Playing for Good: Exploring the Efficacy of Games and Digital Tools in Prosocial and Moral Education

Promoting social and moral learning experiences in schools is an important aim for building strong, ethical, responsible and empathetic future generations. Digital natives will be more and more immersed in a volatile, complex and unpredictable world where responsible, ethical and socially sustainable decisions are a key component of resilient individuals and societies. Building teachers’ awareness related to the present topic will contribute to adopting more effective learning design strategies strongly connected to Alpha Generation learning needs. The main objective of this study is to review recently published papers on the most effective strategies and instructional formats to develop prosocial and moral attitudes and behaviors in educational settings. More specifically, using a narrative review approach, we discuss: a. the benefits of enhancing prosocial and moral education skills; b. the effectiveness of using video games and digital tools in prosocial and moral education; c. different strategies to use games and digital tools in design-learning for moral and prosocial education. The present article also aimed to design a specific instructional work-model using video-games for teaching the subject Religion based on supporting and enhancing prosocial attitudes, humanistic values and promoting self-efficacy, responsibility and ethical decision making. Implications for interdisciplinary research and practices for moral and social development are discussed.