Classroom Introduction of a Video Game on Italian Grammar

This study examines how ten Italian lower-secondary teachers integrated the grammar video game "Ross e la Sgrammanebbia" into their classrooms with 185 students aged 11 to 12. Its central concern is the gap between the potential of game-based learning and the practical capacity of teachers to realise it. The research identifies limited game literacy as a key barrier: only three of the ten teachers play games in their daily lives, and only four had previously introduced games into class. The study uses a four-phase mixed-methods design combining questionnaires, lesson design sheets, classroom observation, and interviews to trace how teachers planned, managed, and evaluated game-based lessons, with the share of lesson time devoted to the game ranging from 21% to 100%.

The findings indicate that teachers generally used games in a simplified, behaviourist manner, such as through quiz tools like Kahoot!, and viewed them chiefly as motivational or exercise aids rather than as vehicles for learning. Their lesson planning was thorough with respect to conventional teaching elements but weak in defining playful goals and evaluation methods. Only five teachers identified objectives drawn from the national Italian language curriculum. Classroom observation revealed that teachers enacted a broader range of scenarios and roles during the game-based lesson than they had planned or self-reported, suggesting that practice sometimes exceeded teachers' own articulation of it.

The author concludes that closing the divide between curricular goals and game-based practice requires systemic teacher training rather than isolated individual initiative. The study is situated within the Italian lower-secondary context and focuses on a single grammar game, and its scope is correspondingly bounded to that setting and that intervention. Its reference base draws on prior research into teacher roles, barriers to implementing commercial games in schools, and case studies of in-class game use, positioning the work within the wider literature on game-based learning in education.