All Aboard! Towards Inclusiveness in Digital Game-Based Teaching

This extended abstract examines the challenges teachers face in adopting digital games and gamification tools in education, drawing on two prior studies by the authors of Swedish teachers. Its central argument is that while digital game-based teaching holds recognized pedagogical value, including improved motivation, engagement, and collaborative skills, its benefits are not yet reaching a large share of teachers and their students. The paper frames the issue as one of inclusiveness, asking how developers and educational stakeholders can lower entry barriers and support professional development.

The research relies on an online survey distributed in spring 2019 to schools across Sweden, with 181 compulsory and upper secondary teachers responding from an initial outreach to 1,200 randomly selected schools. The survey combined closed, scaled, and open-ended items, and was analyzed using descriptive statistics and k-means cluster analysis. The sample was predominantly female (65%), with the largest age group being 40 to 49, which the authors note reflects the wider teacher population. The study adopts a broad definition of games, including digital games on any device and gamification tools.

Findings show that 68% of respondents had used digital games or gamification tools in their teaching at some point, most commonly quizzes, with a range of other resources also reported. Male teachers were reported to be far more likely to use entertainment games, while female teachers more often used educational games and gamification tools. Cluster analysis identified negative, mixed, and positive dispositions toward game-based teaching, with positive dispositions associated with greater variety of use, deeper pedagogical integration, and interest in professional development. Roughly one third of teachers had not used games at all, often citing unfamiliarity with the technology, uncertainty about implementation, difficulty accessing quality curriculum-relevant games, limited preparation time, and cost.

The authors conclude that adoption in Swedish classrooms is real but uneven, and that the entry threshold for teachers remains high. They call on researchers, game developers, and educational stakeholders to collaborate on more inclusive approaches that broaden access to game-based learning.