1. Introduction
Play is part of the person from birth and is considered an essential part of his development, such is the importance that the term “homo ludens” was proposed as the man who plays [
1], being an important element from a double social and cultural vision for the person.
In this current social and cultural context, the teacher plays a key role in generating a new educational environment, which involves organizing and adapting the didactic process for students [
2]. In the field of physical education (PE) and physical activity and sport, these teaching innovations are evolving from traditional models, based on direct instruction, with organizations in rows and columns as the basis of teaching, to alternative models, encouraging a change in the way of teaching and learning on the part of the teacher [
3,
4]. These contributions come not only from science but also, and directly, from higher education derived from the indications set by the European Higher Education Area (EEES) where they state that the didactic process has to change to a learner-centered methodological approach [
5]. This means generating a change in the didactic model, where the teacher and the student modify their roles: the teacher becomes a guide of the didactic process, and, in turn, the student is the one who becomes the real center around which the process revolves, being the active protagonist of it [
6], with the aim of achieving the greatest amount possible of significant learning on the part of the students [
7].
In the present digitally connected society with continuous access to information, new opportunities have arisen for the application of games in the field of education [
8]. This movement has led to a continuous trend towards the incorporation of technology in education, causing a continuous reflection on educational models and the emergence of different educational methodologies [
9]. In this sense, the implementation of technology in physical education classes has initiated a positive change in student participation, as well as an improvement in motivation towards it and an enriching way of looking at physical education [
10]. However, its application should not only be reduced to the first educational stages, as it is convenient and advisable to implement its use up to the university level in order to improve the training of future teachers so that they are able to experience, feel and value the game together with the use of new information technologies (ICTs) and learning and knowledge technologies (LKTs) [
11]. In this way, it will help them in their training and in being able to better adapt to the current educational context and to the new training needs that will influence the personal, social and physical development of the pupils [
12]. This will improve motivation, participation and collaborative learning [
5,
13] under the idea of learning-by-doing [
14].
It is in this context where the possibility of using a new methodological proposal aimed at improving training emerges, such as gamification, which uses games and video games as the axis on which the teaching–learning process is built [
15]. It is a pedagogical approach based on introducing the dynamics and characteristics of video games in the classroom [
16,
17], generating benefits, not only in the acquisition of skills, but also in greater motivation and interaction, as well as better levels of satisfaction through the resolution of problems [
5,
15,
18]. It is considered a novel methodological strategy in the physical education area [
15,
19], where, by not rewarding the result but rather the effort and teamwork, the student is involved in the process and is evaluated, independently of the results obtained, so that he or she is motivated and makes an effort to solve the challenges posed [
18]. It also facilitates the relationship between the learner and the environment, generating an attitudinal change and making learning rewarding [
20,
21]. However, not everything that is done by playing games is gamified; gamification demands some minimum requirements, such as telling a story in which students have to overcome different tests or challenges, the teacher giving them a reward or badge for overcoming each challenge and showing the rankings, all of this using ICTs and LKTs [
22], and some teachers add a high workload to this methodology [
15]. Several studies with university students show that they enjoyed the experience and had higher engagement and higher student motivation [
5,
23,
24]. Others, on the other hand, show less motivation and worse final scores [
25], so more studies with valid tools are needed to know the effect [
15].
This innovative learning context is influenced by several factors that affect learners, including motivation, basic psychological needs and cooperative learning. The first of these, motivation, is considered to be the direction and the intensity of a person’s effort to achieve a specific goal or objective [
26]. It also comprises a continuum in the actions a person takes, from intrinsic to extrinsic motivation [
27]. Intrinsic motivation has been related to students who are more adaptable and have better experiences in PE, as well as having positive outcomes such as enjoyment, engagement or competence [
28]. Reference should also be made to demotivation, i.e., the total lack of motivation or rather the intention to do a certain activity, and all of this within the self-determination theory (SDT), a theoretical framework used to understand people’s behavior [
27,
29,
30].
As the second factor, basic psychological needs affect motivation and are related to the context of each person; basic psychological needs are autonomy, competence and relatedness [
29], which are necessary for general health: physical, psychological and social well-being [
16]. Autonomy is understood as the desire to feel that one is the originator and regulator of one’s own behavior, competence is the person’s perception of being able to show effectiveness within a particular context and relatedness refers to the feeling of belonging to a social environment [
29,
31]. It has been shown that any element that can satisfy basic psychological needs will lead to improvements in intrinsic and self-determined motivation of the individual, as well as to greater enjoyment of physical education classes [
32]. Finally, cooperative learning has gained great importance in recent years, especially in the field of education, and is considered as a methodological tool that can help to meet the needs of 21st-century students [
33]. It is considered a methodology that uses small groups for students to work together in order to improve their own learning and that of the other students in the group, through common objectives and with benefits for achieving various positive results such as motivation, social skills and performance in subjects such as physical education [
34,
35,
36].
In this way, the gamified work environment aims to promote the interconnection of students for group work, helping them to improve their competences and to work autonomously, as the teacher’s help is limited. Therefore, it considers that there can be a connection between it, psychological needs, self-determined motivation [
16] and, of course, the cooperative learning of the students who participate in it.
Hence, to the best of our knowledge, empirical studies on gamification in PE for future teachers are scarce, and it is therefore necessary to analyze the effects of gamification on different psychological variables and, also, on cooperative learning. Consequently, it is necessary to analyze the effect of gamification on motivation, basic psychological needs and cooperative learning of prospective PE teachers.
3. Results
The main results show high values for the basic psychological needs, with autonomy having the highest values, intrinsic motivation being quite high and very low levels of amotivation. The values for cooperative learning are also high in all factors. By gender, females obtain higher results than men in psychological needs, cooperative learning and amotivation and external regulation after the application of gamification (
Table 1).
By gender, there are no differences in psychological needs, meaning that gender is not affected by gamified practice. In the case of cooperative learning, gamification has a different behavior according to gender, specifically with significant differences (
p < 0.05) in the factors Social Skills, Positive Interdependence and Individual Responsibility, with a greater influence on females than on males. Finally, females have higher levels of external motivation than males and with significant differences, meaning that they do it for external reasons (
Table 2).
By degree, in all cases in the psychological needs, it is the competence factor that has a different behavior, with significant differences (
p < 0.05), with physical education students showing the highest rank. As for cooperative learning, the behavior is different depending on the degree; therefore, gamification does not affect the degree of study in the same way, with significant differences in SS, GP and PI, in all cases with a higher rank for Master’s students. Finally, gamification does not affect motivation according to the type of studies, although in MI and IR the highest rank is presented by PASS students, in the same way as in the case of AMO (
Table 3).
The results by gender and type of studies show that, in the case of males, gamification affects psychological needs differently; in the specific case of competence, physical education students obtain higher ranks than PASS and Master’s students. In cooperative learning again, Master’s students show higher values than the rest of the degrees in the SS and GP factors. In motivation, the effect of gamification is similar in all areas of study. In the case of females, gamification does not affect psychological needs differently; however, the effect is different in cooperative learning, specifically in the SS factors, where females in the Master’s degree obtain higher ranks, and PI, where females studying PE show higher values. Finally, again as in the case of males, gamification does not affect female motivation, although female PASS students show higher motivation values (
Table 4).
In the case of age, gamification does not have a significant effect on psychological needs, although it is true that students aged 21–25 years obtain higher values in all the factors. In cooperative learning, the effect of gamification is not homogeneous, since in the case of the SS, GP and PI factors, the highest ranges correspond to students over 25 years of age; i.e., gamification has a greater effect on cooperative learning as the age of the subjects increases. Finally, in motivation, gamification does not affect the age of the subjects; however, it is much more motivating for the younger ones, and they also present higher ranges of motivation (
Table 5).
The bivariate correlations show the following (
Table 6):
4. Discussion
The general hypothesis of the study was that gamification is a methodological tool that affects future teachers by improving psychological aspects differently according to age, gender and degree, with the general objective of analyzing the effect of gamification on motivation, basic psychological needs and cooperative learning of future physical education teachers.
We agree with other research in considering that gamification is a novel methodological strategy, a suitable and enriching pedagogical framework for education and physical education [
8,
10,
19], which presents significant experiences even when applied to different contexts, including the university stage, as is the case in our study [
11,
16,
34]. In this sense, it is demonstrated that gamification affects and improves the psychological aspects of students, as in other research [
16,
34].
In addition, Spanish legislation and the EEES require teachers to apply innovative pedagogical approaches to improve the training of future teachers [
11] and, in this way, create training contexts that enable the development of competences, as well as autonomy and the creation of healthy habits, aspects that are helped by gamified sessions with students through active learning, as indicated by other research [
5,
15,
16,
40]. However, this aspect needs to be analyzed and corroborated with more research to further verify this effect.
The study hypothesis is demonstrated by presenting good results in the basic psychological needs, with high values in all of them, as shown in other studies [
16], although the age of the sample is not similar. In this way, we agree with other research that considers that the improvement of basic psychological needs is essential for the health of students in all aspects, not only physical, but also social and psychological aspects [
16,
41]. These results are related to other studies indicating that the improvement of psychological needs benefits adaptive and cooperative behaviors, as in our research correlating psychological needs with cooperative learning [
28,
42]. The students also show satisfaction with their basic psychological needs [
43]. Along the same lines, the element with the highest rating in psychological needs was autonomy, which is also positively related to the other two factors, competence and relationship, aspects that may be due to the fact that the gamification process with the different phases leads students, both male and female, to nurture their basic psychological needs, linking this circumstance to greater autonomous motivation and better psychological growth [
16,
44]. These results found in our research can be interpreted as a sample of high values of intrinsic and self-determined motivation [
32,
45]. This aspect has resulted in students creating a positive environment for the psychological needs of future teachers since the gamified environment created generates positive relationships, competition and autonomy among students through cooperative challenges. Therefore, this methodological tool presents the necessary elements to develop the basic psychological needs [
16] of future teachers in the area of physical education.
A key element in education is motivation, and in this case, the results show that after the implementation of gamification, through motor problem solving and active participation, the values of intrinsic and self-determined motivation are quite high [
5,
15,
16,
18,
23,
24,
46,
47,
48,
49,
50], both in general and by gender, coinciding, moreover, with the framework of the self-determination theory [
27,
29]. In this way, gamification is shown to be an attractive methodological tool for learners [
16], where pleasant experiences motivate learners [
51]. However, they do not comply with the previously corroborated idea that rewards provoke a higher level of external motivation [
25,
27], since group work is valued and not individual performance [
16], through problem solving [
52]. It is also true that studies do not show clear results, as there are studies that show a positive effect on motivation through gamification [
15,
23,
24,
37,
53], while others do not [
25,
43,
54,
55,
56]. However, in our case, motivation was related neither to psychological needs nor to cooperative learning, so these data have to be taken with caution and more interventions are needed to concretize these results in the future. What is true, however, is that intrinsic motivation and self-determined motivation are negatively correlated with motivation; i.e., high levels of motivation lead to a decrease in motivation, a key aspect in the training of future teachers, which is a paramount element in the successful training of students in schools [
29].
Another of the most relevant elements in the 21st century is cooperative learning, which is why we consider it to be a methodological tool that helps future teachers in the 21st century [
33,
38], with a proven value in the field of physical education [
49,
57,
58]. The use of ICT stimulates cooperative learning, thanks to the contribution of each of the participants in the groups, and following the guidelines of the gamified methodology [
50,
59]. In addition to helping to improve aspects such as motivation and basic psychological needs, grouping pupils into groups has improved group cohesion, commitment and social relations, as the absence of rankings meant that pupils were not competing for the best place [
15,
57,
60,
61,
62,
63,
64]. In this sense, the results show high values of cooperative learning [
20,
21,
49,
60,
65,
66,
67], although it is higher in the case of females, with significant differences in SS, POI and INRE, and with better results for Master’s students than for the other grades analyzed; that is, as the students advance in their training and age, cooperative learning is valued as more important. This needs to be analyzed with more research to further test this effect. It also correlates with other research in that interpersonal skills and motivation are improved [
57]. Furthermore, it correlates positively with basic psychological needs and among all factors of cooperative learning; i.e., improved cooperative learning implies improved basic psychological needs in future teachers [
16].
Therefore, the implementation of gamification in the area of physical education, with the improvement of motivation, basic psychological needs and cooperative learning, can be used to return to the area its educational value and not only focus on fitness, obesity prevention or the promotion of physical activity [
15,
68], since it demonstrates a high impact on the teaching process at all levels, including university [
6,
49]. In this way, physical education can establish itself as an educational and formative subject.
Finally, this research has several limitations such as the small number of participants as the sample is not very large, and more studies with larger samples are needed for the results to be generalized. It is necessary to apply an analysis prior to the implementation of the proposal or even to measure in the middle of the intervention and analyze the effect at different points in time. Application in other countries would help to see if the results are similar regardless of cultural and contextual variables. In addition, the duration of the program should be increased to see if the effect is different depending on the time of implementation. In addition, it would be desirable to have different teachers in the implementation of the study, as some researchers may see the use of a single teacher as biased. The study within the university setting of prospective teachers is limited, and the data should be corroborated in different settings and contexts.