Teacher Positions and Play Qualities in Esports at Specially Planned Youth Education Programmes

This paper examines how teacher roles influence gaming activities within esports programmes offered at Specially Planned Youth Education (STU) in Denmark. The STU programmes cater to young people with developmental, cognitive, and psychosocial challenges, who are unable to participate in mainstream education. This paper introduces play theory as a valuable framework for understanding how teachers facilitate gaming, especially in the context of structured esports programmes. Traditional approaches to game-based learning often focus on goals, achievement, and knowledge transfer. In contrast, this study emphasizes the affective and sensory dimensions of gameplay using concepts from play theory.