Jogando e aprendendo a viver : sobre a utilização de jogos de tabuleiro na educação, um estudo de caso

Abstract

This thesis addresses the phenomenon of games and their presence throughout human history, as well as in the most diverse fields of knowledge. This is initially achieved by carrying out an extensive bibliographical survey on the notion of game regarding its history, definitions, types and features of the games existing in the seminal studies by Johan Huizinga and Roger Caillois, connecting them Victor Turner’s concepts of ritual, social drama and liminality, to Richard Schechner’s performance studies and Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory. Additionally, it focuses on an empirical study, followed by ethnographic experience and participant observation in a Board Games Workshop configured as a proposal for education in a school in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in order to better understand how, nowadays, an activity with games applied in the school environment can concretely have repercussions in the construction of one self’s knowledge and that of the world, as well as in the refraction and production of a group ethos that, echoing between game and life, is capable of acting in the construction, development and improvement of social, cultural and existential skills and competences in the subjects that take part in it.