Self–Social Regulation in World of Warcraft: Dialectics of Adaptivity

Against a backdrop of youth’s digital migrations and traversals across online worlds, my research team and I explore the cognitive complexity and spatial and temporal affordances of the popular massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft (WoW) in how it mitigates the authenticity and contextual adaptation gaps inherent in traditional pedagogical design. Central to the interplay between self- and socio-regulatory phenomena, we argue that there is the need for macro-adaptive dispositions as learners adapt to cognitively demanding contexts of immersive gameplay, wherein the dialectics of adaptivity are not just functions of game-play but are also influenced by the dialogic aspects found across WoW affinity spaces. This chapter seeks to forge the conceptual bridge between alternative and sophisticated literacies demands of today’s learners, the rapidly changing requirements of today’s global economy and the limitations of traditional pedagogy within institutionalised contexts.

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