A Study on the Beliefs of Prospective Social Studies Teachers About the Applicability of Gamification in Education: To Play or Not to Play?

The increasing need to enhance the quality of education in social studies has led to the introduction of gamification as a teaching strategy. However, there is limited literature on the use of gamification in social studies classes, which poses a challenge to the accumulation of evidence supporting its implementation in this context. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate teachers’ beliefs about gamification, as this impacts their classroom practices. This study aimed to explore the beliefs of 100 pre-service social studies teachers on the applicability of gamification in education. The study employed a cross-sectional research design and utilized an adopted questionnaire with a reliability score of 0.949 to quantify the sampled respondents’ beliefs. The study revealed interesting findings, highlighting the importance of considering teachers’ beliefs in implementing gamification as a teaching strategy in social studies.