Effects of EU Simulation Games on Secondary School Students’ Political Motivations, Attitudes and Knowledge: Results of an Intervention Study

For promoting students’ political competence at school, high expectations are placed upon active learning tools such as political simulation games. Their anticipated advantages are of particular relevance with regard to problems identified for teaching about the European Union (EU) at school, such as perceived hypercomplexity, perceived distance from everyday life and lack of interest. Although simulation games today seem to be quite a well-known, internationally practised method of teaching politics at school as well as at university level, there is a profound lack of systematically won empirical evidence regarding its effects and preconditions. The empirical study presented in this chapter addresses this research deficit: It analyses the effects of simulation games taking into account both the “subjective” evaluation of the games by participants and the “objective” effects of the simulation games on students’ EU-related political motivations, attitudes and knowledge measured in a pre-post design (intervention group N = 308). Furthermore, the study analyses the relevance of several predictors for the subjective evaluation and objective effects of the game, such as gender and cultural capital as well as participants’ political interest and pre-knowledge. The study focuses on German secondary school students and relatively short games of three hours (including introduction and debriefing) well usable in everyday teaching practice, simulating a decision of the European Parliament in three different policy areas (asylum policy, data protection, CO2 emissions of passenger cars). Measurement models, latent structural equations and latent class analyses are calculated using SPSS, ConQuest and Mplus.