A Integrating Positive Psychology, Gamification, and Digital Competence in Teaching English to Young Learners: The PGD–TEYL Model
Teaching English to young learners requires age-appropriate language instruction and emotionally supportive, engaging, inclusive, and digitally responsible learning environments. Despite growing research on positive psychology, gamification, and digital competence in language education, these perspectives remain largely fragmented, providing limited guidance for teachers seeking an integrated pedagogical framework for young learners. This conceptual paper develops the Positive–Gamified–Digital Teaching English to Young Learners (PGD–TEYL) model through a focused integrative review and theory-synthesis approach. Its theoretical contribution is an alignment logic that assigns distinct but interdependent functions to three pillars: positive psychology establishes conditions for safe and meaningful participation; purposeful gamification organises goals, challenge, choice, feedback, progress, and collaboration; and teacher digital competence governs inclusive, ethical, and developmentally appropriate use of digital resources, including teacher-mediated generative AI. The pillars are operationalised through the DREAM cycle (Diagnose, Relate, Engage, Assess, and Make Progress Visible) and differentiated pathways for lower-primary learners aged 6–8 and upper-primary learners aged 9–12. The model argues that educational value emerges from alignment among learner needs, language outcomes, gameful functions, and technological affordances rather than from technology or rewards alone. As a provisional and empirically testable framework, PGD–TEYL offers guidance for lesson design, teacher education, instrument development, expert validation, and future classroom trials in Indonesian and comparable primary EFL contexts.