From Gangsta' to Gamester: An Entertainment-education Strategy for a School-based Gang Prevention Program

Since the 1980s, there has been a steady increase in gang activities in communities across the nation and gang prevention programs have been created and implemented as a reaction to this growing social problem. This study investigated the use of an entertainment-education board game to enhance the Class Action program currently taught in the Hampton, Virginia, elementary schools. Since the impact of board games on social change remains relatively untouched as a scholarly pursuit, this study took what have been termed entertainment-education strategies and methodologies and related theories and applied them to the board game context and social change. More specifically, they were applied to and incorporated within an entertainment-education board game (EEG), True Friends, in which students from one fifth-grade class in three tested Hampton, Virginia, schools completed a brief questionnaire, played the EEG, and participated in a post-game focus group interview to assess the effects of a board game as an entertainment-education strategy for teaching social-cognitive skills. Results found that board games provide a shared historical framework among all users while creating a new interactive environment to allow for social-cognitive skills to be taught through an EEG intervention and the use of follow-up discussions created meaningful dialogue among participants.