Next generation of learning

Europe is no longer the world leader in education. The latest PISA tests show that most EU countries students have lower problem-solving skills than their peers in Asia, and educators are scrambling to figure out how to reverse this trend. One solution may be game-based learning, which is defined as learning through games. Using games in the classroom is an exciting proposition for educators that are interested in placing their pupils at the centre of their own learning process while improving analytical skills and cognitive abilities.

All of life is problem-solving. Changes in society, environment and in technology mean that the content of applicable knowledge evolves rapidly. Adapting, learning, daring to try out new things are among the keys to resilience and success in an unpredictable world.

Problem-solving processes have been studied over the past hundred years. Jean Piaget describes adolescence as the stage of life in which the individual’s thoughts begin taking more of an abstract form and egocentric thoughts decrease. This allows the adolescent to think and reason with a wider perspective. Wisdom, or the capacity for insight and judgment that is developed through experience, increases between the ages of 14 and 25; however, the tendency toward risk-taking also increases during adolescence. So it is very significant to activate and direct problem-solving skills during this period.

This is where our partnership starts. The participating countries of this project (Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Turkey) have lower results when we compare with other OECD countries.  The results for  the upper secondary schools  in percentages are as the following:

Slovenia: – 7.6 %

Bulgaria: – 6.7 %

Romania: – 7.2 %

Poland: – 5.5 %

Portugal: – 0.8 %

Turkey: – 5.7 %

The figures above show that the methods to develop the problem-solving skills of the students haven’t reached up to the desired goals so far. Thus, we need to try something new on problem-solving skills which requires thinking and learning in action. In order to progress about the issue of strengthening problem-solving, throughout the project we will use games-based learning integrating traditional ones to make our students learn more about the nature of the problem and the effectiveness of their strategies.

Here are some results of this analysis in the scope of the project that you can use as guidelines when using games with your students, written in handy and short form for use in the classroom.