Alternatives and Passages: English Teaching, Learning, and Mingoville

While much research into serious games focus on following teaching and/or learning activities, and particularly the human and institutional actors involved in these, the central actors of game based learning research (i.e. the games) seldom get much attention (unless the focus is so-called "technological"). This brief positioning paper takes point of departure in an ongoing postdoc project following circulations and establishments of www.mingoville.com, which is a virtual universe with game based elements developed for beginning English teaching and learning. The paper presents a Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) inspired approach to researching emerging passages between beginning English teaching and learning and Mingoville.