The reflection on the use of simulation in education is not new. From the beginning of the 1970s, in several countries - the United States, Great Britain, France - a number of attempts were made.
The value of simulation situations has long been recognized. Approached at the outset through the analysis of symbolic play in children, Wallon and Piaget in their respective works note the importance of imitation, reproduction and experimentation ("acting as if") in learning and in the construction of representations. This is undoubtedly why historically the practice of simulation in education is so often linked to the theme of play.
In philosophy of education, Olivier Reboul (1980) has shown that simulation was not simply a practice, it is also the founding principle of school organization: “The problems of the school are analogous to those of life, but without their consequences; at school, a badly written letter is not a cause of refusal of employment, a miscalculation does not ruin anyone, an improper handling is harmless. The driving school is only a school because driving errors do not cause accidents. " In this it joins contemporary research which finds in simulation a means of reducing or eliminating the risks associated with learning by experience
Interest of simulation for the learner
Simulation allows perfectly targeted activities in relation to specific skills that need to be brought into play. “It is well suited to the approaches implemented in experimental disciplines. »(J.-Y. Dupont).
A powerful educational interest in the simulation of complex situations in different disciplines including economics, geography, ecology ... is its playful dimension; the student is active there, in a research situation. It mobilizes knowledge often acquired elsewhere to lead to other knowledge or other questions.
The simulation motivates and stimulates the pupil who can take initiatives, decisions and quickly see the consequences of these.
"Simulation, when properly implemented, can stimulate creative thinking, which is seldom the case in real experiences in which theoretical thinking is too frequently interrupted by the multiple actions *of detail that must be performed with care to pass the experiment *”(J. Hebenstreit).