Teachercraft is about how teachers learn. Any reform or change efforts in education are essentially relying on the individual teacher choosing to change their practice. Minecraft is currently the game of choice for millions of youth and also for these seventeen teachers who claim it has transformed their classrooms. Its rapid adoption also provides a unique window of opportunity to look inside the recent memory of innovative teachers and unpack how they learned, chose to use it, and share their stories of adoption.
The stories that Dikkers captures in Teachercraft start to unpack the profession of teaching as a learning activity. Their stories, tendencies and differences reveal teacher learning as a complex process. How much do we really know about how teachers learn to try new lessons in classrooms? Why did they pick Minecraft? More importantly, how did they pick Minecraft? Where did they hear about it? Who do they trust for ideas? How do they test new ideas? Can we begin to identify the trajectories of truly innovative teachers? It turns out, we can – and it may not be what you’d expect.
