Using a board game to teach protein synthesis to high school students

AbstractThe present work aimed to investigate the contribution of the board game ‘Synthesizing Proteins’ to the understanding of protein synthesis by high school students, based on the socio-interactionist theory of Vygotsky. Fifteen students (six from a public school and nine from a private school) participated in the research, which had three stages: diagnosis and pre-interview, game execution, and post-interview, with collection of written and audiovisual data. The data were organised and interpreted according to a qualitative content analysis, in which we evaluated the predominant concepts, the conceptual gains and type of interactions promoted by the game in the understanding of target themes. The results indicated that the game contributed to the improvement (or construction) of a protein synthesis model by the students, providing a symbolic representation of the process through interactions guided by the rules of the game (in the game, students played the roles of molecules, and simulated mechanism...