I’m scheduled to defend my dissertation proposal next Wednesday.  Here’s the abstract for my proposal:

          Serious Games are digital games with an educational, informative, or persuasive goal beyond mere entertainment (Abt, 2002).  They are promising because they often contain features that appear to be useful for learning (Squire, 2004), eliciting behavioral or attitudinal change (Yee, 2007) or encouraging new perspective taking, empathy, and new ways of thinking (Thomson, 2006; Gee, 2005).  As of yet, not much research yet exists on how to effectively use this form of technology to support identity development, raise awareness about social issues, or foster positive social or personal change (Thomson, 2006).

          In this Design-Based Research (DBR) dissertation study, I propose and test a specific Serious Game design that I call Identity Supportive Games (ISGs).  Specifically, I design and test a game that allows players to explore Asian-American identities in relation to ethnic stereotypes.  Many misconceptions and myths persist regarding Asian-American issues (e.g., the effects of seemingly positive stereotypes such as the “Model Minority” image that depicts Asian-Americans as intelligent overachievers who rarely fail).  In reality, these stereotypes and self-beliefs can lead to problems including identity crisis (Erikson, 1968), mental illnesses and depression (Cohen, 2007), poor self-esteem and self-image (Mok, 1998; Sue & Sue, 2004), decreased academic performance (Steele, 1997), decreased opportunities (Cheng & Thatchenkery, 1997), and pigeonholing (Sue & Sue, 2006).  With this in mind, I seek to understand how Serious Games can support identity development, impact self-concept, and broaden possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986) in the face of the limiting and damaging effects of ethnic minority stereotypes.  This work also seeks to produce design principles for attitudinal, affective, and learning outcomes in digital games.

          The issues to be explored run parallel to those in similar groups in other contexts, such as other ethnic minorities in schools and the workplace, as well as women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.  This mixed-methods dissertation study, largely drawing upon the theoretical frames of Erik Erikson’s model of identity development, Marcia’s Identity Status paradigm and Markus and Nurius’ notion of possible selves, leverages recent work on identity play in digital games (e.g. Turkle, 1995; Yee, 2007) and generates “theories-in-action” (Sandoval & Bell, 2004) on identity and learning within digital games for social impact.