Gameful approaches to learning have gradually been established as the go-to rhetoric when attempting to increase engagement with learning. This has especially been the case in educational activities that have long-term missions or teach abstract concepts, such as life skills, communal tolerance, or civic education at large, where there exist several pedagogical challenges in making the context meaningful to the youth. However, currently there is no clear overall view on what kind of gameful affordances are utilized in teaching these subjects and what are their reported impacts. To investigate the state-of-the-art of this corpus, 36 empirical papers were identified and systematically reviewed. The current literature, overall, draws quite an optimistic image of the benefits of game-based approaches in civic education. Most of the reported gamification designs included characters and roleplay, social aspects such as co-op and chat functions, as well as 3D worlds and game maps for students to navigate in. Furthermore, the corpus reported positive impact of gamification on learning in the context of civic education as well as positive impact on cognitive, emotional, motivational and social experiences and motivation. However, the lack of detailed descriptions of the exact attributes that facilitated these favorable shifts indicates a need for more systematic research to identify the long-term and transferable influence game-based approaches have on formal civic education and students' civic skills.
Youth’s understanding of and interests in communities, civics and citizenship are necessary for the democratic and constructive development of societies and more immediately to individual adult thriving as part of society. Hence, families and school’s civic education programs often attempt to gradually build young people’s civic engagement throughout their lives, with the aim of creating opportunities for children to act in their current social realities. Societies, i.e., the social systems, are complex and intricate socioeconomic-cultural structures that set the context where individuals act out their lives. Therefore, the study of societies function and how individual may arrange their live within them is of crucial 6th International GamiFIN Conference 2022 (GamiFIN 2022), April 26-29 2022, Finland EMAIL: isabella.aura@tuni.fi (A. 1); lobna.hassan@tuni.fi (A. 2); juho.hamari@tuni.fi (A. 3) ORCID: 0000-0001-9540-710X (A. 1); 0000-0002-6201-9159 (A. 2); 0000-0002-6573-588X (A. 3) ️© 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
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important for individual beyond other theoretical
and practical education schools provide.
Moreover, there are rising concerns about
growing socio-economic problems in the world
[1], a lack of trust in democratic processes [
Civics or citizenship education, as umbrella
terms, are often considered to include teaching of
not only civic skills, but also skills such as morals,
critical thinking, problem solving or cooperation
[6, 7]. Additionally, they can aim to educate
students about governance systems [8], politics
[9], globalization [
As part of schooling, civic and citizenship
education can be approached as stand-alone
subjects, cross-curricular dimensions or a
combination of different approaches [4].
Regardless of the approach, the need for any form
of civic or citizenship education is undebatable.
Studies have shown that schools without
citizenship courses and civic programs leave
students in a disadvantaged position in their
futures as workers and citizens, compared to peers
receiving civic education [
However, civic and citizenship education might often appear as a distant topic for children and youth, who perhaps see it as only adults’ concern [19]. Additionally, the programs might be highly theoretical and rely on mere memorizing [13, 14]. To promote active, practical and relevant civic engagement in formal education, teachers are increasingly implementing games and gameful approaches into their teaching, in hopes to motivate young learners and present complex civic matters in a more approachable way [20, 21].
The interactive and experiential features,
which are common in games, often foster
engagement and creativity, and offer greater
levels of activity than students would experience
within traditional, teacher-centered teaching [
As this area of research and practice remains relatively emerging, we need to further examine the use of games in civic education and their impact [16]. Hence, the aim of this study is to provide a systematic literature review of the existing empirical research on game-based approaches and its effects on civic education and answer the following questions: What affordances (gamification designs) are used in game-based approaches in formal civic and citizenship education? And; What is the reported impact of these approaches?
To answer the outlined research questions, we
conducted a systematic literature review of
gamebased approaches in formal civic education. The
inclusion criteria tool SPIDER (Sample,
Phenomenon of Interest, Design, Evaluation,
Research type) was utilized to set up this study
[29]. The sample focus of this study is research on
minor students, from primary education to high
school level (6–17-year-olds) due to authors’
interests in empirical classroom activities and to
answer the need for further research [
The literature search was carried out in Scopus in February 2021, using the query: (TITLE-ABSKEY ((civic* OR citiz* OR sociali*) AND edu* AND (game* OR gami*)). The keywords game* and gami* include all forms of games, gamification, game-based methods and gaming. Keyword edu* was used to include literature about education and educating students. Keywords civic*, citiz* and sociali* narrowed the search on civic and citizenship education and, for example, political or democratic socialization. Before conducting the final query, exploratory searches were made to ensure that the keywords cover the relevant literature. Figure 1 illustrates the different stages of the literature search:
The literature search started with 797 identified papers. Two authors screened the titles and abstracts independently against the SPIDER inclusion criteria. Duplicates (n = 13), nonEnglish (n = 2) and inaccessible papers (n = 10), as well as irrelevant papers (n = 738) were excluded. Irrelevant papers had no empirical design (i.e., would not be able to infer about the effects of gamification on learning or related psychological constructs) or did not examine gameful approaches to formal civic(s) or citizenship education in schools with children or youth, leaving 34 records. Following backwards and forwards references search [31], two relevant papers were identified. In total, 36 studies were extracted by one author and two authors determined their final eligibility together. Extracted data included study characteristics (e.g., publication year, which were between the years of 2005 and 2021), participant characteristics (e.g., age group, which were between 6 to 17 years), study design (20 studies utilized mixed methods, 10 were quantitative and 6 qualitative papers), details of the intervention (e.g., affordances and aims) and study results. All authors participated in the process of qualitatively synthesizing the results. Potential bias was carefully considered throughout the coding process with experienced co-authors and any disagreements were resolved via discussions.
This section presents the motivational affordances described in the reviewed studies. Table 1 summarizes the findings in 17 categories.
The majority of the employed game-based approaches in formal civic and citizenship education included avatars, characters or roles and roleplay for the students to use digitally or physically. Through the utilization of avatars or roles, students were often able to communicate or collaborate with their teacher or peers. Hence, the second most employed affordances were different co-op functions and other social dimensions. Many of the interfaces also included a chat function, where students could share ideas and discuss strategies during gameplay. The third most employed affordances were various 3D worlds and game maps, where students navigated their journey through the game. Along with a game world there often was a story or a narrative, altogether in nearly half of the reviewed papers.
Out of 36 papers, 12 studies described different challenges, tasks or quests in the gameplay. Competitive elements were reported in 10 studies, and the same amount employed various implementations of levels, sections or turns. Seven studies mentioned timers or time pressure. A guide or a helper, performance feedback and voting were each included in six papers. Only a few studies described the employment of points, badges or virtual items and goods, and even fewer had implementations of AR technology or progress tracking. Finally, solely one of the reviewed studies examined a traditional board game, which was designed by students for students with the aim of educating about community and civic values.
Self-esteem
Empathy Motivational
Civic motivation Interest in politics and global society Academic motivation
In this section we detail the reported outcomes of the employed game-based approaches reported in the reviewed manuscripts. Table 2 summarizes the investigated outcomes within the framework for gamification outcomes [61, 62].
These findings were obtained through
qualitative and quantitative methods. The
majority of the reported findings were positive.
Out of the 36 reviewed papers, 14 reported
formally assessed learning outcomes and 13
perceived learning outcomes through student
selfreports. The reported improvements in students’
learning included content learning (e.g., students
learned the curricular and academic requirements
[35, 60]) and civic learning (e.g., students adopted
civic values and/or learned to recognize their role
in society [34, 52]). Other positive cognitive
outcomes were improvements in students’
thinking skills (e.g., critical thinking [48] and
understanding multiple viewpoints [50]) and
problem-solving skills (e.g., creativity [38] and/or
persuasion skills [35]), both reported in 9
reviewed papers. However, four papers reported
no effects on actual learning [
As emotional outcomes, the gameful
interventions were described as fun and enjoyable
in 16 of the reviewed papers. Attitudinal change
was found in 11 papers, describing shifts in, for
example, students’ political and academic
attitudes [
Motivational outcomes included mostly improvements in participants’ civic motivation to, for example, actively participate in society [43, 55] or civic engagement [52, 56]. Interests in politics and global society were enhanced in 7 studies, and 5 studies reported positive outcomes in students’ academic motivation. One paper reported results about negative civic motivation, finding slight growth in students’ willingness to participate in politics through potentially illegal methods, for example through vandalism or civic disobedience [41]. Additionally, one study reported that the gameful intervention had no significant effect on students’ interests to learn about the EU [57].
Social outcomes included improvements in
students’ communication in nine papers, and
cooperation skills in five papers. Four studies
reported a positive shift on students’ social
cohesion orientations, including values of social
justice [
Gameful methods are regularly employed in
classrooms, albeit teachers still remain unfamiliar
with how to adequately utilize these methods for
their needs [
However, notable here, compared to the other contexts of gameful interventions [24, 62–64], is that the majority of the game-based approaches employed in the reviewed papers are established programs and software specifically designed for civic or citizenship education, such as Statecraft X, Space Station Leonis and Quest Atlantis, perhaps explaining the observed positive impacts of these tools. Previous research indeed emphasized the importance of utilizing gameful tools especially tailored for the civic use context to materialize positive outcomes [65]. However, many of the examined games and gameful methods are described insufficiently and superficially for the reader, making the evaluation of the game type and functioning mechanisms challenging. According to this review, we can assert that gameful interventions in civic education can enhance civic learning, foster positive attitudinal change towards politics and society, as well as increase motivation and interests in civic matters, but we lack the understanding of the exact attributes or game designs that facilitated these favorable shifts. Detailed descriptions of the examined games and variables are needed in order to extrapolate the most efficient approaches that influence students’ cognitive, behavioral, motivational, emotional and social outcomes.
Unlike other gamification contexts, such as
education or civic engagement [24, 63], the most
employed affordances in the reviewed papers
were designs that promote social interaction and
collaboration, such as roleplay and teamwork,
followed by game worlds that represent various
models of digital environments, maps or 3D
worlds, with the utilization of storytelling and
narratives. With a few exceptions, these
affordances were implemented together,
facilitating a holistic experience of, for example,
immersing oneself into the role of a mayor of a
fictitious city. Roleplaying and story aspects in
games have been emphasized in research before
[66], since they often provide a variety of
experiences of collaborative negotiations,
networking and examining society and citizenship
through multiple viewpoints [
As the results of this systematic literature
review show, the majority of the studies report
positive outcomes, whereas negative, null or
mixed outcomes are rarely reported. It is,
however, important to ask if these overwhelming
positive observations are due to the usefulness of
gameful approaches or due to a lack of
measurement of or reports on the negative or null
impacts of these methods. A similar observation
is reported in other literature reviews of gameful
methods in different contexts [24, 62, 63]. These
reviews have similarly raised questions on
publication biases and emphasized individual
differences in perception and experience of
gameful interventions [64]. Following these
findings, we recommend researchers to
systematically measure learning, development of
skills, behavioral and attitudinal change, as well
as social aspects with larger samples and
controlled interventions, to identify the long-term
influence game-based approaches have on
students. Such research is more likely to be heard
by educators, policy makers, as well as game
designers [
The reported impacts in the reviewed papers
were mostly on students’ cognitive abilities, such
as learning, thinking skills and problem-solving.
Emotional, social and motivational outcomes
were reported to some extent, whereas behavioral
outcomes were barely non-existent. This indicates
that impact beyond gameplay and classroom
activities stays fairly unknown, perhaps due to
lack of sufficient measurement tools, and the need
for generalizable findings on students’
transferable civic skills still remains [
Our study is limited in scope by the limits of the Scopus database used as a sole source for the literature search. However, Scopus is recognized as the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature in the fields of, for example, science, technology, humanities and social sciences, covering over 7000 high quality publishers. After exploring other databases with our rather narrow query, it was determined that Scopus, with nearly 800 multidisciplinary hits, was sufficiently broad for this study. Nonetheless, some relevant research could not have been identified due to this limit. Additionally, the gameful affordances covered in this study were identified according to the descriptions in the reviewed literature, hence, potential mismatches and omissions in description could have occurred between the authors of the reviewed literature.
This review focused on formal education due
to authors’ interests in classroom activities and to
answer the need for further research [
For future research, there is a need to remember that “teens” and “youth” are not homogeneous groups with similar attitudes and values, which is why civic education initiatives must be under constant evolution in terms of design, development and execution, and should acknowledge these personal and generational differences. These interventions should be relevant to youth coming from various backgrounds, ethnicities, genders and socioeconomic statuses. It is vital to encourage especially unprivileged and underrepresented youth to actively participate in society and communities to have their voices heard, so that equal democracy is achieved and maintained. Noteworthily, most of the studies reviewed in this paper reported that game-based approaches supported all student participants, regardless of their demographics, which might indicate that games and gamification could be efficient in supporting young learners’ civic engagement equally.
6. References
[31]
[