Abstract:

The development of scientific literacy in terms of knowledge, inquiry and attitudes is systematically initiated in the early school years. Primary school teachers strive to put together diverse, interesting lessons and at the same time must ensure that students achieve the intended learning objectives, skills, and knowledge standards. It is useful to incorporate a variety of activities into the lessons. One way to do this is through didactic games. Didactic games are games designed to achieve cognitive or educational goals. The advantage of didactic games is that they involve pedagogical aspects in addition to achieving learning objectives and skills. Students can develop the skills of dialogue and communication, learn cooperation, tolerance, sharing and patience. The teacher plays an important role in planning didactic games because he/she is the one who selects, designs and prepares the didactic game for the selected learning content. Attention must be paid to what can be included, how many learning contents, skills, and the scope of the didactic game itself. He/she must create learning opportunities for students to learn in an environment that is crucial for students to develop their interest in learning content. The teacher must step out of his/her frame and plan a didactic game that will bring more sustainable results, even if he/she will spend a lot of time for preparation.

Since the Bologna educational reform, the Faculty of Education (University of Ljubljana) has been striving to provide students with the necessary knowledge for planning, designing and implementing didactic games in science education, which contribute to the improvement and development of a scientific literacy. Students may choose Didactic Games in Science as an elective subject. The subject also emphasises the implementation of dealing with objects, experimental work, and inquiry. The question arises to what extent students succeed in applying the guidelines for the design of didactic games and in incorporating the building blocks of scientific literacy in the designs of didactic games.

The paper presents an analysis of the didactic games created by students who chose the topic for their master's thesis on the primary teacher education study programme in the period since 2015. The sample includes 15 master theses containing more than 45 didactic games in the field of science at the primary school level. Based on the criteria for the evaluation of didactic games (professionalism, suitability for development, coverage of learning objectives, building block of scientific literacy covered by the didactic game, originality, aesthetic aspect, etc.), the didactic games were evaluated on a five-point scale by four experts in the field of science didactics.

Detailed results of the analysis and guidelines for designing didactic games with the aim of increasing scientific literacy will be presented in the paper.

Keywords:

Didactic games, pre-service teachers, primary school, scientific literacy.