Perspective making: Constructivism as a meaning-making structure for simulation gaming

Constructivism has recently gained popularity, although it is not a completely new learning paradigm. Much of the work within e-learning, for example, uses constructivism as a reference “discipline” (explicitly or implicitly). However, some of the work done within the simulation gaming (SG) community discusses what the basic assumptions and implications of constructivism for SG are. Constructivism provides one theoretical approach to the use of computer-based systems and, as such, deserves careful consideration. The author’s view is that SG researchers—as SG is a transdisciplinary field—should seek to do research that is acceptable in terms of other disciplines and need to go back to the original texts in the reference discipline to gain genuine appreciation of the arguments being proposed. This is an aim of this article. Another aim of this article is to provide theoretical tools with which to enhance SG argumentation development and debriefing.