In this paper, we describe our efforts to combine generic (domain general) and domain-specific skills' practice in the same digital learning environment. We have implemented part of the social studies subject curriculum for lower secondary education in Norway (grades 8 to 10) in Minecraft for preservice teacher education. By leveraging Minecraft's affordances for block building and roleplaying, we have created the first version of an integrated learning environment. We conducted a pilot study in an undergraduate preservice teacher education program and discuss our findings by drawing on empirical data collected from 60 student teachers, using observations, questionnaires, and interviews. Our preliminary findings suggest that the student teachers perceive the use of Minecraft in their teaching as a possible threat to domain-specific knowledge. They also consider generic skills such as design and collaboration important and see the potential in Minecraft as a new way of reaching their students.
Minecraft has been rated the most popular digital game among 9–14-year-old children
in Norway, but teachers’ perception of Minecraft as a game and not a tool for learning
poses a challenge. We argue that teachers and student teachers need a tool box for
meeting the interests of their future students on their own arena as well as fulfilling
the requirements of the curriculum; to accomplish this, we explore Minecraft’s
potential for teaching and learning as it seems to provide affordances for the two
requirements. Dikkers [
Children are attracted to Minecraft because of its low threshold to participation and
high ceiling for engagement in design and role-playing activities; they mine building
blocks and craft tools, combat monsters, and collaborate with peers and allies in one
of four different gameplay modes (creative, survival, adventure, spectator) [
Generic skills are not associated with any specific subject domain per se, but we
rely on them in many domains, and they contribute to overall performance. Recently,
they have received worldwide attention. For instance, a Norwegian White Paper with
recommendations to the new national curriculum in Norway emphasizes developing
students’ abilities to explore, create, communicate, interact, and participate [
Students combine generic (domain general) and domain-specific knowledge and skills when they learn. For example, visualization is used in many areas of mathematics, communication is required for language learning, and reading multiple languages for deep learning in world history and religious studies. When teaching specific subjects, generic skills are often taken for granted. In today’s multicultural society, with a greater variety in children’s background and interests, strategies to develop integrated learning environments have begun to appear.
The aim of this research is to understand how student teachers perceive the value of generic skills in specific subject areas, in particular design (creation), collaboration, and adaptability, through a dialectical interplay of generic and domain-specific skills practice, exemplified by children building and playing Minecraft and other blockbuilding games. In other words, our focus is on how both types of skills can be practiced in the same lesson and in the same digital learning environment. We address the following research questions in the pilot study: 1. What are student teachers’ perceptions of Minecraft for learning purposes? 2. What are the challenges and opportunities for teachers’ organization of Minecraft lessons into two distinct activities: generic and domain-specific skills practices? 2
Information and communication technology (ICT) in schools is often introduced
without taking into account pedagogical requirements, and “pushed” by technology
vendors and ICT staff. On the other end, many teachers are looked upon as protecting
their classrooms from the changes that follow from new technology, and Dikkers
introduced the metaphor teachers as conservants for the role of preserving traditional
school culture by fighting against outside pressure and lobbyists [
Minecraft is a sandbox game, which means that users in the game interact by
placing and breaking three-dimensional (3D) blocks (modeled after 1 m3 physical
construction blocks) and communicate in parallel, mainly by chat but also by voice via
other applications. The open-ended nature of a sandbox game gives students great
freedom for explorative activities [
Research has shown that Minecraft can motivate children to learn through
immersion and play, which means that one becomes involved in a subjective experience that
leads to a feeling of participating in a comprehensive, realistic experience [
Mørch et al. [
The study was organized as an experimental teaching activity between two educational institutions in Norway (A and B) over a three-week period. Institution A provided educational resources (15 MA students majoring in general education acted as tutors) and institution B (60 BA student teachers majoring in social studies) carried out a joint learning activity defined by an assignment created by institution B. The assignment was to create a model of the Norwegian parliament building and to engage in collaborative learning through the roleplay of a political decision-making process inside the building based on a script collaboratively created in small groups. Thus, the students had to acquire technical skills in using Minecraft in creative mode, detailed knowledge about the parliament building and how the physical structures reflects the political processes as well as how political decision making are played out in democratic society. The students worked in groups of four, and the role-plays were recorded by using a video-capture tool (Screencast-O-Matic).
We collected data by observation, a questionnaire informed by our research questions (N=38 respondents out of 60 participants), and interviews with two students (an experienced player and one without prior experience in Minecraft). We used a version of thematic analysis based on open coding to organize the textual data. We show examples of data representing three themes and summarize our results as points for discussion, as our findings are tentative (pilot study). 4
Of all the students teachers (N=60) only a few (N=4) reported previous experience with Minecraft. The questionnaire indicated that most felt they did not get sufficient time to learn how to use the technology during the time allocated for the activity. Thirty percent indicated negative attitudes, such as “I will never use Minecraft” in future teaching practices and described Minecraft as “taking time away from social studies.” Despite this negative attitude, most saw a potential in Minecraft, as shown in Excerpt 1 below. However, 47% indicated positive attitudes, including suggesting future practices of Minecraft in their own classroom and outlining motivation as a key reason. Informed by our focus on student teachers’ perception of Minecraft for learning purposes and taking into account generic and domain-specific skills, we categorized our data into the following themes: 1) student teachers as protectors of domainspecific knowledge, 2) student teachers finding new ways of reaching their students using popular tools, and 3) combining generic and domain-specific knowledge. 4.1
According to the questionnaire, several students believed that they did not learn anything (30%). Interestingly, the same students reported that the sessions using Minecraft were fun and that collaboration worked well. However, some students’ perception of Minecraft was, “You are learning a computer game and not necessarily a subject” (questionnaire).
One student (Eva), who had no previous experience in Minecraft, was somewhat critical at first, but she also identified an area for improvement and a positive experience gained:
“If you bring Minecraft into the classroom, it’s important to include the curricular part [domain specific knowledge] [...] to get the curricular learning outcome. Maybe because when we have so much fun, the fun part takes over. The roleplay [of the political process] was kind of, “Okay, done!” in a hurry, and we didn’t bother to put much effort into it because the building part was so much more fun.” (Excerpt 1: Interview Eva)
Eva’s statement is representative of the attitude held by many protecting subject
matter practices. She is concerned that the “fun part” (building in Minecraft) might
take over at the expense of developing domain-specific knowledge. Many respondents
shared her opinion. She expressed her feeling that block-building games, through
enacting agency and being engaging and fun, take time away from learning subject
matter knowledge, which is the primary objective of schoolteachers, thereby creating
a dilemma for the teacher. However, one can question whether student teachers are
aware of the pedagogical affordances in Minecraft and related games for training
generic skills [
The questionnaire results indicate that some student teachers (30%) were skeptical toward games, stating that games do not belong in schools. While some students (37%) found Minecraft difficult to use (e.g., encountered technical problems), several highlighted the opportunities Minecraft gives for engaging students in subject matter activities: Furthermore, student teachers highlighted: “The possibilities are that you can vary teaching, and it’s fun for those who have used it [Minecraft] previously.” Eva’s views from the interview support this point:
“I was very positive coming into this project because there are many, let’s say 11year olds, who can relate to Minecraft. And in that way you can reach students who may think your class is boring … to reach them with other teaching methods. And Minecraft is something completely different from what we do in school.” (Excerpt 2: Interview Eva)
Eva points out that Minecraft is popular because children can relate to it via prior experiences. If this familiarity in using a powerful tool can be transferred to a school setting, she believes that easily distracted students will be more engaged in learning activities. Eva also said that using games could lead to new challenges, as the “fun part” can take over (see Excerpt 1). However, she points out later in the interview that the most important part of the learning activity is to focus on subject matter, meaning that the building activity must be integrated to serve teachers’ primary goals.
The student teachers in our study indicated the need for a toolbox of teaching
methods to reach children and motivate their learning. Such a toolbox must be
designed to be both flexible and usable, so that users can apply the tools for teaching
purposes and integrate them in a broad learning context. One such teaching method is
roleplay [
Our findings thus far indicate that student teachers can be described as protectors of domain-specific knowledge (see section 4.1). At the same time, students express the need for a toolbox that both enables them to vary their teaching methods as well as reach the students through their interests (see section 4.2). The results from the questionnaire indicated that students gave Minecraft’s learning outcomes a low score and collaboration and problem solving a high score. This implies a dilemma for teachers, where a possible solution is to raise awareness of the value of generic skills to student teachers. Jonas expresses it in the following way:
“[…] this project is about much more than learning skills in Minecraft; it’s about learning how to give the children a tool for understanding something else [subject area knowledge].The point is not that we learn Minecraft, nor is the point that the pupils learn Minecraft. Minecraft can be learned in their spare time. The point is to have a tool that will allow them to understand something else, for instance political processes in the Parliament, what the Parliament is, and how it works. That should be the focus. I am not saying that subject-specific topics were not in focus, only that it didn’t have to be Minecraft. It could be Legos. But then you have to have tons of Lego bricks. With Minecraft you don’t need tons of Legos.” (Excerpt 3: Interview Jonas)
Jonas emphasizes that Minecraft is like digital Legos with an unlimited number of bricks that easily snap and come in different types (colors, hardness, material, etc.). New building blocks can be created by crafting (graphical composition tables) and by writing program code. Understanding the specific topic taught (political processes in parliamentary practice) should be emphasized, according to Jonas, and the interaction between the two modes, building and roleplaying, should be more seamless.
Both Jonas and Eva noted a disconnect between the two parts of the assignment: The building of the Parliament and the roleplay of the political decision-making process inside it. To develop the script for the roleplay and making both the avatars and the dialogue credible, domain-specific skills are needed. We found, however, that the technical aspects of the building process took most of the students’ attention (see Fig. 1 & Fig. 2), and much less work was put into learning about political decision-making processes and creating a credible roleplay script. As a result, the students did not have sufficient time to carry out the roleplay and to acquire the necessary domain-specific skills. Our preliminary findings suggest that the student teachers perceive the use of Minecraft in their teaching as a possible threat to domain-specific knowledge. At the same time, they consider generic skills important and see the potential in Minecraft as a new way of reaching their students. However, our informants stated that our current attempts to integrate generic and domain-specific skills practices are insufficient; the transitions between the two modes are not seamless, which indicates that we need to work harder to create a complementary/dialectic relationship between the two modes.
We suggest that future research should start with creating a subject-specific context on which to base Minecraft building activity. This knowledge domain context could be created by students and teachers in collaboration and precede roleplay and building. To preserve institutionally established practices, we suggest continuing with the roleplay by developing the first version of the script. Hopefully, this will encourage students to carry out a research-like process before they start first round of building in Minecraft. At the same time, there should be an increased awareness of generic skills in our communication with student teachers so that these skills are not taken for granted. In addition to designing and building, Minecraft might be a tool for learning a range of generic skills like collaboration, problem solving, creativity, and adaptability in concert with domain-specific skills. This indicates several areas for further research.