Enhancing Elementary Students' Science Process Skills through Game-Based Learning in Science Education

Science process skills (SPS) are essential for elementary students because they enable active engagement in scientific practices such as observing, questioning, predicting, experimenting, collecting data, interpreting data, and concluding. However, science instruction still offers limited opportunities for students to engage directly in these scientific activities, tending to emphasize conceptual understanding over process. This study analyzed the effect of board game-assisted Game-Based Learning on elementary students' SPS in energy-transformation content and identified how these skills developed following the intervention. A quantitative, quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design was used with 52 fourth-grade students: 24 in the experimental group and 28 in the control group. SPS were measured using a performance assessment covering seven indicators. Data were analyzed using normality and homogeneity tests followed by an Independent Sample t-Test. The experimental group's mean score increased from 66.88 to 84.17, while the control group increased from 65.18 to 77.68; the Independent Sample t-Test indicated a significant difference between groups after the intervention (t(50) = -3.593, p < .001), with a large effect size (Cohen's d ≈ 1.00). These findings suggest that board game-assisted Game-Based Learning (JoyR1D3) is a promising interactive alternative for developing elementary students' SPS.