Committee of N: School Design Game as a Tool for Professionalization

• In Event: Playful Practice Spaces: Innovative Approaches for Next Generation Teacher Education

Abstract

Overview
Committee of N is many things, but it is primarily the card game activity that organizes student work in the history and policy unit of an introductory education class in MIT’s Scheller Teacher Education Program. Students reported that the unit on history and policy of education, as it was taught, was, “depressing,” and implied that the possibility of improving education felt hopeless. By focusing on the (re-)design of features of schooling and on collaboration and deliberation, Committee of N seems to not only allow students to develop their sense of self-efficacy as educators, but to also improve and expand their learning of the unit’s material. The use of cards to drive structured, facilitated design activities allows Committee of N a flexibility that not only makes it highly responsive to context, but has also allowed the game to flourish and drive conversation in a number of contexts and with a diversity of audiences.

Frameworks
The study of Committee of N draws on design-based research and action research approaches, drawing on the literature of teacher expertise & professionalism (with a focus on pedagogies of teacher enactment (Grossman et al., 2009)), of games and game-based learning, and of cognitive and constructionist theories of learning. We believe that game-based approaches can be a powerful pedagogical tool in this context because (a) games are good at helping people learn what a practitioner does in authentic work environments and develop a professional identity, values, and enjoyment (Shaffer, 2006) and (b) games are good at scaffolding experience, from a simple level to the boss level, and teacher candidates can similarly decompose their practice. This work will attempt, through the lenses of minimal instructional design (van der Meij, H. & Carroll, J.M., 1995) and Seymour Papert’s constructionism (1980, 1983; Papert & Harel, 1991), to reveal as of yet undescribed affordances of games for learning and for a sense of self-efficacy.

Challenges
Games and other classroom activities like Committee of N are dependent on facilitation and on the efforts of the learning community playing the game. As a design activity, successful learning in the activity does not necessarily require expert level designs, but productive discussion and deliberation among peers is important for getting the most from the exercise. Also, adopting this approach to our history and policy unit is changing our approach to the rest of the course. While this can be highly productive (see below), there is tremendous risk in transforming nearly an entire course all at the same time.

Insights
We unfold the practice of developing a game (and the surrounding processes) which facilitates a real sense of efficacy due to decomposing the historic and political structures of school. By using a design strategy, we help students develop mastery by asking them to investigate their past as students and to interrogate their experiences in educational institutions.

Author

• Jason Haas, Massachusetts Institute of Technology