Brazilian Teachers’ concerns towards the use of Gamification in Education: perceived barriers to its adoption

Abstract

Gamification applied to learning environments is widely accepted as positively impacting students’ psychological and cognitive aspects, such as motivation and learning performance. According to the literature on the subject, gamification tends to promote more positive effects on students than negative ones. Meanwhile, the literature lacks a deeper understanding of how education professionals perceive gamification in learning environments and their concerns about implicit issues and ethical issues. Prior research has not examined the relationship between gamification in education, its ethical concerns, and barriers. As a result, we expanded a previous study to identify and delve deep into potential barriers and ethical concerns pertaining to gamification from the perspective of Brazilian teachers. A survey was designed and answered by 61 Brazilian teachers. According to our findings, teachers are not inclined to use gamification for various reasons, such as social factors (e.g., acceptance by teachers and students) and planning and evaluation issues (e.g., lack of knowledge). Our study also found that their ethical concerns pertain to psychological effects, social issues, privacy issues, humanization, and behavioral effects. As part of the contribution of this paper, we list potential barriers and ethical concerns that designers and researchers should keep in mind when designing and implementing gamification and gamification-based personalization in learning environments.