Games-based construction learning in upper primary education
Creators: name: Ford, Amanda
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024

description: Within Scottish schools teachers are being encouraged to make more use of different styles of approaches to learning, one of which is the use of ICT to help develop children’s digital literacy skills across the whole curriculum. Some suggested means of implementing this are using Glow – the Scottish schools’ intranet system – or games-based learning (GBL). The curriculumencourages GBL by way of children constructing their own games, games-based constructionlearning (GBCL).With applications like Scratch being easily available, game construction is becoming more accessible to a wider audience. However, from a teacher’s perspective there are barriers to introducing GBCL in their classes from a lack of knowledge around GBCL and games construction to not knowing how best to implement this within their teaching. This thesis explores the use of game construction in primary school settings and aims to provide empirical evidence on the use of Scratch in primary education in Scotland This thesis has reviewed the GBCL literature and identified that there is a lack of GBCL literature and a lack of implementation frameworks for GBCL within education. An initial framework for the implementation of GBCL within primary education has been developed and refined through empirical work with schools. This was undertaken during the school years 2011/12 and 2012/13. 384 children from 16 classes between Primary 4 and Primary 7 participated with their class teachers. Eight one-hour lessons on games construction using Scratch were delivered to each class either by the researcher or class teacher and evaluations of them by the children and teachers showed a mainly positive response. Teachers who participated gained confidence in their own skills of teaching with Scratch and were pleased with the progress their classes had made. Teachers also saw Scratch not only as a game construction tool but as a tool that allowed the children to problem solve and work together in teams. During the study 178 games from all classes were constructed and these were analysed using a game coding scheme that was developed to capture the programming and design elements that the children had used in their games. Results showed that children could successfully use programming constructs such as User Interaction (key handling), Loops (iteration) and Conditional Statements to create their own simple games. This is important for teachers when considering the implications of not only using GBCL in their class but if they want to start looking at computational thinking and teaching programming in class.

This thesis has provided an original contribution to knowledge by showing how GBL/GBCL is being used in primary schools and what teachers feel about it. It has shown that through surveys and interviews teachers lack knowledge and possibly some confidence in delivering GBCL lessons. Additionally, this thesis provides empirical evidence on the use of GBCL within primary schools. As well as this, this thesis provides not only a framework for implementation that can be used in schools to undertake GBCL as well as a game coding scheme to assess Scratch games programming and design but lessons that have been trialled and still are being used by children and teachers in schools across Glasgow who now participate in an annual event known as the Mini Game Jam to showcase the skills they have learned through their Scratch lessons.