That’s more like they know me as a person": one primary pre-service teacher’s stories of her personal and ‘professional’ digital practices

In contributing to debates about how student-teachers might draw from personal experience in addressing digital literacy in the classroom, this paper explores the stories that one primary student-teacher told of her digital practices during a larger study of the role of digital literacy in student-teachers' lives. The paper investigates the 'recognition work' this student-teacher did as she aligned herself with different discourses and notes how themes of 'control' and 'professionalism' seemed to pattern her stories of informal and formal practices both within and beyond her professional education. The paper calls for further research into how student-teachers perceive the relevance of their personal experience to their professional role and argues for encouraging pre-service and practising teachers to tell stories of their digital practices and reflect upon the discourses which frame them

Student-centred learning through serious games

This research explores the rationale behind the utilisation of electronic games in education. A qualitative research sheds light on the students’ opinions and perceptions toward the use of serious games in-class. Semi-structured, face-to-face interview sessions among secondary school students suggest that they are acquiring relevant academic knowledge and competences, as they reap motivational and emotional benefits from these learning games. The students reported that their engagement with these games has improved their critical thinking and helped them make evaluative decisions to solve problems. Generally, students were capable of developing their interpersonal skills as they have actively collaborated in teams. On the other hand, there were a few students who were not perceiving the usefulness and the ease of use of playing serious games at school. This study postulates that the research participants possessed different skill-sets as they exhibited different learning abilities. In conclusion, this paper opens-up some avenues for future research in this field of study.University of Malta, Malta and Ministry of Education and Employment, Malta.peer-reviewe