Game-based approaches to climate change education: a lever for change? The case of Climate Fresk-Sverige

In face of the climate crisis, educational responses aim at raising awareness, fostering knowledge, and encouraging theengagement of the general public. Climate change education plays an important role in the necessary individual andsocietal transformations. Playful and game-based educational approaches are increasingly used. They hold the promiseto overcome the challenges and limits of mainstream approaches. This thesis explores the case of Climate Fresk, arecently created game-based workshop, based on the latest IPCC report, which pledges to push the world into transitionby providing a better understanding and fostering action and engagement to its participants. The present researchconsists of a formative evaluation of Climate Fresk in Sweden. A framework of successful game-based approaches forclimate change education was established and guided the evaluation of Climate Fresk. After defining the intendedoutcomes of the workshops, through a focus group and interviews with the Climate Fresk facilitators, an evaluation ofthe extent to which these outcomes were achieved was carried out by interviewing thirty participants. Twoquestionnaires were used: one for the participants who had just taken part in a workshop; another for players severalmonths after their participation. The results confirmed the integration of the game-based climate change educationfeatures of the framework to a large extent. The intended outcomes, as formulated by the facilitators, about climateunderstanding, thinking skills, attitudes, emotions, engagement, were achieved to a certain degree. Increasedunderstanding of climate change and system thinking was gained for a large majority of the participants. The findingsshow that there is scope for improvement. The data collected from the players who participated several months agoshow that Climate Fresk does not solidly lead to engagement and action. Recommendations are proposed for theClimate Fresk facilitators and organisers to enhance the impact o