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Convenor(s): Giovanni Brancato (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy)
Presentation 3
Self-Regulation, Motivational Design and Wellbeing: From Psychological Regulation to Game-Based Contexts for Human Flourishing
Salvatore Fadda, Carlo Andrea Pensavalle, Maria Giuliana Solinas
University of Sassari, Italy
This contribution reframes psychological wellbeing and human flourishing within the challenges of educating for democratic citizenship in an era of complexity, instability, and technoscientific opacity. Building on Self- vs. Externally-Regulated Behavior Theory, the paper argues that learners’ capacity to inhabit complex systems responsibly depends on the interplay between (a) self-regulatory competencies and (b) the “regulatory quality” of learning environments—especially their emotional climate. Emotions are treated not as secondary outcomes but as the neuropsychological infrastructure of learning: supportive affective states enable exploration and deep understanding, while anxiety and stress—frequently triggered by uncertainty, feedback loops, and perceived loss of control—can produce cognitive withdrawal and helplessness. The paper proposes COTS board games as accessible “complexity simulators” for citizenship education: rule- based worlds where players experience uncertainty, systemic risk, resource conflicts, ethical dilemmas, cooperation/competition, and failure in a psychologically safe setting. Through structured play, students encounter emotionally resonant decision-making situations that can be debriefed to strengthen emotional intelligence (recognition, regulation, perspective-taking) and to transform mistakes into curiosity and redesign rather than fear and avoidance. In this way, game design becomes a pro-regulatory educational ecosystem that supports autonomy, competence, and relatedness while cultivating resilience, critical awareness, and hope—key dispositions for democratic agency under complexity. Finally, the paper explores how generative AI can function as a dialogic cognitive–emotional mediator integrated into game-based learning: not as an authority that simplifies complexity technocratically, but as a reflective scaffold that helps teachers and students articulate strategies, interpret emotional responses, test alternative narratives, and reduce performance anxiety. By combining complex-systems play, motivational design, and AI-supported reflection, the proposed framework expands learners’ ability to understand technoscientific systems critically and to act with greater clarity, wellbeing, and responsibility in contemporary democratic life.
