Serious outcomes from serious play: teachers’ beliefs about assessment of games-based learning in schools

This chapter reports on teachers' beliefs about how working with games can or should be assessed in diverse educational contexts, and how the influences the way they work with games upon the Serious Play research conducted with teachers in diverse primary and secondary schools in Victoria and Queensland, Australia. It deals with a brief review of some key issues raised within recent games-and-assessment literature, and then draws upon project data to discuss related questions in more detail. Teachers also argued that some games-based work, although not directly linked to an assessment task, facilitated the development of various skills and abilities which would subsequently be assessed in other ways. They participating in the Serious Play project expressed a clear belief in the potential of games to help students achieve both formal and informal outcomes, some of which could and would be assessed by teachers where it was appropriate for the students.