read, play, theorize and, most significantly, research and study games differently as the perspectives we bring individually to our work evolve through generative exposure to one another's ideas and frameworks. This has been the larger purpose of Loading… and remains the primary indicator of its utility for the development the Canadian game studies community.
Man, 1988
Children who are read to at home have a higher success rate in school. According to the National ... more Children who are read to at home have a higher success rate in school. According to the National Education Association, having kids read a lot is one Reading Literacy in the United States: Findings From the IEA Reading Literacy Study. Reading teaching in schools can kill a love for books will function competently in school and go on to contribute actively in an increasingly literate society is the level to which the child progresses in reading and. SummaryReviews: Literacy, society, and schooling: Adopted May 1998. A joint position statement of the International Reading Association and the. vital for all children to have literacy experiences in schools and. Available in the National Library of Australia collection. Format: Book xiv, 336 p.: ill. 24 cm. Peg Griffin-The Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition schools said boys in their school did not do as well in reading as girls. 82 of schools. achievement, while boys' gender identities, influenced by society's. Research evidence on reading for pleasure-Gov.uk reader PDF is available on our online library. With our online resources, you can find literacy society and schooling a reader. Other ebooks & PDF you can Functional illiteracy-Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia have shown that many students in Irish schools are not developing literacy and numeracy skills to the best of. participate as active and informed citizens in our society. Traditionally we have thought about literacy as the skills of reading and Literacy society and schooling a reader-Kwame Nkrumah University In such societies, people stop reading once formal education is completed as. Therefore, the challenge for many schools is to create a literate environment The National Strategy to Improve Literacy and Numeracy APA 6th ed.
Situated play, 2007
To better understand boys' privilege and girls' educational disadvantage with regard to video gam... more To better understand boys' privilege and girls' educational disadvantage with regard to video games, this presentation aims to challenge the ways girl gamers are rendered invisible by gaming communities, researchers, and designers. Drawing from audiovisual research of a girls' gaming club at an elementary school in Toronto, this paper explores the micro-interactions of a gaming session between five girls which is interrupted when two boys enter the scene and try to hijack their play. Using the MAP (Multimodal Application Program, developed by Suzanne de Castell and Jennifer Jenson) tool to visually chart and analyze the coordinated reactions of the girls as they put down their controllers and hold their bodies immobile during the boys' disruption, this paper explores the tenuous relationship to video games these girls enjoy, even within a space ostensibly devoted to their play.
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2014
Building upon a recent call to renew actor-network theory (ANT) for educational research, this ar... more Building upon a recent call to renew actor-network theory (ANT) for educational research, this article reconsiders relations between technology and educational theory. Taking cues from actor-network theorists, this discussion considers the technologically-mediated networks in which learning actors are situated, acted upon, and acting, and traces the novel positions of creative capacity and participation that emerging media may enable. Whereas traditional theories of educational technology tend to focus on the harmonization of new technologies with extant curricular goals and educational practices, an educational theory of technology looks to novel forms of technologically-mediated learning experience-from production pedagogies to role play in the virtual-to make visible the surprising relations, techniques, and opportunities that emerging media, and their attendant social contexts, may offer educational research.
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Papers by Suzanne de Castell