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=Human action and social groups as he natural home of assessment: Thoughts on 21st century learning and assessment=

Gee, J. P. (2010). "Human action and social groups as he natural home of assessment: Thoughts on 21st century learning and assessment". In V. J. Shute, & B. J. Becker (Eds.) Innovative Assessment for the 21st Century (pp. 13-39). New York, NY: Springer Science+Business Media 

James Paul Gee is one of the most cited authors in terms of gaming and learning. He first defines 5 types of learning environments: (1) actual – actually joining a social group that forms one’s identity in a given specialist domain (training to be a SWAT member); (2) pretense – going through the actual real world learning process given a specialist domain, but with no intention of joining of staying in that social group (journalist going through SWAT training to write an article); (3) sim – gaining empathy for a domain’s identity through a simplified version of the domain via a simulation (pretending to be a scientist in a school lab); (4) play – imaginative play with different domain conventions and safe from real world bad consequences; and (5) generic – learning is not tied to a specific domain but by the uses of the content. In the real world many people are ‘pro-am’ who are amateurs who have become experts in whatever they have developed a passion for since everyone can look up information on the internet and join with other ‘pro-am’ to create and solve a larger problem. In terms of discussing 21st century skills it is important to look at 2 questions first: (a) we should focus on the domain before we discuss skills – what domain is worth learning, with learning meaning gaining an appreciation for; and (b) whether these skills are transferable to other situations? He ends his article with 7 conclusions about the future/recommended research areas that focus on the learning of the ‘pro-am’ communities, assess learning/innovation based on the domains (allow for re-playing), and once they are assessed to ‘pass’ a domain whether students can do it again at a later time.