Internationally, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is given high priority in order to address social, ecological, and economic challenges. The importance of ESD for the future sustainable orientation of our society is underpinned in particular by Agenda 2030 (UN 2015). Alongside these developments, digitality is advancing in many areas of life, such as higher education. Both educational concepts (ESD and digital education) have common goals, as they refer to current and future challenges and cannot be clearly assigned to one discipline. Also, both concepts are about fostering the critical awareness of learners through critical reflective thinking and participatory experience in interdisciplinary contexts (Weselek et al. 2022). In this regard, according to Pegalajar-Palomino et al. (2019), higher education is the key to supporting important developments for both concepts. Future-oriented teacher education should combine both concepts by enabling future teachers to jointly shape sustainable development processes, for example with the help of serious games. These are games that do not serve the purpose of entertainment (van der Molen et al 2017), but pursue an educational goal (Wouters et al. 2013). Thus, escape rooms can be referred to as serious games if they pursue a specific educational goal. In this context, Fotaris and Mastoras describe the specificities of escape rooms from an educational perspective. From their point of view, escape rooms are based on a social constructivist approach, as learners construct their own knowledge when they encounter and deal with various challenges in an escape room in real time. In this process, learners face complex problems, which can only be solved through interaction with others (Fotaris & Mastoras 2019). Referring to serious games and their potential for supporting ESD goals, Spangenberger et al. (2022) report that such games have already been discussed intensively in the international literature. They explain that, from an empirical point of view, various studies have shown that serious games are more effective for learning than traditional learning methods. This is demonstrated by the meta-analysis of Wouters et al. (2013) and other studies evaluating the use of serious games in higher education (e.g., Braghirolli et al. 2016). Since university teacher education aims at teaching key competencies for the later (self-)responsible, reflective, and professional actions of teachers in school, it is of central importance that teachers promote important key competencies for ESD. Thus, important competencies for ESD have already been identified. These competencies, which are important for learners to help shape sustainable development processes, include competencies for collaboration, critical thinking, and integrated problem-solving skills (e.g., Rieckmann 2018). Against this background, it is of central importance that concrete learning objectives are formulated for the field of ESD in university teacher education as a basis for the development and implementation of appropriate didactic methods and tools. It is in this context that the project BNERoom aims to contribute to a stronger implementation of ESD and digital education in teacher training. The overall goal of the project is to develop a digital escape room (BNERoom) on ESD for student teachers, to test it with students, and to evaluate it scientifically. The project initiates an interdisciplinary exchange between students of all teaching professions in educational science and didactics (catholic theology and social education) and scientifically accompanies the negotiation processes among students.

Within the framework of this project, the designed-based research approach (DBR) was chosen as a research approach which pursues the goal of further developing teaching-learning arrangements. The approach is contextualized in this project for the subjects of didactics and educational science, as it is a discrepancy experience within educational practice (Reinmann 2022). With this focus on a school problem, we chose to concentrate on the SDG 10 "Reduce Inequality" in the development and evaluation of the escape room, because it combines the challenges of education in a special way. The escape room can be developed to create a place where students collaboratively deal with challenges related to this topic, for example. In this sense, it can be understood as an intervention in the context of the accompanying research. In this context, the DBR can be classified as developmental research in the field of educational science in the area of practical research, so that, according to Lehman-Wermser & Konrad (2016), it pursues a double objective. On the one hand, it aims to solve relevant problems from educational practice (here: reduction of inequality of opportunity in the educational system) and, on the other hand, it will yield theory-generated and -developed results (here: chances and limitations of the implementation of a digital escape room on ESD in teacher education). To evaluate the digital escape room, we will video the students’ interactions while they are working in the room. This will be done in the LabProfile of the TU-Dortmund, which has appropriate technical equipment for the development and exploration of different scenarios, such as the application of an escape room. We will document testing of the escape room by students in three seminars, i.e., with at least 30 students. In addition, cognitive interviews will be conducted with students at three time points. The aim of the data analysis is to evaluate the escape room; more specifically, it will allow us to: (a) determine how expedient the developed dilemma situations are for empowering the students, (b) gain insights into the inner structure of the students' negotiation skills, and (c) record which (interdisciplinary) knowledge stocks they refer to. Against this background, the evaluation will be done with the documentary method (Bohnsack, 2021).

The digital escape room in this project represents an innovative and interactive serious game that is to be tested and evaluated concretely with students. Following on from the project’s above-mentioned research goals, we will drawn conclusions about the design of the dilemma situations based on both the videographed application of the students and the interviews. It is important to use both types of data (videography and interviews) so that students are not only observed during application, but they are also interviewed. Hence, conclusions for the modification of the escape room can be drawn on both. The videographies will also be used to capture the internal structure of students’ negotiation skills. These results are central to the testing and further development of the escape room. As a third goal, both survey settings will record the knowledge stocks that students refer to. In particular, it is important to identify which knowledge stocks they draw on from their own discipline within the common interdisciplinary framework. The results of the study in the project are interesting for other European countries to further develop teacher education internationally. Overall, the project aims to strengthen, network, and implement ESD in university teacher education and to contribute to a stronger interdisciplinary exchange among student teachers. During the lecture, we will present the storyline of the escape room, the testing with students, the associated seminar conception, and the first results of the scientific evaluation.

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