“From Plate to Play”: Transforming Nakhon Pathom’s ‘Khao Moo Daeng’ Intangible Cultural Heritage into a Board Game Learning Innovation

Abstract

Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) is knowledge, practices, and lived experiences transferred from one generation to the next. In Thailand, Khao Moo Daeng (Thai-Style Red Pork on Rice), a famous local food of Nakhon Pathom Province, has been registered as a National Intangible Cultural Heritage. Transforming such cultural knowledge into creative instructional media offers a promising approach to enhancing youth engagement with the cultural heritage. This study aimed to (1) develop a board game–based instructional innovation grounded in intangible cultural heritage and (2) evaluate the quality of the developed board game. This research is part of a broader project entitled “Creative Education”: Conceptual Framework of Learning Management for Enhancing Innovator and Spirituality of Intangible Cultural Heritage Using Artificial Intelligence for Pre-service Teachers in Thai Society. Research Methodology: This study employed a mixed-methods approach. Qualitative data were collected through documentary research to synthesise information on Khao Moo Daeng for board game development. Data collection involved (1) an evaluation of the board game’s quality by nine experts through educational connoisseurship, with quantitative data analysed using mean and standard deviation, and (2) narrative reflections from 28 second-year pre-service teachers majoring in Thai Language, Faculty of Education, Silpakorn University, during the 2025 academic year, which were examined using qualitative content analysis.
Research Finding
The findings revealed that (1) the developed board game, titled “Let’s Help Grandpa Find the Recipe of Khao Moo Daeng”, successfully integrated intangible cultural heritage into an engaging game-based learning format, and (2) the board game was rated at the highest quality level by experts (mean = 4.87, SD = 0.14). Likewise, all the students reported greater awareness of intangible cultural heritage after playing the game. The board game was also found to promote Thai language learning and demonstrated its potential as an innovative instructional model for pre-service teachers. Its interactive format fosters an understanding of cultural heritage.
Overall, the findings indicate that board games are a highly effective medium for disseminating intangible cultural heritage. Therefore, future research should implement such games across diverse educational settings, including primary, secondary, and higher education, to obtain broader quantitative data on cultural perception. Furthermore, it is recommended that other domains of intangible cultural heritage be developed and tested through various game-based innovations on a larger scale in the future.