Prensky (2001) famously emphasised that in digital game-based learning environments, teachers must transition from being the ‘sage on the stage’ to a ‘guide on the side’. This shift requires teachers to develop new competencies, including technological proficiency and the ability to scaffold learning experiences within digital contexts (Becker 2007; Kacmaz & Dubé 2025). Kajamaa, Kumpulainen and Olkinuora (2020) found that teacher interactions in technology-rich environments reveal a more complex spectrum of expected roles: authoritative, orchestrating and unleashing, which highlight the multidimensional demands on teachers in novel learning settings. Fleer (2020) combines the multiple roles by stating that in digital play-based learning, teachers must balance structured guidance with allowing children’s autonomous exploration. This is vital for fostering both directed and emergent learning opportunities. However, given that teachers in community-based childcare centres often rely heavily on rote teaching and learning practices (Shallwani et al. 2018), the new roles and the transition to facilitating autonomous digital exploration represent a fundamental pedagogical reorientation. The digital learning environment also transforms expectations around play facilitation and peer interaction management. Molin (2017) argues that in game-based learning environments, teachers need to guide discussions, encourage reflection, and help children make connections between game content and real-world experiences. In optimal settings, the teacher’s role becomes dynamic, shifting between guiding, supporting and stepping back to support children’s agency and self-directed learning (Lim & Nguyen 2023). Teachers are also expected to model positive digital citizenship practices, helping children develop important social-emotional skills alongside academic knowledge in technology-mediated environments (Axelsson, Andersson & Gulz 2016). In community-based childcare centres, the teachers are generally expected to include children from diverse backgrounds; however, the teachers often struggle to cater to children’s different learning needs through inclusive and active participation of children in classroom activities (Shallwani et al. 2018). The intersection of limited formal training, minimal digital literacy and the new pedagogical expectations of the digital game-based learning intervention creates a unique context in which teacher adaptation can be examined closely. Yet teachers are only one part of this picture: the productive use of digital games also depends on what children themselves bring to the screen, namely their actions, interactions and engagement, and on the cultural meanings the games make available to them.

Digital game-based learning has emerged as a significant area of interest in early childhood education research. This approach integrates technology with educational content, with the intent to complement play experiences and potentially support various aspects of development in ways that differ from more traditional approaches (Disney et al. 2019). The effectiveness of digital game-based learning is influenced by multiple factors, including the design and content of the games, the learning environment, and individual learners’ needs and interests (Gee 2013). Parental attitudes and cultural perceptions of technology also play a significant role in shaping how young children use and perceive these digital tools (Kucirkova & Flewitt 2022; Pynnönen, Kumpulainen & Lipponen 2025). Research suggests that when using well-designed educational games, digital game-based learning can potentially support early literacy and numeracy development through interactive, multimodal learning experiences that engage children through play (Chu et al. 2024; Patel et al. 2018). This potential has been empirically demonstrated, with children showing significant gains in phonemic awareness through digital gameplay, achieving outcomes often thought to require direct instruction (Pynnönen et al. 2022). Young learners can exhibit a range of activities while engaging in digital game-based learning, which often reflect their natural curiosity, creativity and problem-solving abilities (Hussein et al. 2022). Common actions include experimenting with different features and elements of the games, attempting multiple strategies to overcome challenges, and self-regulating their pacing to match their learning needs (Chen & Tu 2021; Eslami & Chowdhury 2021). By observing these activities, teachers can gain insight into individual learning preferences, enabling them to support their experiences accordingly. Besides teachers, the learning experience is affected by group dynamics. Peer and adult interactions play a central role in shaping children’s experiences with digital game-based learning, and they are often grouped together (Johnston 2021). These interactions involve collaboration, knowledge sharing and emotional support, which foster a sense of community and social-emotional growth, even when the play itself takes place between the child and the computer. Children tend to observe and learn from each other through imitation and modelling (Lawrence 2018). Interaction with adults, such as teachers, typically involves guidance, scaffolding and encouragement, which can contribute to a child’s cognitive development, self-confidence and motivation (Sulaymani, Fleer & Chapman 2018). The evidence on whether digital game-based learning supports early literacy is, however, mixed. Some studies find significant gains in phonemic awareness and letter knowledge through tablet-based play (Chu et al. 2024; Patel et al. 2018; Pynnönen et al. 2022). Others report no measurable advantage over conventional approaches (Rodriguez-Segura 2022) or gains that fail to persist once the intervention ends (Bailey et al. 2020). This seems to be particularly true in low-resource settings where infrastructure, teacher preparation and content cultural fit interact to dampen any single-factor effect (Rodriguez-Segura 2022). The unevenness of these findings is precisely what motivates an in-situ teacher-practice focus. What teachers actually do with the tablet in front of children with mixed prior exposure, in classrooms with intermittent power and patchy connectivity, is likely to do more to explain divergent learning outcomes than the games themselves. How these actions and interactions are taken up as learning depends, in turn, on the cultural meanings the games make available, and on the work done by teachers, peers and the games themselves to render those meanings usable in a particular setting.

This study views digital game-based learning through a Vygotskian understanding of mediation, in which higher mental functions are constituted through the internalisation of culturally and historically derived tools (Vygotsky 1978). Through this view, learning is a matter of a child embracing cultural tools that are made available and meaningful through social activity. The significance of this framing for early childhood digital learning is that a tablet and its literacy content are considered cultural objects. The culture that dominates is Anglophone, largely American, and it carries the assumptions and conventions of those settings (Alaa, Hammouda & Abdennadher 2023; Kam et al. 2009). For such objects to function as tools for children’s literacy learning, they must be rendered usable within the children’s own cultural and linguistic world. Mediation is the process through which this rendering occurs. Vygotsky’s account of the more knowledgeable other is often reduced to scaffolding within the zone of proximal development, understood narrowly as a zone of help. Gillen (2000) attributes this misreading in part to the deficient English editions through which his work has been received. We draw instead on the fuller sense in which mediation makes a particular cultural tool available, shaping not only whether a child completes a task, but which tools enter the child’s developing repertoire. On this view, a more knowledgeable other who links an unfamiliar cultural tool to one the learner already commands is not simply offering generic support; they are making the unfamiliar tool available for learning. Mediation in this sense need not reside in a single participant: teachers, peers and the game itself may each hold authority over different cultural tools. To examine how mediation is accomplished in interaction, we draw on multimodal, social-semiotic theory (Kress 2010; The New London Group 1996). This perspective treats meaning-making as realised across multiple modes: linguistic, gestural, spatial, audio and visual, and treats participants’ contributions as design rather than as transmission of fixed content. It offers the analytic grain for examining mediation as it is actually performed, for instance, when a teacher combines spatial positioning, gesture, touch and speech in a single act of guidance. The social-semiotic lens thus provides the means of examining the Vygotskian cultural-tool mediation in action. Some of the frameworks we draw on, namely Vygotsky’s mediation, Prensky’s role-shift and embodied-cognition accounts of early learning, were developed in Anglophone, largely Northern settings whose institutional assumptions do not always travel. Vygotsky’s more knowledgeable other is usually theorised within a school whose teachers have formal pedagogical preparation; the volunteer teachers in our setting have neither that preparation nor access to a curriculum to anchor their mediation. Prensky’s binary presupposes a teacher with sufficient digital fluency to choose between being a sage and a guide; the teachers we observed often knew less about the tools than the children. Embodied-cognition work in early childhood is rarely staged in classrooms divided by a curtain made from rice bags or run by a coordinator whose phone hotspot is the centre’s only internet connection. We use these frameworks because they remain analytically productive, but we intend to read them through the constraints and resources available in this setting.

The study was conducted at a community-based childcare centre in Blantyre, Malawi, providing a specific context for examining digital game-based learning implementation in a resource-constrained setting. The centre originated as a feeding programme and has expanded its services to include early childhood education, with digital learning tablets recently introduced through a partnership with an international non-governmental organisation. This centre’s trajectory reflected local community responses to educational needs rather than following any predetermined developmental pathway. The integration of digital tools into this community-based setting offered an opportunity to examine how global educational technologies intersect with local pedagogical practices and priorities. The learning space consisted of a single classroom divided by a makeshift curtain made from empty rice bags. One side accommodated the digital game-based learning intervention for 3–6-year-olds, while the other hosted activities for children under 3 years. The intervention space was equipped with tablets, tables and chairs arranged to accommodate 30 children simultaneously. Outside of the digital learning sessions, the furniture was moved aside to create an open play space for traditional early childhood activities using basic materials such as wooden geometric manipulatives and hand-drawn alphabet illustrations. Four volunteer teachers, two of whom were male and two were female, all in their late twenties or early thirties, facilitated the digital game-based learning, playing a key role in shaping children’s learning experiences despite lacking formal pedagogical training. These teachers, who were members of the local community, were expected to instil teaching practices indirectly, encouraging learners to take a more active role in their education. A technical coordinator with a vocational degree in information technology was present during approximately half of the observation days, providing essential technical support for the implementation. This coordinator had installed the learning applications on the tablets, trained the teachers in device management procedures, including charging and overnight storage in a secure space, and provided troubleshooting assistance during the initial phases of implementation. The children participating in the study, ranging from 3 to 6 years old, formed a multi-age classroom of 30 children, with daily attendance varying between 12 and 19 children. Children’s attendance was particularly influenced by an aid organisation’s food provision schedule, since many families primarily sent their children to benefit from the feeding programme. The non-formal nature of the learning environment, operating outside the framework of compulsory education, allowed for greater flexibility in focusing on learners’ individual needs and interests. This flexibility mattered in a multi-age classroom, where children’s varied digital competencies and learning paces required teachers to adapt their support continually, while also opening opportunities for peer learning. The alignment between this flexible, non-formal approach and the interactive nature of digital game-based learning created a unique opportunity to examine how technology could support individualised learning in early childhood education.

This study addresses the research question: How do teachers navigate their roles and pedagogical practices in a multi-age classroom setting in which children aged 3 to 6 years engage with digital learning games? To investigate this question, the study employed ethnographic participant observation within a naturalistic paradigm to examine the complex dynamics of digital game-based learning implementation. Following Spradley’s (1980) and Knoblauch’s (2005) focused ethnographic approaches, we conducted classroom observations to understand how teachers adapted their pedagogical practices within the cultural context of a rural Malawian Community-Based Childcare Centre. Focused ethnography was particularly suited to this study as it allowed us to examine a specific cultural phenomenon, digital learning integration, within a distinct subcultural group of teachers who shared common behaviours and experiences despite not all knowing each other personally (Stahlke Wall 2014). The method’s emphasis on data intensity through systematic observation, supplemented by photographs and video recordings, compensated for the relatively brief field period while maintaining analytical depth (Knoblauch 2005). This approach enabled us to capture both the immediate interactional dynamics between teachers, children and technology, and the broader cultural patterns that shaped how pedagogical traditions adapted to digital innovation within this specific educational context. The choice of focused ethnographic methodology was grounded in the need to understand teaching practices as culturally situated phenomena that emerge from the intersection of local values, community relationships and educational innovation. As Hammersley and Atkinson (2019) emphasise, ethnography provides the analytical framework necessary to examine how social practices develop within specific cultural contexts while avoiding the imposition of external theoretical assumptions about effective teaching. The naturalistic paradigm, as outlined by Lincoln and Guba (1985), guided our commitment to understanding phenomena within their natural contexts rather than under controlled conditions, which was particularly appropriate for examining digital learning implementation where multiple variables interact in complex, uncontrollable ways. Participant observation allowed the researcher to adopt what Spradley (1980) terms a ‘passive participant’ role: present in the classroom while maintaining the analytical distance necessary for systematic observation. This role enabled an understanding of classroom dynamics from both insider and outsider perspectives, essential for capturing the nuanced ways teachers adapted their practices over time. The month-long observation period provided sufficient duration to observe both immediate responses to digital learning implementation and evolving adaptation patterns, while daily sessions allowed for systematic documentation of temporal patterns, spatial arrangements, interaction dynamics and cultural practices. The research design addressed ecological validity through systematic attention to contextual factors that shaped pedagogical possibilities (Bronfenbrenner 1977). Beyond documenting classroom interactions, the researcher recorded material constraints, technological limitations and community dynamics that influenced teaching practices. This attention to context enabled an understanding of how teachers’ pedagogical choices emerged from the intersection of multiple pressures: technological challenges, community expectations, and the practical constraints inherent to volunteer-based educational provision in resource-limited settings (Shallwani et al. 2018). The researcher’s position as a European outsider, with prior involvement in the wider intervention, required careful methodological consideration, since it shaped both what was visible and what could be asked. To limit this influence, the researcher maintained a consistent daily presence to normalise his role, adopted unobtrusive positioning during observations, and triangulated formal observations with informal conversations and member-checking to distinguish typical practices from potential performative adjustments. These measures reduced novelty effects but could not neutralise them: teachers’ awareness of an outside observer may still have inflected what was performed in his presence. The analysis therefore treats the resulting account as one situated reading rather than a view from nowhere. Observations took place daily from 10:00 to 12:00, immediately before the children’s lunch, throughout the month-long field period, with the exception of public holidays and days when food was not provided at the centre. Photographs and short video clips were saved with the date and time of capture. To support identification across sessions, the researcher tagged each child with a code and mapped the children’s seating positions at the start of each class until familiar with their names; photographs and video clips were cross-referenced to these seating maps so that individual children could be tracked across the observation period.

Analysis followed a focused ethnographic approach (Knoblauch 2005; Stahlke Wall 2014), which relies on close, repeated reading of the field materials rather than the line-by-line coding associated with grounded theory. Rather than treating themes as surfacing inductively from the data alone, the corpus was read as theoretically informed from the outset: field notes were examined with attention to how the digital tablet and its English-language content became usable for children through the mediation of teachers and peers, each holding authority over different cultural tools (Vygotsky 1978). The 34 h of observation data, documented across 17 daily sessions, were organised chronologically and grouped into three periods: early (Days 1–5), middle (Days 6–11) and late (Days 12–17) to track changes over time. Field notes were read multiple times. Initial readings developed an overall sense of classroom dynamics; subsequent readings identified recurring patterns, notable incidents and changes across the observation period. Consistent with focused ethnography’s emphasis on data intensity over coding density (Knoblauch 2005), passages illustrating teacher practices, children’s responses, technological challenges and cultural mediation were marked, assigned to one of the three periods, and compared both within and across periods. Candidate patterns were then checked against the full corpus, including a search for instances that did not fit, before being consolidated into the four themes reported below. The analysis was organised around four main areas identified as significant for understanding teacher adaptation: how control and agency dynamics evolved over time; how teachers navigated technical and cultural challenges; which embodied pedagogical practices remained stable; and how peer learning developed in the multi-age setting. Temporal patterns were traced by comparing practices across the observation periods, examining what changed, what remained consistent and under what conditions. These four areas were not chosen inductively, but rather, they follow from the cultural-tool framing set out in the theoretical section, each corresponding to a distinct site at which mediation of the digital tool was negotiated: between teacher and child, between game and child, between body and screen, and between more- and less-experienced peers (Kress 2010; Vygotsky 1978). To strengthen the credibility of the analysis, field notes and emerging interpretations were discussed on an ongoing basis with one of the teachers and the head of the community childcare centre. These member-checking conversations served two purposes: verifying the accuracy of observed events and testing the researcher’s cultural interpretations against the understandings of those embedded in the setting. Informal exchanges with the technical coordinator provided additional context for understanding observed practices. Where their feedback diverged from the researcher’s initial reading, interpretations were revised accordingly. Mapped onto Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) trustworthiness criteria, these moves provide credibility through member-checking and triangulation across written notes, photographs and video clips; transferability through thick description of the centre, the four teachers and the technology configuration, so that readers can judge fit to comparable settings; dependability through a documented analytic trail of periodisation decisions, marked passages and interpretations revised following member-checking; and confirmability through a reflexive account of the foreign-observer position and how member feedback shaped the interpretation. Photographs and short video clips were not analysed as a separate visual corpus. They were used alongside the written notes and reviewed to verify spatial arrangements such as seating, sight-lines to the curtain and the position of the tablets, and embodied interactions such as eye-level positioning, hand-over-hand guidance and touch-based reassurance that the running notes named but could not describe in full.

Ethical research methods were implemented throughout the study, as a result of the sensitive nature of studies involving young children in vulnerable communities. We embraced the ‘ethics-in-action’ approach from Hilppö, Chimirri and Rajala (2019) to be more responsive and adaptive to participants’ needs and cultural contexts. Prior to data collection, informed consent was obtained from all adult participants, including teachers and staff members, with parent or guardian consent secured for the children involved. All participant names used in the text are pseudonyms. This rigorous consent process, which included explicit permission for photography and image use in research publications, aligns with the ethical standards outlined by the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (ALLEA – All European Academies 2023).

The temporal analysis revealed changes in how teachers negotiated student agency within digital learning environments. During the initial sessions, teachers maintained tight control over technological interactions (Figure 1), consistently redirecting children from self-selected activities to teacher-chosen tasks. Field notes from the first day illustrate this control: although the teachers were not expected to select games for the children, they were observed circulating the room and choosing the same game for every child (Lauri V.J. Pynnönen, Field note, 17 October 2019). This restrictive approach appeared to reflect both technological uncertainty and established cultural patterns of adult-directed learning.

What made this control particularly striking was its persistence even when children demonstrated clear competence. Children who successfully navigated the complex login procedures matching four-symbol sequences from printed codes to on-screen icons would find themselves immediately logged out by teachers and redirected to different activities. As documented in early observations:

By the second week, however, a fascinating dynamic began to emerge. Children developed sophisticated strategies for navigating between their preferences and teacher expectations. One child, for instance, learned to monitor teacher movements carefully, switching to higher-number exercises when unobserved and quickly returning to assigned basic content when a teacher approached. Rather than simply representing defiance, these actions demonstrated children’s growing technological competence and their ability to self-assess their learning needs. The teachers’ response to these strategic actions evolved significantly over the observation period. Initially interpreted as misbehaviour requiring immediate correction, these independent navigation attempts gradually became recognised as evidence of engagement and learning. A critical moment occurred during the second week when a child played DragonBox Numbers with his tablet incorrectly oriented in landscape mode yet demonstrated clear mastery of the game mechanics. Both the technical coordinator and teacher observed his play but chose not to intervene. When asked about this decision, the teacher explained, ‘because he’s playing the game so well’ (Lauri V.J. Pynnönen, Field note, 28 October 2019). This moment represented a fundamental shift from viewing independent navigation as problematic to recognising it as successful learning. By the third and fourth weeks, teachers had developed increasingly nuanced approaches to supporting student agency. Rather than maintaining blanket control or complete freedom, they began making contextual decisions about when intervention was necessary and when children’s exploration should be permitted. This selective intervention pattern suggested that teachers were developing what might be called ‘adaptive oversight’ by maintaining awareness of children’s activities while intervening only when genuine learning obstacles arose. We use ‘adaptive oversight’ to denote a stance in which the teacher intends to maintain continuous awareness of children’s on-screen activity but intervenes only when a learning obstacle, rather than a deviation from teacher choice, is detected. It is distinguished from uniform redirection on the one hand and complete withdrawal on the other: the teacher remains the arbiter of when intervention is needed, but the trigger shifts from non-compliance to learning friction. What changed over the 4 weeks was less the teachers’ authority than the conditions under which they exercised it, a pattern that became harder to sustain once challenges became more technical and cultural.

Throughout the observation period, teachers confronted two distinct but interrelated categories of challenges that required continuous navigation: technical difficulties and cultural content disconnections (Figure 2). These challenges represented ongoing obstacles that required external technical support, though teachers did develop some pedagogical innovations for managing cultural mismatches. Technical problems persisted throughout the intervention period, creating ongoing challenges for both teachers and children. Headphone malfunctions were a constant issue from the first day, with ‘many of the plugs break[ing] inside the tablets headphone jack’ as ‘children wanting to unplug and replug the headphones constantly’ (Lauri V.J. Pynnönen, Field note, 17 October 2019). These problems continued unresolved weeks later, as teachers ‘tried fixing them by moving the plug around in the headphone socket, but failed to make a difference’ (Lauri V.J. Pynnönen, Field note, 13 November 2019). Rather than developing independent technical competencies, teachers remained heavily dependent on technical support throughout the intervention. When the technical coordinator was absent, it became obvious that ‘the teachers have not been sufficiently skilled to run the interventions’ (Lauri V.J. Pynnönen, Field note, 8 November 2019), and the researcher noted having to break his role and serve as technical support, observing that ‘this shows how important it is to have a technical person in the room’ (Lauri V.J. Pynnönen, Field note, 13 November 2019). These technical difficulties were persistent, and teachers had limited ability to resolve them independently. The pattern highlights how difficult it is to implement digital learning initiatives without adequate technical infrastructure and ongoing support systems. The repeated mechanical failure of standard 3.5 mm jacks under routine plug-and-unplug also points to a device-design issue: consumer tablets with internal jacks were not specified for high-frequency repeated insertion by young children. Hardware procurement choices, not only user behaviour or maintenance capacity, structured what teachers had to manage. Internet connectivity issues presented another layer of complexity. The games frequently required internet access for content downloads, but connectivity was limited to the technical coordinator’s personal mobile hotspot. Teachers remained dependent on external technical support for resolving connectivity issues, though they did learn basic operational procedures such as which applications could function offline. The technical coordinator began organising off-site preparation sessions to download necessary content before children arrived, as teachers remained unable to manage these technical requirements independently.

The cultural misalignment of the digital content required even more creative adaptation strategies. The applications, designed for Western contexts, featured extensive content with no relevance to rural Malawian children’s experiences. Winter weather and avalanches appeared in reading exercises, while food-related vocabulary centred on hamburgers and processed foods that children had never encountered. Housing representations showed suburban American homes with attached garages and manicured lawns, contrasting sharply with the traditional structures familiar to the children.

Teachers’ initial approach involved attempting to work through all content regardless of cultural relevance, but this quickly proved problematic. As teachers gained familiarity with the applications, they started to develop situated pedagogical practices for managing these cultural mismatches. They learned to navigate selectively through content, for example, by spending extended time on materials featuring familiar animals while moving quickly past stories about unfamiliar urban contexts. When coming across unavoidable cultural misalignments, teachers began providing verbal bridges between digital content and local experiences. They would explain unfamiliar concepts through analogies to familiar ones, helping children understand not just specific content but the game logic behind it. Technical and cultural challenges thus set the limits within which adaptive oversight could operate, even as other practices remained remarkably stable across the same period.

Despite the digital learning context, certain culturally grounded teaching practices remained remarkably consistent throughout the observation period. These stable practices seemed to serve as anchoring points that enabled other adaptations to occur while maintaining pedagogical continuity. Physical guidance emerged as a fundamental and unwavering aspect of teachers’ pedagogical approach. Throughout all 17 observation sessions, teachers consistently positioned themselves at children’s eye level (Figure 3), often kneeling beside children or sitting on child-sized chairs to create more intimate moments. When children struggled with tablet-based drawing activities requiring precise finger movements, teachers instinctively employed hand-over-hand guidance rather than relying solely on verbal instruction. One detailed observation captured this approach:

This physical dimension of teaching extended beyond direct instruction to encompass emotional support and encouragement. When children became frustrated with challenging games or technical difficulties, teachers provided reassuring touches on shoulders or gentle pats of encouragement. This is embodied in the note:

The constancy of these embodied practices throughout the digital intervention suggested they represented core cultural values about how learning occurs through relationship and physical presence rather than mere information transfer.

Language use patterns revealed another dimension of cultural continuity within digital innovation. While all games were operated in English (Figure 4), reflecting Malawi’s colonial educational legacy, teachers consistently provided instruction, explanation and encouragement in Chichewa. This created a complex linguistic environment where children engaged with English-language digital content while receiving support in their native language. Teachers would explain game objectives in Chichewa, translate unfamiliar vocabulary, and celebrate successes in the language that carried emotional resonance for the children. This bilingual approach served multiple functions beyond simple translation. It validated children’s home language and cultural identity within a technological environment that might otherwise feel foreign. It provided cognitive scaffolding that allowed children to connect new digital concepts to existing linguistic frameworks. Most importantly, it demonstrated teachers’ intuitive understanding that meaningful learning occurs when new information can be integrated with existing cultural and linguistic knowledge systems. The stability of these embodied and linguistic practices across very different technical conditions points to the cultural depth of the centre’s pedagogical repertoire, which extended into the peer-learning dynamics of the multi-age room.

The multi-age classroom environment, with children ranging from 3 years old to 6 years old, presented unique challenges that required sophisticated differentiation strategies. Teachers’ approaches to managing this diversity evolved significantly over the observation period, revealing important insights about peer learning in digital contexts. Initially, teachers approached the multi-age setting with strategies that proved problematic for digital learning. They assigned identical activities to all children regardless of age or ability, resulting in situations such as the following:

This uniformity left older children unchallenged while overwhelming the youngest children. When younger children naturally gravitated towards watching older students work, teachers would redirect them to their own tablets, viewing peer observation as a distraction rather than a learning opportunity. The shift in teachers’ attitudes towards peer learning emerged gradually through accumulated observations of productive peer interactions. By the second week, teachers began noticing that certain children naturally assumed teaching roles with their peers. One observation documented how:

Rather than separating the children, teachers began allowing these organic teaching moments to unfold.

As teachers recognised the collaborative aspects of digital game-based learning, they began actively facilitating such opportunities. They started arranging seating to pair more capable children with those needing support. When tablets malfunctioned, rather than seeing device sharing as a problem, teachers recognised it as creating natural collaboration opportunities. Children began working together to solve problems, navigate games and celebrate successes collectively (Figure 5). The emergence of these peer learning dynamics reflected deep cultural values about communal knowledge transmission adapted to digital contexts. Older children took pride in demonstrating their competence to younger peers, while younger children gained both technical skills and confidence through peer support. Teachers learned to orchestrate these interactions, knowing when to allow peer teaching and when direct adult intervention was necessary. The orchestration of multi-age peer learning thus completes the four-theme picture, showing teachers, children and the games operating as a distributed mediation system across the conditions set out in the preceding themes.