Language teacher education through engagement in an educational escape room

Abstract

To fill a number of gaps in both the task engagement and language education literature, 25 international and multilingual graduate teacher education students in groups of 3 and 4 participated in a stand-alone, face-to-face educational escape room (EER). The purpose of the experience was to model facilitators of task engagement for in-service English teachers while supporting them in engaging in learning about and practicing comma use. This exploratory study employed pre- and post-test statistics of learning outcomes to complement descriptive data. Results support assertions in the literature that EERs can be engaging across learners and language content. Guidelines and implications for future EER development are provided, including ideas for how the next iteration of the EER might be designed more effectively and how additional rooms might be designed for language teacher education.