Implementation Conditions of Board Games as an Educational Technology in the Classroom

This action-research project, conducted at Laborschule Bielefeld and Bielefeld University in Germany, investigates how analogue board games can be implemented as a sustainable additional educational technology across school forms, age groups, and subjects. Its central argument is that existing research tends to examine learning outcomes such as curricular content and key competencies (communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity) separately, and offers little practical guidance on embedding board games in everyday classroom practice. The project aims to identify the enabling conditions for board-game-based learning and, in the long term, to produce a grounded didactic framework for teacher education, inclusive practice, school organisation, and curricular use.

The research combines long-term classroom observations, a situational analysis workshop informed by Clarke's approach, questionnaires, interviews, group discussions, and qualitative content analysis. Participants include teachers and pupils from several schools, spanning a bGBL club for ages 9 to 11, a bGBL class for age 12, and cover-lesson settings in subjects such as English, German, geography, history, arts, and mathematics. The study follows an iterative, Grounded Theory-consistent design and is organised in phases running from 2023 to 2029. Preliminary findings are presented as provisional, with the bulk of analysis still in progress.

Preliminary findings indicate that board-game-based learning is a highly complex classroom situation shaped by teacher experience, group composition, learners' prior gaming experience, curricular aims, accessibility, classroom organisation, and the quality of instructional guidance. Classes unfamiliar with board games require explicit support in learning game procedures, participation rules, and collaborative practices, since these do not emerge automatically. Early discussions within a teacher network suggest that board games can be used productively as an additional educational technology, though the project has not yet quantified learning effects.

The project's stated limitations are its modest resources and its focus on enabling conditions rather than measured outcomes. Further analysis is planned on subject-specific instruction, lesson structures, recess use, organisational requirements, and effects on pupil well-being, with a comprehensive framework to be synthesised in an associated doctoral dissertation.