The effect of educational games applied in the social studies course on the social emotional development of secondary school students

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of educational games used in Social Studies course on social-emotionalonal development of secondary school students. In the scope of the research, a quasi-experimental design with pretest and posttest control group, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was used. The study group of the research consisted of 5th-grade students studying in a public school in a district of a city. A total of 46 students, 23 in the experimental group and 21 in the control group, participated in the research. In the study, the 5-B class was determined as the experimental group and the 5-A class was determined as the control group. This experimental procedure was carried out for 6 weeks in the "Active Citizenship" learning domain in Social Studies course, In the research process, while educational games was used in the experimental group, Social Studies teacher continued teaching within his plans in the control group. In the research, the personal information form, the checklist and the 'Social-Emotional Development Scale' developed by Bozgün (2021) were used as data collection tools. In addition, lesson plans prepared by the researcher were used in the experimental process. The Social-Emotional Development Scale was used twice, in the pre-test and post-test. All of obtained data were entered and analyzed in the JAMOVI software. In the study, positive social behavior, self-control and self-development sub-dimensions, which are the sub-dimensions of the Social Emotional Development Scale, were also examined. In the study, t-test for independent samples, one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), mixed design ANOVA and t-test for paired samples were applied for the pre-test and post-test scores of the students in the experimental group and control group from the Social Emotional Development Scale. As a result of the analysis of the obtained data, it was revealed that the experimental procedure had a statistically significant effect. As a result of the study, it was concluded that the educational games used in Social Studies course increased the social-emotional development levels of the 5th-grade secondary school students. It was founded that it had a statistically significant effect on socio-emotional development levels. Based on the results of the research, it is recommended that Social Studies teachers could benefit from educational games in order to increase the socio-emotional development of students. In addition, it is recommended for researchers to investigate the effects of educational games on different dependent variables, and the effects of different independent variables on social-emotional development, and to conduct research in different designs covering Social Studies and social-emotional development.