Reading “Trouble”: Rehearsing Figured Worlds of Schooling Through Collaborative Roleplaying Games

In this study, we examine how collaborative speculative play in a tabletop roleplaying game functions as a literacy practice through which teachers read, compose, and revise figured worlds of schooling. Building on scholarship on roleplaying games and literacy learning, we analyze roleplaying gameplay to support educators’ critical reflection on how schooling structures position some children as “troublemakers.” Using positioning analysis, we analyzed transcripts and artifacts from two cases: (1) a 3-h in-person gameplay session with two undergraduate preservice teachers and (2) a 90-min synchronous online webinar with three focal in-service teacher players and audience participation via chat. Across cases, collaborative play made institutional logics “readable” by distributing narrative authority and externalizing internal states, enabling participants to treat schooling as a text that can be revised rather than a fixed backdrop. Gameplay surfaced normative storylines about authority, compliance, and deficit framings while also generating interactional openings for empathetic reinterpretation of “trouble” as contextual, relational, and ethically complex. We discuss implications for teacher education and professional learning, arguing that collaborative roleplay can support in-the-moment ethical sensemaking and rehearsals of humanizing pedagogical responses beyond retrospective individual reflection.