Education Commons^™

Digital Role-Playing Games As Means For Dialogue And Change For Marginalized Teachers, Jonathan Mendels, Amit Schejter

Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Journal

This study presents a theoretical model that incorporates the theories of Paulo Freire, Augusto Boal and Amartya Sen and uses their ideas to create an innovative digital role-playing game for teachers on ‘To-Be-Education,’ a platform originally designed for teacher-student role-playing . We then demonstrate how Sen’s ‘capabilities approach’, Freire’s ‘pedagogy of hope’ and Boal’s ‘theatre of the oppressed’ are adapted to tools of empowerment for Arab-Israeli teachers, who belong to a community marginalized by State policies. The teachers design their own games and base the scenarios on their own real educational and professional dilemmas. They then re-enact these situations to …