In today’s increasingly ‘‘flat’’ world of globalization
(Friedman 2005), the need for a scientifically
literate citizenry has grown more urgent. Yet, by some
measures, we have done a poor job at fostering scientific
habits of mind in schools. Recent research on informal
games-based learning indicates that such technologies and
the communities they evoke may be one viable alternative—
not as a substitute for teachers and classrooms, but as
an alternative to textbooks and science labs. This paper
presents empirical evidence about the potential of games
for fostering scientific habits of mind. In particular, we
examine the scientific habits of mind and dispositions that
characterize online discussion forums of the massively
multiplayer online game World of Warcraft. Eighty-six
percent of the forum discussions were posts engaged in
‘‘social knowledge construction’’ rather than social banter.
Over half of the posts evidenced systems based reasoning,
one in ten evidenced model-based reasoning, and 65%
displayed an evaluative epistemology in which knowledge
is treated as an open-ended process of evaluation and
argument