28 June, 2024
Can Games Spur
Social Justice?
I was unable to find a free Mac-friendly version of Papers, Please but the trailer for it looks pretty impressive:
Sources:
During this upcoming school year, I will be supporting a violence prevention and restorative justice program that will be implemented at some of the high-risk high schools throughout the south side of Chicago.
My role will be to support framework and curriculum development, as well as resource auditing and authoring.
For this post, I would like to explore how games-based learning is being implemented in restorative/social justice education by educators in America, as well as explore some potential games that can be used as a resource for this specific program.
Researching for this post has led me down a rabbit hole on the internet, and what I stumbled across has been both surprising and awe-inspiring. Having never taught secondary students, nor taught social or restorative justice specifically, I had NO IDEA the wealth of online resources available. I am excited to start this work, and to implement these incredible resources I have found online.
I began my search with the article An Analysis of Gamification and Game-Based Learning as Strategies for Anti-Oppressive Education by Alia Skillman. This article begins by noting that educational institutions have historically been environments where oppression takes place. This is often in the forms of racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and classism (Skillman, 2023), and that anti-oppressive education combats these forms of oppression by introducing media with counter-narratives and providing empowering spaces for marginalized students to receive support, advocacy, and resources that are specific to their needs and identities (Skillman, 2023).
Skillman then goes on to explore how games-based learning can support anti-oppression education. She looks specifically at two games: Papers, Please and SPENT, and discusses they tackle challenging topics and simulate different forms of oppression that are experienced by real people. She notes that what makes these games effective is that they offer opportunities for educators to introduce these topics to students and can act as a springboard for meaningful classroom discussions about oppression (Skillman, 2023).
I was able to play SPENT, and I agree with Skillman’s description of it as being provocative and uncomfortable.
Here is how the game opens:
“Urban Ministries of Durham serves over 6,000 people every year. But you’d never need help, right?”
“PROVE IT. ACCEPT THE CHALLENGE… Over 26 million Americans are unemployed. Now imagine you are one of them. Your savings are gone. You’ve lost your house. And you’re down to your last $1,000. Can you make it through the month?”
Students must then make a series of decisions to get through the month. I think what makes this game so effective is that it confronts its players with decisions that may require them to go against their personal values in order to succeed, or sacrifice their performance in the game to make decisions that reflect their values and morals.
In searching for the game SPENT, I also stumbled on a website called Games4Sustainability.
This site has a “gamepedia” listing various games, both digital and physical, for all age ranges. The games are all in one way or another connected to one or more of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). I was impressed by the wide variety of games in the gamepedia, and while most of the games weren’t specifically relevant to the violence prevention program I will be working on, this has opened my eyes to the scope of games-based learning resources available online.
Finally, I also want to share a podcast episode that I found very informative.
Here is the podcast overview from the website:
Video games in the classroom can help young people learn a wide range of skills. But gaming can also expose them to radical ideologies. We talk about game-based learning with Meenoo Rami, manager for Microsoft's Minecraft Education. We also explore how educators can counter hateful messages in games with Keegan Hankes from the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project.
The quote that stood out to me the most from this podcast was “We’re not trying to turn your students into gamers, we are trying to turn your gamers into students.” Students are already playing games. Games-based learning is an opportunity to take something students are already excited about, already passionate about, and fit it into our pedagogy… and I can’t wait to get started.
Skillman, Alia, "An Analysis of Gamification and Game-Based Learning as Strategies for Anti-Oppressive Education" (2023). Social Justice and Community Engagement Major Research Papers. 12. https://scholars.wlu.ca/sjce_mrp/12