Exploring the Concept of Sustainable Development Through Role-Playing

Buchs, Arnaud; Blanchard, Odile

doi:10.1080/00220485.2011.606089

Cited by 22 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Earlier evaluations [50] have shown that roleplay in which the participants defend a particular view of sustainable development, challenged by other views, helps students to grasp the complexity of the topic. Similarly, van der Meij et al [51], argue that collaborative play alone does not increase the learning outcomes, and indicate the potential of scripted dialogues to increase the 'level of dialogic acts', and in turn learning outcomes.…”

Section: The Climate Adaptation Gamementioning

confidence: 99%

Serious Gaming for Climate Adaptation—Assessing the Potential and Challenges of a Digital Serious Game for Urban Climate Adaptation

et al. 2020

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Serious gaming has gained increasing prominence in climate change communication, and provides opportunity to engage new audiences and new platforms for knowledge co-creation and dialogues. This paper presents the design and evaluation of a serious game on climate adaptation, primarily targeted towards high school students, practitioners and politicians. The game aims to provide an experience of the impact of climate adaptation measures, and illustrates links with selected Agenda 2030 goals, which the player has to consider, while limiting impacts of hazardous climate events. The game design builds on the key goals in Education for Sustainable Development combining comprehensive views, action competence, learner engagement and pluralism. This study draws on game sessions and surveys with high school students in Sweden, and aims to assess to what extent different aspects of the game can support an increased understanding of the needs and benefits of adaptation actions. The results of this study indicate that the game can engage players to reflect upon challenges related to climate adaptation decision making, but also point towards the challenge of including a high degree of complexity which can make it difficult to grasp consequences of individual measures, as well as to link these to the natural variability of the occurrence of extreme climatic events.Sustainability 2020, 12, 1789 2 of 18 mere entertainment such as instructional goals" [6] p. 414, has been addressed in a number of recent studies. Given the complexity of climate adaptation, referred to as a "wicked problem par excellence" [10] (p. 28), scientific knowledge, rivalling social interests as well as ethical consideration need to be recognized, and hence demand new types of educational tools. Enhancing science education by contextualizing the content as socioscientific issues is argued to increase understanding as well as to train ethical reflection and personal judgement needed in modern societies [11,12]. This is also in line with the core of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) that strives for systems thinking and democratic action competence in a world full of conflicting interests [13,14]. In this capacity, serious games can support teachers to strengthen their Education for Sustainable Development as it provides an experience of climate adaptation, based on systems thinking and action orientation. Inspired by these two strategies, we argue that digital games can be a valuable resource in climate communication and education.Climate change games cover a wide range of related topics, such as urban development [15,16], personal action [3], land use models [17], agriculture [18-20], water management [21-25], climate risk attribution [26] and simulations of climate negotiations [27]. In their review of climate adaptation games, Flood et al. [7] present a large number of more recent games with focus on climate adaptation, and discuss their efficiency for "engaging with diverse publics and enable social learning" [7] (p. 18) as well as the role of ...

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Section: The Climate Adaptation Gamementioning

confidence: 99%

Serious Gaming for Climate Adaptation—Assessing the Potential and Challenges of a Digital Serious Game for Urban Climate Adaptation

et al. 2020

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“…The scripted role-play may be seen as an instrument for teaching a given content. Buchs and Blanchard (2011) explicitly avoided scripted role-plays as their aim was the “co-construction of knowledge” (p. 389).…”

Section: Drama and Role-play In Esdmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drama in higher education for sustainability: work-based learning through fiction?

Österlind

2018

HESWBL

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to highlight the use of drama in the context of professional learning for sustainability, and specifically, a drama workshop on sustainability for in-service teachers. The workshop was designed to explore environmental problems from several perspectives, by using drama techniques like bodily expressions, visualisations and role-play. Design/methodology/approach Data are drawn from questionnaires evaluating the effects of a drama workshop delivered in Helsinki in 2017. In total, 15 in-service teachers answered open-ended questions. Responses from experienced teachers were chosen as particularly interesting in relation to work-based learning. Findings The findings demonstrate that drama work contributes to education for sustainability in terms of increased self-awareness, critical reflections and signs of transformation; experienced professional learners bring their workplace context into the university, which enriches teaching and learning; and sustainability is a non-traditional subject in need of non-traditional teaching approaches. Research limitations/implications The results of this small-scale study are only valid for this particular group. Practical implications The study gives an example of how applied drama can contribute to learning for sustainability in higher education. Originality/value This paper contributes to a growing literature concerning how drama allows participants to work on real problems, from a safe position in a fictive situation, providing both closeness and distance. When students become involved in an as-if situation, it leads to increased motivation and practice-oriented learning. As the content of sustainability can be challenging, drama work offers a meaningful context in which concepts and issues can be explored. Fictive situations may contribute to more realistic learning experiences.

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“…This is why we believe that the first step toward designing Education for Sustainable Development should entail understanding its polysemy. The game that we have created is meant to reach this goal (Buchs & Blanchard, 2011).…”

Section: Sustainable Development: a Multifaceted Conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Clarifying Sustainable Development Concepts Through Role-Play

Blanchard

Buchs

2015

Simulation & Gaming

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The article aims at assessing the effectiveness of a role-play in addressing two concerns: clarifying the concept of sustainable development and teaching sustainable development issues. The effectiveness is gauged by surveying students to reveal how the game matches a set of "significant learning" criteria defined by Fink (2003). Firstly, our article brings a short overview of how the concept of sustainable development has emerged and spread over time. Secondly, in order to assess the learning potential of our role-play, we examine how it addresses the six components of Fink's taxonomy of "significant learning": (i) foundational knowledge, (ii) application, (iii) integration, (iv) human dimensions, (v) caring and, (vi) learning how to learn. This taxonomy is analysed through a rigorous assessment methodology. The assessment shows that our role-play is highly praised by the players as it not only brings them foundational knowledge, but also allows them to enhance many skills. Thus, the framework of this role-play contributes to educating about sustainable development as well as educating for sustainable development.

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Exploring the Concept of Sustainable Development Through Role-Playing

Cited by 22 publications

References 6 publications

Serious Gaming for Climate Adaptation—Assessing the Potential and Challenges of a Digital Serious Game for Urban Climate Adaptation

Serious Gaming for Climate Adaptation—Assessing the Potential and Challenges of a Digital Serious Game for Urban Climate Adaptation

Drama in higher education for sustainability: work-based learning through fiction?

Clarifying Sustainable Development Concepts Through Role-Play

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