Simulation Games on the European Union in Civics: Effects on Secondary School Pupils' Political Competence

Civics courses strive to promote students' political competencies, which according to the model of Detjen et al. incorporate content knowledge, abilities to make political judgements and take political action, as well as motivational skills and attitudes. For achieving these goals, high hopes are placed on active learning tools such as political simulations. Looking at positive expectations generally placed on simulation games, they seem very suitable for addressing key problems of teaching about European Union identified earlier. However, simulation games have also been regarded as demanding and time-consuming, with the "fun-factor" outweighing the "learning factor". There is a profound lack of systematically won empirical evidence for such positive and negative expectations. This study addresses this research deficit, focusing on the effects of short European Union simulation games of the decision-making of the European Parliament on pupils and their political competence controlling for different background variables (e.g. gender, cultural capital, pre-knowledge, political interest). Data were collected from 2013 to 2016 in secondary schools of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia (N = 308; average age = 16.75 years) using partly standardised questionnaires accompanied by interviews. The intervention study (pre--post design) focuses on the competency dimensions content knowledge, motivation (political interest, self-efficacy), volition (willingness to participate politically) and attitudes (e.g., perceived responsiveness of European Union and perceived relevance of European Union for everyday life).