**3. Good educational principles from mind, brain, and education sciences**

The first way to evaluate teaching and learning quality is by considering principles presented by Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) researchers. In her book, Mind, Brain and Education Science, Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa [14] presents 21 principles that great teachers follow. These principles are grounded in research conducted in neuroscience, psychology, and pedagogy. Using a transdisciplinary approach, Tokuhama-Espinosa established these 21 principles that are supported by these three fields and give greater insight into what is brain-friendly learning. These principles are adapted from Tokuhama-Espinosa (pg. 206) and presented in **Table 1**. They are adapted to simplify each principle and frame them as components of good, brainfriendly education.

Each principle presented represents an element of what MBE research promotes as good education. As Tokuhama-Espinosa proclaims in her book, these principles should serve as an agent of change to how education is offered. As research advances the understanding of how the brain works with education, it should be expected to see changes in the educational system to better adhere to those findings. This merits an exploration gamified instruction to determine its congruence with these important


#### **Table 1.**

*Tokuhama-Espinosa's [14] 21 principles adapted to simplify each concept as presented in Rueckert et al. [15].*

findings. If the gamified modality is more closely congruent with MBE principles than other options, this would strongly advocate for the mass adoption of the modality to improve instruction for all learners.

As gamification has become increasingly prominent as an educational mode of delivery, there has been a growing call for transdisciplinary research investigating the underlying brain-friendliness of the gamified classroom [16]. Rueckert et al. [15] began to address the lack of substantive inquiry into how gamification may align with underpinning claims of brain-based education by conducting a survey study on student perceptions of a gamified classroom and its congruence with 21 principles suggested by MBE research [14]. Their study looked at two university level English language classes in Ecuador. Each class was a different section of the same course and taught by the same instructor. One was gamified and one was taught as it had been traditionally. Students were given pre and post surveys to measure the extent with which they agreed that their classroom adhered to the 21 MBE principles. They were further asked open ended questions about their experience and the instructor submitted a journal of the experience. Their preliminary investigation found a significant correlation with 14 of the 21 principles for the gamified group. Further, the ratings improved for all 21 principles. This data showed promising results for improving adherence to all 21 MBE principles through gamifying instruction with 14 of those principles being significantly improved. Their study presented 14 correlations between the use of gamified instruction and adherence to the MBE principles presented. Their 14 correlations are as follows.

