Didactic Games in Social Studies in Primary School

Abstract

This study attempts to present representation of didactic games in social studies classes in primary school. We were especially interested in origin of didactic games that teacher use. Didactic game is a game used in classes taught with game-based learning and is proven to be an effective experiential learning method in more researches by Boocock, Bognar and others. In March and April 2017, we conducted a research among the 290 students of the 4 th and 5 th grade and 177 teachers teaching 4 th and 5 th grade about the representation of didactic games in wider aspects in the 4 th and 5 th grade of social studies classes in Slovenian primary schools. In addition, 56 social studies lessons were observed. Results revealed that there is a problem of insufficient range of ready-to-use or ready-made games designed for the subject social studies, therefore the majority of teachers had already created a didactic game by themselves.