Simulation Game “Support Committee”

Conception and Materials for Analogue and Digital Use in the Context of an Inclusion-oriented Teacher Education

Abstract

Inclusive education that aims at achieving equity among students with heterogeneous individual predispositions has become a normative as well as political objective, despite the general operational mechanisms within selective school systems. Within these conflicting conditions, teachers need to deal with specific dilemmas of difference as in the ones of identification, curriculum and school placement. As simulation games are defined as reconstructions of real-life situations or the anticipation of future situations, where groups with conflicting interests have to solve a problem, they could be an appropriate method to foster reflection and change of belief in teacher education. This paper presents a simulation game that prompts realistic decision-making processes of inclusive school placement practices. It consists of three phases: the preparatory stage “briefing”, which aims at collecting suitable information and developing arguments for the respective roles, the simulation phase, which allows participants to act out their lines of argumentation within a scenario, and the concluding reflective discussion, which serves as systemic debriefing of the simulation part. We report on the roles used in the simulation, the different phases and the implementation in pre-service teacher education, including the results of a formative evaluation in university classes. This article contains a supplement with a manual and the required documents for implementation.