Children’s Out-of-school Learning in Digital Gaming Communities

The aim of this study is to contribute with knowledge about children’s out-of-school learning in digital gaming communities. Since girls’ gameplay is underrepresented in research (cf. Ito et al. 2019), this study explores girl’s participation in Minecraft communities, guided by the question: What characterizes learning in girl’s out-of-school Minecraft communities? This study answers to Halverson’s (2012) call for a shift in research perspective on education by paying less attention to ‘what works’, and more attention to ‘what’s happening’ and ‘what’s possible’. Thus, learning will be explored by studying girl’s situated learning in Minecraft, chosen mainly for its complexity insofar as it offers children the opportunity to compete, play and/or design new worlds. Data were generated through interviews, video-recorded play sessions and video-stimulated recall. Multimodal interactional analysis was applied in order to analyze children’s actions via mediation, seeking representations as signs of learning. The components of Wenger’s Social Theory of Learning were used as a basis when exploring learning in children’s out-of-school digital gaming communities. Five significant themes were identified: learning as experiencing, learning as belonging, learning as performing, learning as struggling and learning as enacting participatory identities. The main findings are presented in a tentative conceptual framework, that visualizes the characteristics of children’s out-of-school learning. The conceptual framework can assist stakeholders who are interested in connecting children’s out-of-school learning experiences with supporting, challenging and problematizing children’s learning in school. The framework can also be used by policymakers in discussions on children’s learning as it reflects what education might look like when the focus is shifted from ‘what works’ to ‘what’s happening’ and ‘what’s possible’.