Articulating and Formalizing Intuitive Understandings about Newtonian Mechanics

School science, with its focus on explicit formalized knowledge structures, seldom connects to or builds upon students' tacit intuitive understandings. Commercial video games, however, are exceptionally successful at helping learners build accurate intuitive understandings of the concepts and processes embedded in the games due to the situated and enacted nature of good game design. However, commercial games fall short as platforms for learning because they do not help students articulate and connect their evolving intuitive understandings to overarching explicit formalized structures that would support transfer of knowledge to other contexts. In Thought and Language, Vygotsky discusses the potential for leveraging intuitive understandings from everyday experience ("spontaneous concepts") with instructed "scientific concepts" to build robust understandings. Research by Clark, Nelson, D’Angelo, Slack, and Martinez-Garza of Vanderbilt and Arizona State University outlines how the SURGE project (Scaffolding Understanding by Redesigning Games for Education) builds this approach into computer physics games that develop and connect students' intuitive understandings about Newtonian mechanics into overarching explicit formalized frameworks allowing knowledge transfer across broader contexts. Data include pre/posttest responses from the Force Concept Inventory (an instrument widely regarded by the physics community as the best test of conceptual understanding of force and motion) and embedded assessments and other variables collected within the game. Analysis examines student learning associated with SURGE’s integration and overlay of popular gameplay with overarching physics concepts and representations.