Training Science Teachers to Design Inquiry-Based Lesson Plans through a Serious Game

A significant challenge for science teachers’ training is to understand how to enact teaching strategies that would encourage students to perceive learning as a memorable experience instantiated through an activity; and thereby getting involved in a process of meaning-making. This paper describes SimAULA, a serious game that aims to integrate inquiry learning into game dynamics for scaffolding science teachers’ efforts to design their lesson plans. To this line, the paper proposes a 7-step process of orchestrating inquiry features that enable science teachers to think about inquiry in the context of creating activities based on real-world situations that map closely on to students’ understandings rather than those with naturally occurring complex patterns. SimAULA’s overarching architecture is presented in the context of the 7- stage inquiry process to be implemented and evaluated in a number of schools across Europe.