Scoping review data - Gamification\u2019s Role in Supporting Learner Autonomy: A Review

Autonomy support is a key goal in modern, student-centred digital learning environments, where students are increasingly expected to take responsibility for their learning. Such environments nurture students\u2019 volition and help them plan and manage their learning. Gamification is widely promoted as a way to motivate students and foster agency, yet it can just as easily undermine autonomy through extrinsic rewards and superficial mechanics. This tension is especially critical in autonomy-supportive environments such as flipped classrooms and self-directed learning, where students\u2019 volition and responsibility are essential. Despite gamification\u2019s popularity, no synthesis has examined how it is applied in these contexts or what outcomes are actually measured. This review maps and evaluates the autonomy-supportive potential of gamification features across education levels, academic fields, and learning settings, and examines the outcomes studied. Following the PRISMA-ScR guidelines, Scopus and ERIC searches identified 290 empirical studies on gamification in autonomy-supportive educational contexts. Gamification feature use was dominated by achievement features, while social and immersion features were unevenly applied, declining at higher education levels and varying by field. Most studies focused on performance outcomes, with autonomy-related outcomes rare. Experimental studies reported predominantly positive results. Overall, gamification\u2019s autonomy-supportive potential remains under-realised. Unlocking this promise will require moving beyond convenience-driven choices toward intentional combinations of features, broader use in out-of-class settings, stronger comparative study designs, and direct measurement of autonomy-related outcomes. Gamification can be a driver of learner agency\u2014but only if we design with autonomy in mind. This review provides researchers with an evidence base for advancing autonomy-supportive gamification and offers educators practical guidance for aligning feature selection with autonomy-supportive goals.