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…

Designing games from the ground up is a popular activity for helping students think in designerly ways. Despite their benefits, such game design activities may place higher-than-anticipated demands on cognitive and institutional resources. In an effort to alleviate these demands, this study explored how playing and fixing partially completed games…

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…

Empirical research highlights the benefits for the development of children's mathematical competencies when they play linear number board games with dice and receive feedback. We, therefore, investigated mathematical competencies in two training studies with six sessions and a 3 × 2 design. The sample in the first experiment consisted of N = 79…

Game based-learning have been widely promoted to overcome the difficulties encountered by beginners to learn programming. However, there are many issues to address for the implementation of game-based learning. Indeed, game-based learning is not limited to adding game elements such as rewards to a learning situation, but it rather consists of…

The aim of the study is to develop a Likert-type scale to determine the play preferences of children attending pre-school education. The research was designed and carried out according to the survey research model. Data collected from 3 different study groups were used in the scale development process. The study groups consist of parents of…

Research on the educational value of play tends to focus on active players, especially when evaluating novel interaction technologies. However, a long history of scholarship underscores observing communal practice as a primary means of enculturation and learning. This paper demonstrates learning opportunities available within a range of…

The role of school has drastically changed over the past several decades. Standards and added subjects lead to a challenging and narrow view of education. The consequences of added pressure undermine the role of play throughout K-12 school systems. Research studies continue to describe play as vital for the success of children's development and…

Early foreign language teaching has recently been made compulsory in Finland, making this an area open to development and innovation where policy-makers and teachers play a significant role in creating new kinds of learning environments, operating cultures, and pedagogy for foreign language learning. This article discusses the early foreign…

The research aims to determine the effect of movement and game-based music education on the musical (exercising dynamics, playing the body, singing) skills of students with moderate intellectual disability. Within the framework of this purpose, it was aimed to improve the musical dynamics application skills, body playing skills and singing skills…

Gamification, the use of game design elements within nongame contexts, can be found across a wide range of digital products and is used to increase user engagement and simplify complex tasks for the user. While the use of gamification can be problematic with some content and contexts, these same strategies do have potential for engaging students…

In this article, we demonstrate how playful learning serves to provide optimal learning opportunities through teacher-guided play. First, we describe the theoretical design principles that can be leveraged to support mathematical learning for students that have been underserved. Then, we provide concrete examples of evidence-based games that can…

In recent years, art museums have been putting more effort into creating e-learning resources (ELR) to encourage young children to learn about art off-site. However, research on art museum ELR from the perspective of educational content is scarce. Using the ELR offered to children by Queensland Art Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art, Australia (QAGOMA…

Authors Kevin McCaughey and Rick Rosenberg demonstrate techniques for using board games to stimulate student-centered language practice that is flexible, productive, engaging, and fun. The article includes tips for efficient game play and for using games with a variety of levels and class sizes. The authors show that playing board games for…

Board games can be a highly engaging and motivating resource to support physics teaching at all educational levels. However, the development of board games to facilitate the communication of complex science subjects may not be an easy task for those with no prior experience in designing games. For instance, the various classification of…