Educational Escape Rooms (EER) as a new teaching tool gained significant attention in the research discourse – especially the last two years. So far, research focused on the practicality, feasibility or description of the development. To provide a more comprehensive understanding to mechanisms within this instructional approach, it is valuable to examine it through the lens of established and well-researched theories and approaches of teaching and learning. Therefore, we identified which theoretical foundations were used in research on Escape Rooms as learning tools and took a look at the extent to which and where they are represented. For this purpose, a systematic review was conducted, which resulted in the identification of 24 articles containing a total of nine theoretical foundations. It is presented how these approaches are applied in EERs and how they are interrelated. Furthermore, we developed six patterns that illustrate the integration of the found theories into the articles. The integration of these theoretical approaches ranges from general statements on theoretical grounding in EERs without connection to didactic considerations to theoretical grounding with empirical validation. Result of the systematic review is that the theoretical foundation in current research on EERs is weak. Therefore, it is argued that future research should focus more on the interweaving of theory, didactic instructions, and practice to gain a better understanding of mechanisms behind successful learning environments with EERs.

中文翻译：

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教育逃生室研究的理论基础和方法：系统综述


教育逃生室（EER）作为一种新的教学工具在研究讨论中获得了极大的关注——尤其是在过去两年。到目前为止，研究主要集中在开发的实用性、可行性或描述上。为了更全面地理解这种教学方法中的机制，通过已建立的和经过充分研究的教学理论和方法的视角来检查它是有价值的。因此，我们确定了逃生室研究中使用了哪些理论基础作为学习工具，并研究了它们的代表性程度和地点。为此，进行了系统回顾，确定了 24 篇文章，共包含 9 个理论基础。介绍了这些方法如何应用于 EER 以及它们如何相互关联。此外，我们开发了六种模式来说明将发现的理论整合到文章中。这些理论方法的整合范围从与教学考虑无关的 EER 理论基础的一般陈述到具有经验验证的理论基础。系统回顾的结果是，当前EER研究的理论基础薄弱。因此，有人认为，未来的研究应该更多地关注理论、教学指导和实践的交织，以更好地理解 EER 成功学习环境背后的机制。