DISRUPTIVE CRITIQUE OF GAMIFICATION AS AN EDUCATIONAL STRATEGY IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Abstract

The 21st century is accompanied by the emergence of new emerging educational
proposals linked to ICTs, showing themselves to be promising sources of improving
teaching-learning processes in classrooms. In this essay, gamification will be discussed
as a competent pedagogical strategy for the current needs of education, for which
documentary information from doctoral theses, scientific articles, books and magazines,
consulted in libraries and virtual repositories, was taken into account as an epistemic
source under the categories of gamification, motivation, game and operant conditioning.
Exposing successes and failures of gamification in its theoretical bases and structures,
as well as in the relationship with motivation and its use in the classroom. Managing
to conclude that gamification can be a useful methodology sporadically in classes, by
improving extrinsic motivation and not intrinsic motivation, preventing its uses from being
extrapolated in time, contexts and the understanding of concepts. At the same time, its
behavioral factor is evident when using operant conditioning to generate motivation and
changes in the user, indicating the possible consequences of its misuse, such as stress
or detachment from the activity when exposed to these stimuli for long periods of time.