Bio

Dr. Suzanne de Castell is a Professor and former Dean of Education at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, and Simon Fraser University, in Canada. She has spent nearly four decades in higher education, with extensive publications on philosophy and education, literacy and new media studies, gender, equity and technology, and digital game-based learning. She has led and been a part of research funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Human Resources Development Canada, United States Air Force Research Laboratory, corporate funded research and research funded by Ministries of Education in British Columbia and Ontario. Dr. de Castell’s scholarship has made a lasting impact on literacy studies, and her subsequent contributions to game studies have been foundational in building the digital games research community in Canada and internationally. She continues to be engaged in games and learning research.

Project

Beyond “Skills” and “Disciplines”: Production Pedagogy for 21st Century Learning

Post-literate cultures, in which emerging media of representation and expression have rapidly overtaken traditional literate forms, call for new pedagogical theories and practices. This project aims to compile and synthesize recent and emerging scholarly work on “production pedagogy” a response to this cultural shift from linguistic representation to digital engagement. “Production pedagogy” grounds learning neither in disciplines nor in skills, but in making and designing real-world objects and technology artefacts, and seeks less to ‘ prepare’ students for life beyond school, than to support and extend their intelligent and purposeful engagement with the present.