Teaching Social Studies With Games

Abstract

Social studies is a class students encounter in the fourth and fifth grades of primary school in Slovenia. It includes goals from the fields of geography, sociology, history, ethnology, psychology, economy, politics, ethics, aesthetics, and ecology. Among other didactic recommendations in the national curriculum for teaching, social studies include experiential learning with games. Game-based learning enables an optimal learning environment for students. The purpose of this article is to examine representation of games in social studies in primary school. The research sample consisted of 290 students of the fourth and fifth grade, 177 teachers teaching fourth and fifth grade, and 56 observed social studies lessons. Results showed that teachers rarely use didactic games in social studies. Results show that teachers rarely use game-based learning in teaching social science. Depending on the type of a game, the most commonly used one is a role-playing game. Most respondents' students like game-based learning in social studies and also estimate games are not played often enough in social studies.