Gamified Pedagogy and Critical Thinking in Secondary Education: A Comparative Quasi-Experimental Study of Government and Private Schools

Abstract

Critical thinking is increasingly recognized as a core educational competency because students must be able to analyze information, evaluate evidence, infer conclusions, and solve complex problems in rapidly changing social and technological environments. However, conventional teacher-centred instruction may provide insufficient opportunities for sustained cognitive engagement and higher-order reasoning. Gamified pedagogy offers an alternative approach by integrating game-design elements such as challenges, quests, feedback, rewards, progression, and collaborative problem solving into instructional activities. This study examines the effectiveness of gamified pedagogy in developing critical-thinking skills among ninth-grade students and investigates whether its effectiveness differs between government and private school contexts. A quasi-experimental pre-test–post-test design was employed with 200 students from selected schools in Gurugram, Haryana. The sample comprised 100 students from a private school and 100 from a government school, with experimental and control groups of 50 students within each school context. Experimental groups participated in a 12-week gamified learning intervention, whereas control groups received conventional instruction. Critical thinking was assessed using the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST), and quantitative data were analysed using t-tests and two-way analysis of variance. The results showed substantially greater gains among students receiving gamified instruction than among students receiving conventional instruction. The private-school gamified group demonstrated the largest improvement (M gain = 35.2; Cohen's d = 2.01), followed by the government-school gamified group (M gain = 17.6; d = 0.86). A significant main effect of school type and a significant interaction between teaching method and school type were also observed. Qualitative observations indicated increased engagement, participation, and willingness to undertake analytical tasks, while government-school students reported greater technological constraints. The findings suggest that gamified pedagogy can strengthen critical-thinking development, but its effectiveness is influenced by implementation conditions and educational infrastructure. The study contributes to the literature by connecting gamification, higher-order cognition, and educational equity within a comparative secondary-school context.