One of the most school-related words we know of is “classroom”. Now we see that another “room word” is paving its way into schools world-wide: Escape room. There may be different approaches to an Escape Room. We follow the definition of Escape Rooms as a “live-action team-based game where players discover clues, solve puzzles, and accomplish tasks in one or more rooms in order to accomplish a specific goal (usually escaping from the room) in a limited amount of time” (Nicholson, 2015, p. 1). 

Despite all the enthusiasm and promising reports from use of Escape Room for educational purposes (e.g. Berthod et al., 2019) we do not know enough about the use of Escape Room in education. In the review article “A review on use of Escape Rooms in Education – Touching the Void” (Taraldsen et al., 2020), we focused on the use of escape room as a didactic tool in teaching and learning, as identified in empirical studies that have examined the use of escape rooms in educational contexts. Within these parameters, we focus on the following four key questions:
1. What methods have been used to examine the use of escape rooms for educational purposes?
2. How is the escape room used for educational purposes?
3. What is the focus of attention in research on the use of escape rooms in education?
4. What are the implications of the use of escape rooms for teaching and learning?

The paper presentation at ECER 2021 will first be aimed towards the emerging field of research on escape rooms for educational purposes through emphasis on main findings from our published review article. Based on this, we will pave the way for a discussion of if and how escape room as a didactical method can provide a contribution to the future development of teacher education.

The selection process for this review consisted of three phases. In the first phase, we made searches on Escape Room in search engines like Oria and Google, in order to get an impression of relevant synonyms to this concept and keywords related to the use of Escape Room for educational purposes. In the second phase, we searched the databases ERIC, Scopus, Science Direct and Web of Science (August 2020). These four databases have broad impact within education research. The searches were limited to peer-reviewed articles in English published after 2007, as this is the year that the first non-virtual Escape Room was introduced to the public (Nicholson, 2015). In the third phase, we excluded duplicates, articles that did not include empirical studies, articles that did not pay attention to educational purposes, and articles that were not published in peer-reviewed journals. The resulting 70 articles form the basis of our review. The research questions defined the criteria for analysis. What research methods that have been used to examine the use of escape rooms for educational purposes, and how and by whom escape rooms have been used in education, were identified for each article and summarized. Through a constant comparison approach (Silverman, 2013; Strauss & Corbin, 1998), a criterion for analysis was to identify the main question(s) asked by the researchers and identify what main fields of attention the current research may be grouped in. Finally, each article presents implications of presented results, discussion and conclusions. A criterion for analysis was therefore, again through a constant comparison approach, to identify what the current research reports as experienced opportunities and challenges related to use of escape rooms for educational purposes, and through this analysis get an overall impression of where the research on use of escape room for educational purposes currently is.

Although we searched for articles published in the period 2007-2020, our search only returned articles published in the period 2017-2020: four in 2017, eight in 2018, 32 in 2019, and 26 in 2020. This publication trend indicates that there is a rapidly increasing interest for the innovative approach to teaching and learning which escape room represents. Our results show that most articles are concerned with healthcare and STEM subjects in higher education. Only some articles include compulsory school and teacher education. The reported experiences with Escape Room for educational purposes are positive, with implies possibilities for use in compulsory school and teacher education. The reasons for this enthusiasm are manifold, but are mainly concentrated on outcomes. Articles report on possibilities to apply curriculum content, possibilities to create scenarios closely related to professions, and possibilities to emphasize and enhance the development and applications of 21st century skills like creativity, critical thinking, problem solving processes and cooperation. Researchers have also focused on motivation, with emphasis on affective concepts such as fun, enthusiasm, and eagerness. However, despite the overall positive experiences with escape room for educational purposes, the research area is still in a preliminary phase, and requires more systematic research. Many teachers are touching the void in their search for new approaches and methods to meet new priorities in revised curriculums and expand the understanding of the use of escape rooms in education. We found this to be an apparent issue regarding design, learning outcome and assessment. We urge the educational research community to progress research on escape rooms into a phase that provides schools and teachers with rigorous research about the “if, how, why, and when” regarding the use of escape rooms as a didactic tool that can be relevant to both primary and secondary education, as well as teacher education.

Berthod, F., Bouchoud, L., Grossrieder, F., Falaschi, L., Senhaji, S. & Bonnabry, P. (2019). Learning good manufacturing practices in an escape room: Validation of a newpedagogical tool. Journal of Oncology Pharmact Practice. Nicholson, S. (2015). Peeking Behind the Locked Door: A Survey of Escape Room Facilities. Retrieved 28.12.2019 from: http://scottnicholson.com/pubs/erfacwhite.pdf Silverman, D. (2013). Doing qualitative research, 4th edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Strauss, A. & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Taraldsen, L. H., Haara, F. O., Lysne, M. S., Jensen, P. R. & Jenssen, E. S. (2020). A review on use of Escape Rooms in Education – Touching the Void. Education Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1080/20004508.2020.1860284