Lower secondary school students’ conversations when constructing representations of plate boundaries in Minecraft

This article explores students’ (13 y) conversations when they construct representations of plate boundaries in the digital gaming environment of Minecraft Education. It also investigates how the spatial affordance of Minecraft Education may support students’ meaning making of the theory of plate tectonics. Video data of classroom activities with Minecraft Education was collected with head cameras. Analysis of the data shows that students overall used everyday language during the activity of constructing plate boundaries.  The study suggests i.) a need for more teacher-centeredness and structured scaffolding of scientific language during small group work in Minecraft, and ii.) a need to increase the spatial extent in Minecraft Education to include both the subsurface and more regional scales of resolution.