Thinking Through Play: How Designing Educational Games Enhances Critical Thinking, Motivation and Achievement in Science Classes

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of designing an educational game on the topic of Force and Motion in a sixth-grade science course on students' critical thinking skills, motivation to learn science, and academic achievement in science. The study employed a single-group pre-test-post-test design, which is one of the experimental quantitative research methods. The sample for the study comprised 29 sixth-grade students attending a secondary school in the central district of Bartın Province. The Critical Thinking Skills Scale, Science Motivation Scale, and Force and Motion Subject Achievement Test were utilized as pre-test and post-test data collection instruments. Before the intervention, after completing the unit objectives over approximately four weeks, the test and scales were administered to the students as a pre-test. During the intervention, which lasted six weeks, the students, under the guidance of the science teacher, designed an educational game on the topic of Force and Motion. Upon completing the game design phase, the students played the games they had developed with their peers and provided written feedback on their peers' games. Following the implementation phase, post-tests were administered. The data collected from the pre-test and post-test scores were analyzed through paired-sample t-tests using the SPSS software. The impact of the educational game design process on students' critical thinking skills, motivation to learn science, and achievement levels was analyzed using a repeated measures test to determine whether there was a significant difference in the data collected. Based on the findings, it was concluded that the educational game design process had a statistically significant effect on students' critical thinking skills, science learning motivation, and academic achievement. The results were discussed in the discussion section in relation to the relevant literature.