Utilizing Outdoor Quiz Games in Secondary School: Teachers’ Perceptions of Usefulness

Abstract

Outdoor play is a natural way for children of all ages to do physical activity. The advantages of being outdoor in an educational setting have been elaborated. For instance, the social constellations may change when outdoors as the social structures defined in the classroom setting no longer apply as the pupils may display different skillsets outdoors as to indoors. Using games for learning purposes have been employed for several decades. As far back as in 1904, the Landlord’s Game was used to teach people about real estate and taxation. Since then games have mostly been developed for leisure purposes, but some also for educational purposes. In this paper, we elaborate on the use of a Norwegian developed quiz game called ‘ZippyGO’. Most of the research on ZippyGO have been focusing on students’ perceptions of the use of this quiz game. In this paper, however, we focus on the teachers’ perceptions and use of an outdoor quiz game for educational purposes. In this particular case, four teachers have collaborated on developing questions for the quizzing. We conducted mixed method ways of collecting data, surveys and semi-structured interviews. Our investigations have focused mainly on how the teachers perceive working on developing adequate questions for the quiz and how they perceive pupils may react to using the quiz game. We have also challenged the teachers on their perceptions of games for learning purposes in general and about being outdoor during class.