Introduction

Sustainable development and sustainability transformations have reached high urgency on national and international agendas and involve new knowledge and learning processes. Transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge as a research approach in combination with the methodological elaboration of theories of change have potential to support transformative learning processes. Both approaches engage with questions about the actors involved, impact pathways, or the role of power and agency in a given context.

Intervention

We introduce the THEORY OF CHANGE GAME, which applies theory of change thinking to transdisciplinary projects aiming for sustainable development. A combination of board and card game, it evolves around collaborative discussions.

Method

We explain the iterative development rounds of the game through several game sessions in different settings and analyse whether and how the game supports social learning for sustainable development. To assess social learning, we draw on the typology developed by Baird et al. (2014), which includes cognitive, relational, and normative learning.

Results

The iterative development rounds took place first in academic settings and then in a non-academic event. Our observations during the game and the debriefing rounds after the game demonstrate that social learning takes place in the form of cognitive and relational learning. Verified findings on normative learning would need other assessment approaches.

Discussion and conclusion

Several development rounds supported the design of a game that is suitable to support social learning for sustainable development. We see the potential of the game mainly in cognitive and relational learning. Further work on gamification elements could help to enhance the entertainment component of the game.

中文翻译：

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使玩家能够发展可持续发展的变革理论：一场严肃的游戏

介绍

可持续发展和可持续性转型已成为国家和国际议程的高度紧迫性，并涉及新的知识和学习过程。知识的跨学科联合生产作为一种研究方法，结合变革理论的方法论阐述，具有支持变革性学习过程的潜力。这两种方法都涉及有关参与者、影响途径或特定背景下权力和代理作用的问题。

干涉

我们介绍了变革游戏理论，将变革思维理论应用于旨在实现可持续发展的跨学科项目。棋盘游戏和纸牌游戏的结合，围绕协作讨论而发展。

方法

我们通过不同设置中的几个游戏会话来解释游戏的迭代开发回合，并分析游戏是否以及如何支持社会学习以实现可持续发展。为了评估社会学习，我们借鉴了 Baird 等人开发的类型学。(2014)，其中包括认知、关系和规范学习。

结果

迭代开发轮次首先在学术环境中进行，然后在非学术活动中进行。我们在比赛期间和比赛后的汇报轮次中的观察表明，社会学习是以认知和关系学习的形式发生的。规范学习的验证结果需要其他评估方法。

讨论和结论

几轮开发支持了一款适合支持可持续发展的社会学习的游戏的设计。我们主要在认知和关系学习中看到了游戏的潜力。在游戏化元素方面的进一步工作可能有助于增强游戏的娱乐性。