Character Development Through Game Play

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation” Plato

Traditional board games have been designed for years to stimulate both brain activity and enjoyment. They expose players to competition, organised rules and the opportunity to strategise through innovative, creative and critical thinking. In a school context, games can be used as a significantly more effective means of student engagement and involvement. They align beautifully with the General Capabilities of the Australian Curriculum:

Critical and Creative Thinking

• Analysing, synthesising and evaluating information

• Reflecting on thoughts and actions

• Generating innovative ideas and possibilities

• Identifying, exploring and clarifying information

Personal and Social Capability

• Self and social awareness

• Self and social management

Ethical understanding

• Exploring values, rights and ethical principles

• Understanding ethical concepts and issues

• Reflecting on personal ethics in experiences and decision making

As a school, it is important to provide experiences in which children can engage with strategic thinking games that, in turn, provide benefit to their wellbeing. Simple observations of children playing clearly identifies character strengths at work through:

Increasing levels of creativity

• Solving problems – making connections to the world around them and then apply their knowledge to similar situations

Promotion of curiosity

• Risk taking

Improved judgement

• Planning and making decisions

• Cognitively problem solving

• Investigating situations and exploring options

Improved self regulation

• Pausing and reflecting before making decisions

• Short-term vs long-term strategies

Developing fairness

• Being just in their moves

• Demonstrating respect for their opponents

• Demonstrating respect for the rules

Demonstrating humility

• Learning to win with dignity and to lose with grace

• To recognise the effective strategies of opponents

Developing perspective

• Being able to analyse an entire board and see it from many angles

To help foster and promote these skills in our students, we have adopted both the Mind Lab and Accelium methodologies and platforms: Mind Lab and Accelium use strategy games to develop higher order cognitive, emotional and social skills through play. Structured game-playing sessions, which are entertaining, engaging and exciting, enable students to learn life skills and deepen their creative and critical thinking capabilities. Mind Lab Classic adopts the hands-on approach, whilst Accelium,  Mind Lab’s most recent response to the agile needs of students and schools, incorporates the art of digital learning. Both approaches involve the introduction of a metacognitive model whereby students analyse emotional and cognitive processes all the while learning to develop, discuss, challenge and refine effective strategies that are transferable into real-world situations.

Similarly to my article on ‘Character Development through Nature Play’, the result of this can be a significant increase in children’s resiliency as they learn to negotiate various options and risk factors. Being actively engaged in these decisions helps children develop an increased ability to become better risk assessors as they learn to navigate a game board and calculate best strategies.