Influence of a board-game narrative framework on student’s narrative writing in the context of evolution teaching

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This research studies the narratives of lower secondary school students after playinga board-game about evolution integrated into educational resources for lowersecondary school. The board-game ‘Darwinium’ was designed by a team ofresearchers and teachers and places middle school students in the fictional situationof researchers observing the evolution of fictional animal populations placed in anexperimental dome. The game mechanics and the story it tells is considered a“narrative framework” (Author, 2021). In other words, it sets the initial situation, a setof theoretical and methodological standards on which the players/students can basethe reconstruction of future events. During a game play, players have to report on theevolution of their fictional animal population in verbal narrative form and graphic form.This project is based on previous work that has highlighted the difficulties inapprehending the theory of evolution of living things and the ideas of chance that arelinked to it (Author, 2018; Fiedler, Sbeglia, Nehm & Harms, 2019).A previous study (ESERA, 2023) revealed that after playing the game Darwinium,some students express an understanding of certain important ideas related to evolutionin accordance with scientific knowledge. The game seems to enable students toconsider the question of randomness in the evolutionary process, even though forsome this idea of randomness coexists with their finalist conception of evolution. Therewas also an absence of the idea of contingency in the explanations of evolution.