Playful Knowledge – An Explorative Study of Educational Gaming

This dissertation can be read as an attempt to explore the widespread assumption that games have educational value within the context of formal schooling. More specifically, this study tries to answer a number of questions related to this assumption: Why should games have a place in formal education? How should educational games support teaching and learning? And what characterises “good” educational game design? The educational use of games is seen as a social phenomenon in which the dynamic interplay between different actors – game design, teachers and students – implies on-going negotiations and interpretations of mutually constituted scenarios, discourse and interaction patterns.