NotesFAQContact Us
Collection
Advanced
Search Tips
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
ERIC Number: EJ1231947
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019
Pages: 18
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0142-5692
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
'I Don't Think You're Going to Have Any Aborigines in Your World': "Minecrafting terra nullius"
British Journal of Sociology of Education, v40 n8 p1037-1054 2019
The myth that justified the takeover of a continent lives on both in classrooms and in popular media. Drawing from classroom observations in an urban primary school in Australia, this article enters the technology in education conversation, more specifically through the use of videogames for learning. Based on classroom exchanges between teachers and students, we interrogate how the school's use of "Minecraft", a best-selling commercial videogame, continues to reproduce myths of settler colonialism in the twenty-first century. Specifically, the curriculum mobilizes structures inherent to both "Minecraft" and modern Australia's treatment of its Indigenous populations. That is, both classroom and videogame interactions reproduced the myth of "terra nullius": the doctrine which determined that land, prior to colonization, was empty and unowned, and therefore available for settlement by the colonizer. We conclude that within videogames and classrooms, students' voices manage to interrogate the curriculum, resisting the reproduction of erasive coloniality in school.
Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Australia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A