Game On
A Journey into Computational Thinking with Modern Board Games in Portuguese Primary Education
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22048089 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Fábio Machuqueiro (0000-0002-5884-6346, University of Lisbon, corresponding author), João Piedade (0000-0002-4118-397X, University of Lisbon, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 11 |
| Pages | 1182 |
| Publication date | 2024-10-29 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Education Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2227-7102 • E-ISSN: 2227-7102 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/educsci14111182 |
| OpenAlex | W4403850862 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 36 |
Recent studies highlight the potential of modern board games (MBGs) to foster computational thinking (CT) skills in students. This research explored the impact of integrating MBGs into a primary education classroom through an embedded concurrent mixed-methods approach, with a pre-experimental design in its quantitative aspect and content analysis in its qualitative dimension, with 20 fourth-grade students from a school in Portugal. The students participated in 10 game sessions, each lasting 50 min, and their CT skills were assessed using Bebras tasks in both the pre-test and post-test phases. Statistical analysis, including the Shapiro–Wilk test for normality and paired sample t-tests, revealed significant improvements in key CT areas, particularly abstraction, algorithmic thinking, and decomposition. Descriptive statistics were also calculated, and content analysis using Nvivo software was conducted on field notes, corroborating the quantitative data. The results suggest that MBGs can serve as a valuable educational tool for developing CT skills in young learners. This study not only highlights the effectiveness of MBGs but also emphasises the need for further research using more robust experimental designs to enhance CT development in educational settings
Computational Thinking · Linguistics · Mathematics education · Multimedia · Pedagogy · Portuguese · Primary education · Computer Science · Educational Games and Gamification · Open Education and E-Learning · Psychology · Teaching and Learning Programming
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Understanding computational thinking in the gameplay of the African Songo board game
Just Play Cognitive Modern Board and Card Games, It’s Going to Be Good for Your Executive Functions
Unplugged Approaches to Computational Thinking
Computational Thinking in K–12
| Citations per year | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |