Flow, Fun and Frame in the Classroom: Redefining the Engagement and Self-Determination of Students with Intellectual Disability through Games

The purpose of special education for students with intellectual disability is not only to introduce and improve academic skills but mainly to enhance the quality of the children´s life and promote their autonomy and self-determination. Games have been used in special education classrooms as tools of gratification and extrinsic motivation. Contemporary game theorists have gone further to suggest that there is a mapping between the model of learning motivation and the experience of playing digital games. However the question remains: What happens in an educational setting when games are introduced, are digital games able to become an agent of change, enhance self-determination and the willpower to learn for students with intellectual disability? In order to address these questions, we ran a three years old qualitative study with students with mild and moderate intellectual disability and their educators, using games in different educational settings. Different games and different empirical tools such as interviews, focus groups, videos and systematic observation were used, in order to gather information and document possible changes in the experience of the students as well as changes in their self-determination, engagement and motivation. Data were analysed using Analytic Induction and Erving Goffman´s Frame Analysis as a tool of experiential analysis.