Education or entertainment? : On the potential of games in financial education

In this chapter, we review the various ways games are used in financial education. We start by discussing the evidence on the links between financial education and financial literacy, and note that active learning methods, of which games form an important part, have been found to provide promising results. We introduce the distinction between serious games and entertainment games as a basis for our analysis. We note that students can learn valuable skills either during their leisure time or as part of formal learning experiences. We then discuss the education science literature on the implications of games for learning and devote a section to analyzing the learning implications of games in financial education. Toward the end of our chapter, we discuss examples of different types of games used for educational purposes: digital games, board games, and role-playing games. In the concluding section, we provide some practical advice to teachers and other educators.