Impact of digital games on early reading skills in a developing country context
type: CreativeWork
description: Reading is the basic component of learning that constitutes one of the first steps towards educational attainment. Amongst others, some of the pressing issues the developing countries face are lower literacy rates, education quality and access. Pakistan comes under the list of countries with appalling literacy rates, where 22.6 million children are out of school and have no access to education at all. Recent research indicates the use of digital technologies as a vehicle for change across developing countries in the world. The use of low-cost digital technologies offers opportunities for equitable access to quality educational experiences and the development of lifelong learning skills for marginalised factions of society. The present study explored the role of digital games using low-cost tablets in improving reading skills in multilingual societies within Pakistan- a developing country context, where Urdu is the lingua franca, and English is the second or sometimes third language, while the medium of instruction in schools, specifically at the textbook level, is English. This study considered English as the second language (L2) and Urdu as the first language (L1) in Pakistan. The study also intended to explore the factors essential to developing an effective digital game-based learning environment conducive to developing reading skills for students belonging to low socioeconomic status. Through the lens of constructionist epistemology and theoretical frameworks of pragmatism and transformative emancipation, this research utilised a multi-phase-mixed methods-embedded research design to investigate the effectiveness of digital game-based learning (DGBL) in developing reading skills in a multilingual developing country context. Data were gathered through multiple methods in different phases of the research, incorporating pre-post and delayed-post tests, surveys, classroom observations, student group interviews, and individual teacher interviews. A sample of 288 stude…
abstract: Reading is the basic component of learning that constitutes one of the first steps towards educational attainment. Amongst others, some of the pressing issues the developing countries face are lower literacy rates, education quality and access. Pakistan comes under the list of countries with appalling literacy rates, where 22.6 million children are out of school and have no access to education at all. Recent research indicates the use of digital technologies as a vehicle for change across developing countries in the world. The use of low-cost digital technologies offers opportunities for equitable access to quality educational experiences and the development of lifelong learning skills for marginalised factions of society. The present study explored the role of digital games using low-cost tablets in improving reading skills in multilingual societies within Pakistan- a developing country context, where Urdu is the lingua franca, and English is the second or sometimes third language, while the medium of instruction in schools, specifically at the textbook level, is English. This study considered English as the second language (L2) and Urdu as the first language (L1) in Pakistan. The study also intended to explore the factors essential to developing an effective digital game-based learning environment conducive to developing reading skills for students belonging to low socioeconomic status. Through the lens of constructionist epistemology and theoretical frameworks of pragmatism and transformative emancipation, this research utilised a multi-phase-mixed methods-embedded research design to investigate the effectiveness of digital game-based learning (DGBL) in developing reading skills in a multilingual developing country context. Data were gathered through multiple methods in different phases of the research, incorporating pre-post and delayed-post tests, surveys, classroom observations, student group interviews, and individual teacher interviews. A sample of 288 stude…
author: Ahmad, Farzana
keywords: Digital game-based learning, Digital game-based learning environment, Reading skills, Cross-linguistic transfer of skills, Role of teachers in DGBL, DGBL
license: https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstreams/71bea57e-1420-407a-8811-a77fb2523e50/download
date published: 2023
date modified: 2026-07-24T05:57:18Z
provider: University Waikato
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The University of Waikato