Board Games for Natural Science Education

This paper, written in Polish by Jacek Francikowski of the University of Silesia in Katowice and published in Homo Ludens (2018), argues that modern board games can serve as valuable educational tools for natural sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology, and earth science. Its central thesis is that games embed subject knowledge within mechanics and thematic contexts, allowing students to encounter abstract or unintuitive phenomena through repeated, active engagement rather than passive instruction. The author positions this approach as a response to persistent difficulties in science teaching, including students' struggles with memorizing and understanding terms, processes, and phenomena, as well as low motivation and limited opportunities to observe scientific events directly.

The paper's key arguments center on the pedagogical mechanics of games. Because play is procedural and allows mistakes to be made and corrected, it supports deeper levels of information processing than lecture-based learning. The author contends that gameplay mirrors the scientific method, as players observe a modeled system, formulate hypotheses, and test them against outcomes. Games are also credited with developing a broad range of transferable competencies, including rule-following, concentration, decision-making, teamwork, logical reasoning, strategy building, and even mathematical thinking and English-language skills. The paper notes that many titles are suitable not only for early education but also for lower and upper secondary levels, and that games can be adjusted by complexity to suit different ages and experience.

The paper is a qualitative, literature-based review and illustrative analysis rather than an empirical study; it does not report survey data, sample sizes, or controlled experimental results. Its scope is primarily conceptual and descriptive, drawing on a wide range of cited research across education, psychology, and game studies, together with four commercial games examined in detail: Pandemic (biology and epidemiology), Compounded (chemistry), High Frontier (space exploration and physics), and Ticket to Ride (geography). It also surveys additional titles and discusses free, print-and-play games under open licenses as low-cost classroom resources. The author concludes that games are most effective when extended beyond the 45-minute lesson, through after-school activities, libraries, and science clubs, where students can reflect on their experiences and connect them to real-world scientific concepts.