Using collaborative activities in Minecraft Education for tandem language learning – pupils’ collaboration and interaction

Abstract

This paper explores pupils’ collaboration and interaction in classroom context in which pupils with different first/school languages engage in collaborative gaming activities and discusses the potential for tandem language learning through in-game interaction. Gaming as a collaborative activity was chosen because playing digital games engages children and youth and offers a potential for learning in general and language learning in particular. Employing digital games for educational purposes corresponds with the Finnish National Core Curricula’s emphasis on utilizing the learning possibilities provided by games and gamification. The study aims to explore how the collaborative playing of Minecraft Education (Mojang Studios, 2016) can facilitate interaction. It will also explore the language-learning potential of the interaction. The primary data comprised video recordings of three tandem dyads during two lessons that included gaming activities. The lessons were organized in collaboration between a Finnish-medium and a Swedish-medium school, with sixth graders as participants. The results show potential for using gaming to engage the pupils in collaborating and interacting with each other but also point to a need for supervision and support from the teachers. They show that merely gaming in parallel does not necessarily lead to interaction, which demands pedagogical planning of collaborative tasks in (relation to) the game.