History didactics, board games and cognitive operations a step forward in the educational use of board games

Marco Tibaldini (1)

1 Free University of Bozen-Bolzano

For decades, board games have been used in educational context to improve the student's emotional involvement and to help them to grow their interests and curiosity. But would a playful learning be enough to achieve a true understanding of a discipline? Often, they are focused on contents transmission rather than on the development of those cognitive processes, and for this reason they could easily convey data and information that, even so, are lately dismissed and forgotten. Data that aren't supported by adequate conceptual and cognitive/operational structures, are learned but not understood, and for this reason on long terms they are dismissed in favour of more practical and urgent ones. The evolution of the application of board games to history teaching could indicative of how board games could really help in the development of cognitive procedures, shaping patterns of reasoning that ground the historical thinking.

Mots clés: Gamification; board games; primary school; cognitive processes; cognition; history; history didactics; historical thinking

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Marco Tibaldini. History didactics, board games and cognitive operations a step forward in the educational use of board games. XXIII BOARD GAME STUDIES COLLOQUIUM- The Evolutions of Board Games, Apr 2021, Paris, France. ⟨hal-03737323⟩