Teacher Roles in Learning Games: When Games Become Situated in Schools

This paper examines what happens when professional simulation learning games enter school classrooms, using a case study of the game Homicide, in which students role-play forensic investigators solving murder cases. Drawing on five weeks of full-time video observation (roughly 120 hours) across four 13-to-15-year-old school classes, supplemented by group interviews, pre- and post-tests, and student work logs, the author argues that teachers in these games must navigate two overlapping roles: a fictional role as police chief within the game and a pedagogical role as supervisor of students who may hold more specialized knowledge than the teacher. The central aim is to understand the learning situation created when game culture meets school culture, and how that meeting can either succeed or undermine both.

The observations contrast two teachers' approaches. In one case, a science teacher instructed students to practice fingerprint-lifting technique as a transferable skill, emphasizing process over the investigative result. Students who had been immersed in the game's fiction were confused, since the fingerprints had no bearing on the murder narrative, and their engagement visibly dropped. The author draws on Salen and Zimmerman's concept of the "magic circle" to explain that the game's meaningful goals depend on maintaining the fiction, and that breaking it removes the meaning of the actions. In the second case, a teacher remained within the game's frame by asking open questions and framing success around building a convincing case, which kept students engaged in authentic professional reasoning.

The paper concludes that these competing approaches reflect a broader tension between content-focused schooling, which Gee calls the "content fetish," and professional learning-by-doing, which game-based learning is built to support. Understanding teachers' roles is therefore essential to defining learning in this genre of games. The author suggests that designers and researchers can learn from teachers who skillfully combine fictional and pedagogical roles, and notes that cultural factors, such as the comparatively lower emphasis on standardized testing in Danish schools, may affect how much room teachers have to experiment with such approaches.