Abstract
In Germany, 93% of young people between the ages of 10 and 18 play video games daily. Political geography, in particular popular geopolitics, have found that video games can help to establish and develop people’s understanding of geopolitics. Consequently, this affects geography education, providing both challenges and opportunities for teaching. Geography teaching is an integral part of political education as students need to understand how boundaries and territories create spaces with regards to social power and become the object of political conflict. Reflection plays a central role in understanding and deconstructing such spatial constructions. In this article, we examine representations and concepts of borders in digital strategy games and the perception and reflection of these by the players. The results provide an outlook on the potential and the challenges of digital strategy games for political education in geography lessons in secondary schools as well as for teacher training at universities. For this reason, possible approaches for education and training will be outlined on the basis of the results.
Highlights
In 2018, Gamescom, the world’s largest trade fair for digital games, will be home to many providers in the edutainment sector
This research focuses on borders, which are important in the context of political education but are an often-neglected topic in geography education [1]
Students often have a limited understanding of the real consequences of social and political constructions of space that accompany the drawing of borders, despite this understanding being part of the German educational standards for geography teaching [2]
Summary
In 2018, Gamescom, the world’s largest trade fair for digital games, will be home to many providers in the edutainment sector. Students often have a limited understanding of the real consequences of social and political constructions of space that accompany the drawing of borders, despite this understanding being part of the German educational standards for geography teaching [2]. Three out of five young people in Germany between the ages of 12 and 19 play digital games every day [3]. For this reason, we want to investigate whether informal learning about spatial boundaries takes place from playing digital games, whether these have a strong influence on the understanding of geographical contexts, and to what extent pupils can reflect on the representations of borders in games.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
