Using Minecraft to Reconstruct and Roleplay Local History: Intersubjectivity, Temporality, and Tension

Abstract

This paper presents a design-based study of pupils’ use of Minecraft in a whole-day school project in social studies involving three seventh-grade classes, student teachers and amateur historians. We used qualitative methods for data collection and analysis. We followed three groups through the following activities: 1) searching for historical information (introduction), 2) building in Minecraft and creating roleplay scripts (reconstruction), and 3) acting out the scripts and making videos for a class presentation (transformation). The activities combined generic and domain-specific skills practices in different ways. We analyze how these two modes intertwine and argue that the teaching model we used can bridge the gap between learning in and out school. Key concepts used in the analysis are intersubjectivity, tension, and temporality. Our findings indicate that through Minecraft pupils, teachers, and amateur historians contribute to intersubjectivity toward shared knowledge by setting and releasing tensions between generic and domain specific knowledge.