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The Tanzimat—a series of legal and administrative reforms implemented in the Ottoman empire between 1839 and 1876—has been described by Roderic Davison as a modernization campaign whose momentum came "from the top down and from the outside in." There can be little doubt about the basic historical veracity of this characterization. Ottoman reform was indeed the brainchild of a small, albeit influential, portion of the imperial bureaucratic elite and its direction and timing were undeniably influenced by foreign diplomatic pressure (in the context of the so-called "Eastern Question"). But by characterizing, correctly, the Tanzimat as a state-led, elitist project, Davison's argument enters an interpretive vicious circle which seems to be more a reflection of twentieth-century political sensibilities than of nineteenth-century realities. A "top-down" political project, according to this argument, is by definition less likely to succeed than a project that has "vigorous popular support." And, since we know that the project in question ultimately failed to stop the breakup of the empire, it must indeed have lacked such support.

In recent years, many researchers have reported positive outcomes and effects from applying computer games to the educational process. The main preconditions for an effective game-based learning process include the presence of high learning interest and the desire to study hard. Therefore, educational game design has to tailor gameplay to the psycho-cognitive abilities, attitudes and skills of an individual player, in order to foster the player's motivation and creativity. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to draw a parallel between learning and playing styles, and to investigate the correlations between these types of constructs. The article presents a new playing style family based on Kolb's experiential learning theory that is appropriate to be used for educational games. This family is composed of four playing styles: Competitor, Dreamer, Logician and Strategist, and corresponds to Honey and Mumford's learning styles. To measure the four playing styles, a 40-item questionnaire was designed. In order to verify the consistency, validity, and reliability of that questionnaire as an accurate tool for recognizing the four suggested player styles, a pilot study was conducted. The article reports the results obtained from the study, along with their analysis and applicability. ; This study is part of the RAGE project. The RAGE project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 644187. This publication reflects only the author's view. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.