New Research: Teacher Attitudes about Gaming in the Classroom

A few months ago, BrainPOP teamed up with the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and embarked on a research project to dig deep into that very question. In the next few days, we’ll be releasing that data, but we wanted to give you a sneak peek behind the scenes of Teacher Attitudes about Digital Games in the Classroom. The entire process has been a fantastic learning opportunity for us and will help shape the direction we move with GameUp.

My partner in crime, Jessica Millstone, Research Consultant at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and I were fortunate to visit the classrooms of many talented teachers for the first part of the study. Through video interviews and classroom observations, we captured these teachers different perspectives and approaches to integrating online games in these classrooms.

For the second part of the study, we surveyed 500 teachers nationally. We weren’t surprised to learn that over 60 percent of educators surveyed feel that games helped increase engagement with subject-area content among lower-performing students. We did, however, learn that 62 percent report that games make it easier for them to level lessons and effectively teach the range of learners in their classrooms. Teachers said games make it easier to teach a range of learners in their classroom.

A summary of the findings can be downloaded as a PDF. We’ll be presenting our findings at the following conferences over the next few months:

We’re anxious to hear what you think! Special thanks to Lisa Parisi, Steve Isaacs, Joel Levin, and Ginger Stevens, as well as all of the other incredible educators who participated in this study.