Treatment of Controversial Heritages Through Gamified Civil Dialogue According to Pre-Service Teachers

In order to fill the gap that exists in schools on the controversies surrounding heritage as a vector of identity, it is essential to train future teachers with strategies, competencies and skills that will enable them to critically analyze the relationship between history, heritage elements and the current socio-political model. One promising intervention for this purpose is Civil Dialogue, a deliberative format developed by ASU’s School of Communication premised on the idea that people with different perspectives can engage in productive communication. This study analyzes the responses of teachers in initial training in Elementary Education at the University of Huelva (Spain) to a questionnaire on the Civil Dialogue's usefulness for teaching History, controversial topics, and heritage in K-8 after conducting a gamified Civil Dialogue, including a role-playing game, on migratory movements and their sub-problems such as underlying racism, hate speeches generated or inequality of opportunities. The aim is to make divergent thinking and argumentation work through the critical analysis of hegemonic history, the hierarchization of relationships, human domination over territories, and discrimination of certain social groups. In short, gamified activities that encourage debate, such as this Civil Dialogue modality, are tools designed to improve the training of future teachers, since they encourage argumentation, controversy, empathy, critical thinking, and reflection on current and historical societies, in direct alignment with the purpose of teaching controversial heritages.