Journal of Interactive Narrative
A serious game exploring diversity of perspectives in citizenship education
Within citizenship education, a new focus is being laid upon what is expected of citizens within a diverse society. More emphasis is placed on teaching students how to understand and respect other people’s opinions, regardless of how they may contrast with one’s own. However, learning to be tolerant with others’ viewpoints comes with hurdles, as it is quite easy to become stuck within one’s own worldview. We designed and developed Diermocratie, an in-classroom game aimed at encouraging a more open conversation, which breaks through these hurdles and addresses key competencies such as empathy and argumentation. By a role-playing allegory that parallels real-world events, students explore their own predispositions, are made aware of the perspectives of others, and are enabled to discuss issues objectively. From a preliminary evaluation, most students could identify the parallelism between the in-game allegory and real-world situations. They also indicated that the game motivated them to further talk to each other, approaching sensitive topics among them.
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@article{bib:blokland:2024,
author = { Blokland, Erik and Cullinan, Caroline and Mulder, Doreen and Overman, Willie and Visscher, Marin and Zaidi, Amir and Bidarra, Rafael },
title = { A serious game exploring diversity of perspectives in citizenship education },
journal = { Journal of Interactive Narrative },
volume = { 1 },
number = { 1 },
year = { 2024 },
pages = { 3 },
note = { Association for Research in Digital Interactive Narratives (ISSN: 2998-7814) },
doi = { 10.62937/JIN.2024.GTYU4810 },
url = { https://publications.graphics.tudelft.nl/papers/16 },
}