The Effect of Disposition to Critical Thinking on Playing Serious Games Manuel Gentile (B ) , Giuseppe Citt` a, Salvatore Perna, Alessandro Signa, Francesco Reale, Valentina Dal Grande, Simona Ottaviano, Dario La Guardia, and Mario Allegra Institute for Educational Technology, National Research Council of Italy, Palermo, Italy {manuel.gentile,giuseppe.citta,salvatore.perna,alessandro.signa, francesco.reale,valentina.dalgrande,simona.ottaviano, dario.laguardia,mario.allegra}@itd.cnr.it http://www.pa.itd.cnr.it/ Abstract. This research is a first attempt to investigate the relation- ship between students’ Disposition toward Critical Thinking (DCT) and their learning while engaging in the uManager serious game aimed at fos- tering the entrepreneurial mindset. Specifically, we will try to seek if the students’ DCT influences their game-playing. To this aim, the uManager game was renewed to directly include game mechanics able to support the processes that are at the base of critical thinking like clarifying meaning, analyzing arguments, evaluating evidence. This paper shows the results of a trial conducted with 92 students of the 12th grade. Keywords: Disposition to critical thinking · Serious games · Entrepreneurship education 1 Introduction The current research in game-based learning [19, 21, 22] states that Serious Games (SG) are a widespread tool used to foster learning at different ages in a wide range of fields [2–4, 24]. They are described as a tool allowing students to recall learning experiences in an engaging way [23] and involving players in tasks and activities conceived for knowledge and skills improvements [18]. However, there is no consensus on the effects that SGs may have in fostering students’ 21st-century skill development and how they affect and support the teaching and learning of these skills is still a very controversial point [21]. Namely, although the SG field and research studies on learning and teaching through SGs are growing, very little is known about how SGs can affect the development of the so-called higher-level thinking skills such as, for example, critical thinking, problem-solving and creative thinking, that are classified as belonging to the 21st century skills [7]. Moreover, even more controversial in literature is the question of what degree of complexity should be achieved in the design of an SG to reach c  Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 M. Gentile et al. (Eds.): GALA 2018, LNCS 11385, pp. 3–15, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11548-7_1