Pre-service Teachers' Player Types and Their Relation to Self-Efficacy With Digital Media

This study examines the gamification player types of 75 German pre-service teachers, drawing on Marczewski's player typology and the HEXAD scale, and explores how these types relate to self-efficacy with digital media. The authors hypothesized that the distribution of player types among pre-service teachers would mirror the distribution previously reported for college students by Tondello and colleagues (2016). The sample, collected in an online lecture at a single German university in 2020, was predominantly female and averaged about 24 years of age. Participants were classified by their highest-scoring player type, with mixed classifications yielding 101 player-type expressions in total.

The results showed that the observed distribution differed significantly from the expected one, with philanthropists substantially overrepresented (54 of 101 expressions) and achievers, free spirits, and players underrepresented, while disruptors were rare (one case). Participants reported high self-efficacy with digital media (mean 3.71 on a 5-point scale), but no significant differences in self-efficacy emerged across player types, whether compared individually or grouped as intrinsic, extrinsic, and disruptor types. The authors attribute the high self-efficacy partly to the sample's relative youth and the mastery experiences of trainee teachers.

Several limitations temper these conclusions. The sample size was modest, the group of non-intrinsic types was very small, and reliability for the free spirit subscale was low (α = .38). The findings come from one university and cannot be generalized beyond this population. Nonetheless, the authors conclude that pre-service teachers appear predominantly intrinsically motivated, suggesting that educational games for this group should emphasize intrinsic elements such as social interaction and communication.