Sofya О. Petrenko

The relevance of the research problem is due to the digital transformation of education, which fundamentally changes the nature of pedagogical communication, making it multi subject, hybrid, and technologically mediated. According to the demand of modern society, effective interaction not only in real but also in digital space, including interaction with artificial intelligence, is one of the necessary skills of a contemporary teacher. Meanwhile, traditional teaching technologies are increasingly failing to meet the needs of Generation Z and Alpha students, for whom gaming culture, interactivity and high-speed feedback are a natural environment. Gamification, understood as the use of game elements and mechanics in non-game contexts, is considered a promising pedagogical technology capable of translating learning content into a language understandable and attractive to new generations of learners. However, its application in higher pedagogical education for the purpose of forming student teachers’ communicative competence remains fragmented and episodic; there are no systematic methodologies based on the structure of the competence itself as a target basis for designing a gamified environment. The aim of the article is to theoretically substantiate the structure of the preservice teacher’s communicative competence as a basis for designing gamification technology. The leading methodological approaches were the competency-based approach, Self Determination Theory (SDT), the concept of game elements by K. Werbach and D. Hunter, and Flow Theory by M. Csikszentmihalyi. The study identified and substantiated a four-component structure of communicative competence, including value motivational, cognitive, practical operational and reflective evaluative components. A six-stage model for designing gamification technology was developed, each stage of which relies on the identified components as target benchmarks. A compliance matrix “competence component – game mechanics – expected educational outcome” is proposed, as well as a comparative analysis of instrumental solutions (SaaS platforms, LMS, no code/low code constructors and custom development). The theoretical significance lies in expanding scientific understanding of gamification design: unlike the traditional approach, the starting point is not the content of a discipline but the structural components of the competence being formed, which ensures targeted and systematic selection of game mechanics. The practical significance is that the proposed model and analytical tools can be used by university teachers in pedagogical education when creating gamified courses aimed at the holistic development of students’ communicative competence.