The effects of a gamified project based on historical thinking on the academic performance of primary school children

Abstract

History education research has long defended a transformation of the teaching and learning process in order to overcome the repetitive and conceptual learning of history, advocating an approach based on the development of historical thinking. Gamification is an innovative educational tool which may facilitate the learning of historical thinking concepts in the classroom. The objective of this quasi-experimental research was to verify whether the learning of history of 4th year primary school children improved following the implementation of a gamified project in the classroom compared with a control group which followed a traditional methodology. For this purpose, the learners completed a mixed performance test before and after the classroom intervention. The results showed significant differences in the intergroup (posttest) and intragroup (pretest–posttest) comparisons. This research may serve as a reference point for promoting the implementation of gamification in the primary classroom, and for orienting teacher training programmes towards an epistemological and methodological change.