Abstract

Gamification, the use of game design elements such as points, badges, and competition in classroom instruction, is widely promoted as a strategy to raise student motivation and, by extension, learning outcomes, yet empirical evidence for its downstream effect on measured achievement remains mixed. This study examined the relationship between classroom gamification and scientific literacy among senior high school students across eight schools in Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, using a durian-waste, green-chemistry context as the literacy assessment theme. A gamification questionnaire and a three-tier diagnostic scientific literacy test were administered to the same students, and four complementary analytical strategies, exploratory factor analysis, cluster analysis, correlation and network analysis, and structural equation modeling, were applied to examine whether gamification experience predicts scientific literacy achievement and misconception profile, and whether this relationship depends on the school a student attends. The gamification instrument proved to be empirically closer to a single general engagement construct than to the four-dimension structure assumed at the outset, and one of the four hypothesized subscales did not meet conventional reliability standards. Across all four analytical strategies, gamification experience showed no reliable association with scientific literacy achievement, whether examined through total score, engagement-based student groupings, item-level network structure, or a latent structural model; a school-level moderation test likewise found no evidence that this null relationship differed across schools. Gamification exposure, engagement, and enjoyment, as reported by students, were therefore not, by themselves, sufficient predictors of scientific literacy achievement in this setting, and any relationship that does exist more plausibly operates through how consistently gamified instruction is implemented in the classroom than through student-reported experience alone. Implications for context-based, green-chemistry science instruction, and for the measurement of both classroom gamification and scientific literacy in similar settings, are discussed.

Keywords

References

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