Started working on this game in my final semester at NIE and am glad to have had the opportunity to enact this in the classroom!
*Credits to Melissa, Eric and Dr. Seow for onboarding me to the team to develop and refine the game 😙
Key Understandings
(Principles, Generalisations, Big Ideas)
Policies to tackle climate change can be enacted at different scales - i.e. international, regional, national, individual.
There are differing needs and interests among different stakeholders, and decisions made will result in trade-offs.
A country's choice of climate policy depends on the context - e.g. level of development, severity of effects of climate change on the country (e.g. low-lying coastal and small island countries vs countries that are inland/of higher elevation), etc.
Short-term gains of climate policies that prioritises development will result in long-term losses.
How the Game Works
Trial! (18 Oct 2021)
Trialed the game with a small group of students to get an idea of what difficulties they may face when playing the game in class. I also used the opportunity to refine the guiding questions I intend to pose for consolidation, so as to elicit key learning points to deepen their understanding.
Lesson Enactment (2 Nov 2021)
Evidence of Learning:
Sharing @ Geography Symposium (9 Nov 2021)
Shared about my personal reflections and the affordances of the game with teacher participants at the Geography Symposium. Showcased some student interviews from the trial run as well. (Had a lot of fun editing the videos hehe)
Scenario:
Player decided to pursue economic growth at the expense of the environment
Question posed:
Was it wise to cause a large increase in GHG emissions just for the sake of economic profit?
Question posed:
Among all 13 policy cards, which policy card is your favourite, and why?
Question posed:
Out of the 13 policy cards, which cards do you think represent policies that Singapore has implemented to tackle climate change?
The interactive nature of our presentation also allowed us to gain valuable insights and receive meaningful suggestions from our participants on how this game can be tweaked to further reflect the complexities of the climate change issue.
Some suggestions from the participants:
We can consider assigning country profiles to students - to get them to exercise perspective taking when making policy decisions.
E.g. represent various countries at different stages of economic growth and environmental conservation (also keeping in mind that e.g. LDC who have less $ would also have had emitted less GHG)
We can also consider 'tag team' - for e.g. banding ASEAN countries together in implementing their climate policies.
Deck of slides and padlet used for the symposium sharing:
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