While policies, laws and programs of various kinds have been implemented to address inequality of opportunity in education, achievement gaps caused by background rather than ability are persistent across the world. Looking at unequal educational opportunities as a ‘wicked problem’, we propose that collective action networks consisting of various educational actors, such as policy makers, political leaders, school leaders, teachers, parents and other educational professionals, are needed to refine approaches to tackling unequal educational opportunities.

For such networks to be successful, though, these actors need to be brought together, get to know each other’s role in the context of the problem, and think of unequal educational opportunities as a wicked problem. We propose that a serious policy game can help the educational field to achieve this and to work towards successful collective action networks. In this article, we present the contours of one such game, designed for the Dutch context, and we explain how a similar game can be developed for usage in other contexts.

In doing so, the paper covers two research questions, whereby the second question follows upon our answer to the first: 1) What is needed to refine approaches to tackling the problem of unequal educational opportunities? 2) What does a serious policy game to work towards collective action networks to address unequal educational opportunities look like?

In relation to the first question, the paper builds on the concept of ‘wicked problem’, coined by Ritter and Webber (1973) and further developed by Korsten (2019). Wicked problems are characterized by cognitive, normative and social complexity, and we argue that the problem of inequality of educational opportunities is complex in all these three respects, which makes it a typical wicked problem. This leads us to conclude that this problem needs to be addressed through collective action networks (Duke & Geurts, 2004; Innes & Booher, 2016; Crowley & Head, 2017; Korsten, 2019).

Drawing on game theories, in particular Duke and Geurts’ (2004) 5Cs for serious policy gaming, we propose that a serious policy game is a useful strategy to work towards such networks. In relation to the second question – what such a game would look like – we employ Olejniczak, Wolański and Widawski’s (2020) well established game typology to arrive at a design framework for a policy game on unequal education opportunities. Both the design framework and an example game are presented in this paper.

The design methodology we employed to design the policy game consisted of three elements: goal specification, game type specification and the specification of design principles. To arrive at a series of game goals we explored the literature on wicked problems and action networks. This helped to determine what skills needed to be developed through the policy game. In order to determine the type of game needed to realise these goals, we followed Olejniczak, Wolański and Widawski’s (2018) well-established game typology, differentiating between the type of problem that is addressed in the game (simple or complex) and the type of learning that is to be realized through gaming (learning for game designers or learning for participants). To be able to specify design principles – which we would then adhere to during game design – we first developed a conceptual overview of the educational system of the Netherlands and, based on both literature reviews and expert conversations, we specified the main dynamics therein that feed into inequality of opportunity. Reflecting on this conceptual overview, we then specified how various components of the educational system and the problem of inequality of opportunity had to be treated in the game design. This approach is consistent with Duke and Geurts’ (2004) procedure for policy game design.

After establishing unequal educational opportunities as a ‘wicked problem’ and making the point that such problems require collective action networks, we conclude that serious games can be useful to work towards such networks. We developed a framework for designing such a game and an example game for the Dutch context. The game we designed aimed to improve participants’ understanding of the various mechanisms and variables that are involved in the problem of inequality of educational opportunities (cognitive complexity), participants’ understanding of how different actors view the problem of inequality of educational opportunities (normative complexity) and participants’ understanding of the roles that different stakeholders play in relation to the problem of inequality of educational opportunities, including the role they play themselves (social complexity). The game type, consistent with these goals, is an ‘exploring systems’ game. The designed game can be played with between 15 and 35 participants and is particularly suitable for educational actors at the municipality level: teachers, school leaders, educational boards, policy makers, political leaders and parents.

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