Designing and Using Digital Games as Historical Learning Contexts for Primary School Classrooms

In the last decades, digital games based on historical themes or settings have become an important form of historical engagement. In many ways, this new way to connect with the past presents unique characteristics, different from previous forms of historical mediation. In spite of growing academic interest in using game technologies for historical purposes, evidenced by a growing number of publications and conferences dedicated to this topic, still many questions regarding the representational appropriateness, educational effectiveness, and practical implementation of historical games in formal educational settings remain unclear. This chapter conducts an analysis of the potential of digital games as a new form of historical media. This study adopts a practice-based approach, relying on the iterative development of a series of game prototypes built with the intention of representing life in Early Medieval England. During their development, the prototypes were presented and analysed by experts from relevant fields, moving to implementation in a primary school classroom at a later stage. Drawing from this process, the research has contributed to gain a better understanding of the theoretical issues involved in the design and implementation of historical game-based learning methodologies, making empirical connections between educational theory, historical learning, and game design.