Engagement in play is vital for children to learn 21st-century skills, especially problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, focused attention, and collaboration (Hillman et al., 2014; Singer, 2015; Yogman et al., 2018). These require developing executive functioning skills crucial for school readiness and success. Play fosters brain…

Video games' popularity has continued to increase from their origins within a niche community to something engaged in by the general public. This field of literacy-making has a plethora of benefits to bridging skills both within and outside of the ELAR classroom for students of various backgrounds and skill sets, including language learners and…

Educational games help reinforce educational concepts. They help students learn through hypothesizing, probing, and reflecting upon the game environment. Understanding the impact of a game is important before deploying it in a class. Recent studies in learning analysis describe methodologies and approaches for analyzing educational games. However,…

Background/purpose: This study investigated the impact of the Test Survey for Students (TSFS) software, a game-based learning intervention (GBL), on the mathematical achievement and attitudes of Qatari fourth-grade students. Materials/methods: Utilizing a mixed-methods approach guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the TPACK…

This study examines Swedish teachers' perceptions of the PAX Good Behavior Game for students with special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream classrooms. Data were collected through interviews and focus groups with a total of 22 teachers across five schools and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Teachers generally perceived PAX as…

Within the world of university education, gamification, being the amalgamation of game to non gaming contexts, has gained attentions as an innovative teaching strategy particularly in the English as a second language (ESL) teaching. Deciding to use this mixed methods study to investigate the effect of gamification on student motivation and…

Background: Training the memorization of declarative knowledge requires the repetitive presentation of various forms of factual questions to learners. Educational games designed for this purpose should offer activities that are both tailored to individual learners and varied to prevent boredom. Whilst the Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL)…

In educational settings, gamified learning integrates a variety of game elements to improve the learning experience, but a thorough analysis comparing different combinations of these elements is sparse. This meta-analysis consolidated data from 182 effect sizes across 37 randomized or quasi-randomized trials to assess the impact of gamified…

We examine the origin and evolution of male-female rating gaps for young chess players using two decades of data from the U.S. Chess Federation, the national chess association that tracks competitive tournament play and provides ratings for U.S. chess players. An important feature of our research is that we examine male-female gaps across a broad…

Games are increasingly being used as a creative pedagogical tool for socially just leadership education. Game facilitators benefit from proper sequencing and heightened self-awareness during both the game session and debrief of the experience. While scarce, examples of social justice games are provided for the reader's consideration.

Building on the original work of Bunker and Thorpe and their Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) approach to physical education, there is now a proliferation of Game Based Approaches (GBA) in the research literature (Bunker & Thorpe, 1982, A model for the teaching of games in secondary schools. "Bulletin of Physical Education,"…

The COVID-19 pandemic has had serious effects on children in early childhood as well as on all age groups. Detecting and examining these effects with various studies is vitally important. Hence, current research aims to examine the relationship between digital play addiction tendencies and psychological well-being levels of 5- to 6-year-old…

This perspective piece explores the transformative potential and associated challenges of large language models (LLMs) in education and how those challenges might be addressed utilizing playful and game-based learning. While providing many opportunities, the stochastic elements incorporated in how present LLMs process text, requires domain…

Background: Complex skills, like analytical thinking, are essential in preparing students for future professions. Serious games hold potential to stimulate the online acquisition of such professional skills in an active and experiential way. Objective: Rubrics are proven assessment and evaluation instruments, but were never directly integrated…

Coding tools that use blocks to create programs are popular among kids and play a key role in learning how to code. The effectiveness of the coding courses that are available nowadays depends on how well the tools match the students' needs. The aim of this study is to reveal the impact of digital game design-supported coding education with Scratch…