Research on educational game design for children's tea culture learning

Abstract
With the continuous development of contemporary educational approaches, educational games have increasingly been adopted as an emerging pedagogical medium in children’s education. This study aims to design and preliminarily validate an educational game focused on tea etiquette education for children aged 7-12, with the goal of supporting their learning of Chinese tea culture and fostering cultural identification. Drawing on children’s cognitive characteristics and learning interests, the study proposes a design model for tea-culture educational games that integrates task-driven learning, interaction feedback, and culturally situated scenarios. First, tea etiquette knowledge appropriate for children was extracted through a literature review and expert interviews and then transformed into game tasks and interactive content. Second, a mobile game prototype entitled Tea Etiquette Quest was developed, incorporating modules for tea-set recognition, serving tea, tea-drinking behavior, and social interaction at a tea table. Finally, the prototype was evaluated through children’s playtesting, semantic differential scales, and brief interviews. The findings indicate that task-driven activities, timely feedback, and culturally embedded scenarios can enhance children’s interest in learning, support their understanding of tea etiquette, and improve the perceived effectiveness of cultural knowledge acquisition. This study provides a design-oriented framework for transforming traditional cultural knowledge into child-centered educational game experiences and offers practical implications for the application of educational games in traditional culture education.

Keywords
children’s education, tea culture, tea etiquette, educational game, game-based learning, interaction design

Cite this paper
Qian Zhu, Yulin Zhao, Research on educational game design for children's tea culture learning , SCIREA Journal of Education. Volume 11, Issue 2, April 2026 | PP. 45-60. 10.54647/education880664

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