Promoting inclusive school cultures and, more specifically, addressing inequality of opportunity is high on the European education agenda. Equipping teachers to be able to identify and address inequality of opportunity requires them to develop sensitivity, multi-perspectivity and agency, and these are complex attributes that require personal experiences and deep reflection. Following the principles of design research, five Dutch teacher-researchers developed IQ110 - a game that does just that. It helps both beginning and experienced teachers reflect on the hidden mechanisms of inequality, particularly on the effects of socio-economic status (SES), and it stimulates them to ad-dress these mechanisms. In the card game, that is played by 3-5 teachers, each teacher first draws a persona card: each player becomes a pupil with a given SES-background. Then the players, in turn, draw situation cards. These situations have three possible outcomes, each resulting in getting green (positive) or red (negative) chips. For each situation the other players discuss the most likely scenario and thus determine the pupil’s score. The persona cards are based on Bourdieu’s ideas on economic, cultural and social capital. The situation cards and scores are informed by SES research.The impact of the card game, both in terms of outcomes and its driving mechanisms, is now the subject of a study, funded by the Centre of Expertise Urban Education of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. To this end, the canvasses on which the individual participants record their learning outcomes are analyzed, and there is a retrospective questionnaire that is filled in after having played the game.The preliminary results are promising: especially identifying with low SES pupils and feeling the accu-mulation of negative experiences raises teachers’ awareness. The participants report that through the individual and collective reflections afterwards they are better equipped to address the issue.In our presentation we would first like to briefly demonstrate the game and then discuss the results and possible implications and applications. As we are now working on an international version of the game, we would also like to discuss with you the game’s potential outside of the Dutch context.
Inequality of opportunity is high on the European education agenda. Equipping teachers to be able to identify and address inequality requires them to develop sensitivity, multi-perspectivity and agency, and these are complex attributes that require personal experiences and deep reflection.Recognizing this complexity, five Master’s students chose this challenge for their collective graduate research project. Following the principles of design research and inspired by Bourdieu’s ideas on different forms of capital, they developed a card game that helps both beginning and experienced teachers reflect on the hidden mechanisms of inequality, particularly on the effects of socio-economic status (SES), and it stimulates them to address these mechanisms.The impact of the card game – both in terms of outcomes and its driving mechanisms – is now the subject of a study, funded by the Centre of Expertise Urban Education of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. The preliminary results are promising: especially identifying with low SES pupils and feeling the accumulation of negative experiences raises teachers’ awareness.In our presentation we first play the game with you and then discuss the results and possible implications and applications.
Promoting inclusive school cultures and, more specifically, addressing inequality of opportunity is high on the European education agenda. This is reflected in the policies and ambitions of many teacher training institutes. As inequality is part of a ‘wicked problem’, simply adding the theme to the curriculum is hardly a solution. Equipping teachers to be able to identify and address inequality of opportunity requires them to develop sensitivity, multi-perspectivity and agency, for instance, and these are complex attributes that require personal experiences and deep reflection.Recognizing this complexity, five master’s students chose this challenge for their collective graduate research project. Following the principles of design research, they developed a game that helps both beginning and experienced teachers reflect on the hidden mechanisms of inequality, particularly on the effects of socio-economic status (SES), and it stimulates them to address these mechanisms. In the card game, that is played by 3-5 teachers, each teacher first draws a persona card; each player ‘becomes’ a pupil with a given SES-background, and then gathers positive and negative experiences.This article reports on the impact of the game – both in terms of outcomes and in its driving mechanisms. To this end, the canvasses on which the individual participants recorded their learning outcomes were analyzed, as well as a retrospective questionnaire that was administered. The respondents (n = 90) were students in either initial teacher training programmes or post initial (master’s) programmes.The results are promising, especially on (a) identifying with low SES pupils and (b) feeling the accumulation of negative experiences which raises teachers’ awareness. The participants report that through the individual and collective reflections afterwards, they are better equipped to understand and address the issue.
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