Wednesday, 12 January 2011 22:00

Very few studies provide a detailed answer to that important question, which is why TARGET's coming evaluations are being undertaken. A new and welcome addition to the literature is the forthcoming article “Learning through games? Evaluating the learning effect of a policy exercise on European climate policy”, by Dutch researchers Constanze Haug, Dave Huitema and Ivo Wenzler (doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2010.12.001).

Of particular note: the use by the researchers of “Morine-Dershimer's method for tracing conceptual change through concept maps” could be relevant to ways of mapping the emergence of Threshold Concepts as studied in TARGET.

The article will be printed in the journal “Technological Forecasting and Social Change”. In brief: the authors have developed “a typology of learning effects (cognitive, relational, and normative) that can be expected from policy games”, plus “a set of tools for measuring them. The results of using those tools yield “limited evidence for learning from the policy exercise, mostly in the cognitive and the relational domain. In this context, the use of concept maps is an interesting methodological innovation. Employed as pre- and post-measurements, they proved a useful tool for tracing conceptual change through the exercise among participants. The paper concludes with a plea for more systematic assessment of the learning effects of interactive appraisal exercises, with a view to enabling a deeper discussion on the benefits and limitations of these methods.