Accelerating progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals: serious games for teachers as agents of change

Research context Schools and teachers are recognised as key players for accelerating progress towards UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Research shows that teachers can and do act as agents of change (Pantic, 2015a; 2017; Pantic & Florian, 2015). However, school leadership and teachers often feel unprepared for dealing with these challenges. Furthermore, Pantic’s research on collaborations that facilitate change (Pantic, 2015b) show that they involve time and resource-intense collaboration between researchers and practitioners which are costly and impractical at a larger scale. The Agents of Change Toolkit project (taking place March 2020 – July 2021) creates knowledge exchange opportunities for teachers, researchers, leadership, educational authorities, designers, and out-of-school educators via a series of seminars and workshops, and has co-designed an engaging, practical toolkit for schools and teachers to improve education around the SDGs, particularly SDG4. The project draws on research and theories of change to ensure that the toolkit is engaging, accessible, and effective and it will include a research-informed, pedagogically sound, educational game, made freely available to all. Game-based learning interventions (aka ‘serious games’) have considerable potential for efficient delivery of both knowledge and behavioural outcomes in a range of related areas (Abbott, 2019a; Gabriel, 2017; Games & Social Change, 2015; Games for Change, 2019; Ouariachi et al, 2019 etc.) and a learning-objective-centric workflow for teachers has already been piloted by Abbott (2019b). The Agents of Change Toolkit project (ACT) has used a highly interdisciplinary co-design methodology to create a range of serious games, and other toolkit elements, in consideration of theories of change towards particular purposes for particular schools using scenarios related to SDGs. Game co-design is supported by the latest research in game-based learning design, including explicit and rigorous matching of learning behaviours to game mechanics (Abbott, 2019a; Arnab et al, 2015) and the use of gameplay loops for learning design (Abbott, 2019a; 2019b; Guardiola, 2016). The toolkit enables an accessible, structured, and engaging way of thinking through the whole-school approaches that, although recognised as essential, are often challenging for schools because they require time-intense coordination between different actors. The ACT serious games enable educators to incorporate research about effective ways of making change in the activities that are already structured into schools’ self-evaluation and development, such as ‘Whole-setting and community approach to learning for sustainability’, which sets out what a whole school approach to sustainability looks like. Proposed format 90 minute workshop Participants will have a brief introduction to the ACT project and the resulting outputs including the educational games (approx. 10 minutes.) Participants can play the finished version of the games (which will be free to print and play), specific to their own contexts for change and addressing the SDGs. Players will be encouraged to take away specific ‘action plans’ for their own schools/workplaces, both for accelerating the SDGs and for potentially implementing the game with their colleagues (approx. 20 minutes.) Participants will then have chance to examine the rigorous methods behind the game co-design process and to experience a rapid version of the co-design workshop which will enable them to identify particular needs within their own contexts and potentially create new games or activities to help them acts as agents of change. (Approx. 60 minutes.)