Episode 21: The Social Science of Board Games with Dr. Kerri Evans

Amy Barnes31min

Dr. Ian Anson

00:04

Hello and welcome to Retrieving the Social Sciences, a production of the Center for Social Science Scholarship. I'm your host, Ian Anson, Associate Professor of Political Science here at UMBC. On today's show, as always, we'll be hearing from UMBC faculty, students, visiting speakers, and community partners about the social science research they've been performing in recent times. Qualitative, quantitative, applied, empirical normative. On Retrieving the Social Sciences. We bring the best of UMBC's social science community to you.

Dr. Ian Anson

00:40

Summertime is here, and I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking about hitting the beach. The sand, the waves, sunshine, and of course, the occasional thunderstorm. You know, as a social scientist, I'm skeptical of the notion that my arrival at the beach causes rain clouds to gather, but it sure seems like a strong correlation. And once I do inevitably arrive on my rain-soaked vacations, you know, there's not much to do other than record podcasts, read great social science research, and play board games with my family. I'm a huge fan of board games, and as it turns out, so is today's guest. But wait a minute, what do board games have to do with the social sciences? We're about to find out, thanks to my recent interview with Dr. Kerri Evans, Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work here at UMBC. Dr. Evans, who arrived at UMBC in 2020, after completing a PhD in Social Work from Boston University, is especially interested in the lived experiences of immigrants. Her work, which has been published in a number of important social work journals, seeks to better understand how schools and communities can better welcome and support unaccompanied immigrant and refugee children. Dr. Evans' ongoing project seeks to develop a classroom simulation tool, otherwise known as a board game, that will help teachers and other school officials better understand how to help students. But unlike Monopoly, or Settlers of Catan, this board game has been assembled using a huge volume of social science research. Let's hear what Dr. Evans' game is all about. Oh, and before we jump into the interview, if you'd like to learn more about the game that Dr. Evans has created, including some awesome visuals of the game materials, check the show notes.

Dr. Ian Anson

02:28

All right, Dr. Kerri Evans, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today about this really fascinating new research project. Now you're here on behalf of a larger research team, right?

Dr. Kerri Evans

02:39

Yeah, so I'm working on a project together with Dr. Jiyoon Lee and Keshia Allen in the School of Education, as well as a group of six research students from UMBC that span across the TSOL Department, the Social Work Department and the Psychology Department.

Dr. Ian Anson

02:55

Awesome. I really love you know, whenever we get sort of cross curricular collaborations on the pod, and so it's really great to hear you shout out all these different departments and programs. And so in this project, right, this is a really cool project that recently was awarded a Hrabowski Grant to explore these ways to incorporate games and gamification into the classroom. And so, first of all, obviously, huge congratulations for getting this grant, this is a really cool thing. But beyond that, I'm really interested in understanding kind of what the various problems are that this grant is trying to solve.

Dr. Kerri Evans

03:29

Yeah, so great question. And I'm thrilled to be here today. I don't think I said that at the beginning. So thank you for having me. We're really trying to solve two problems. So the first is in terms of the pedagogy, like you said, right? College students are exhausted. College students have so much knowledge coming at them that I'm really a proponent for finding ways to do something other than a lecture. Do things it will give students either a memorable experience in the classroom, which I think is what this is, and/or conversation that will lead them to something that really matters in the future. So thinking about that translation to how does this relate to your career. And so when we build the class next spring, spring of 2023, we're hoping to run a class on campus. And it's really going to be focused on that. It's going to be experiential learning in the classroom, as well as this, what does it mean for life? What does it mean when you're a social worker or you're a teacher in the classroom? And how do we bring this to action? But the second problem really, you know, giving that overview is is what is the game about? So our game is focusing on the experience of immigrant children in the K through 12 education system here in the United States. So people come as an immigrant at any different age and/or are born here in the United States to immigrant parents. And what the research tells us, and where my research primarily lies, is at this intersection of immigrant students in schools and the multitude of challenges that they face. There's just so many of them. And what I find when I give lectures, or when I do a case study in a training, is that most people, when they think of an immigrant student in school, they picture one thing. They either picture the the high performing Asian students, they picture, the undocumented low-income student, they picture the bilingual Spanish student who's the star of the class, whatever it might be, they have one identity. And so our goal with the game was really to figure out how to change that perception, how to break down what is an immigrant? And how, how do we make people understand and learn about the 100 different immigration experiences that there are. That it's not just one, it's not the first person that comes to mind, but that these kids in and of themselves are incredibly diverse. So we've developed this board game that really is looking at what are the different immigrant experiences, as well as what are the services and systems in place and how can we, as social workers and teachers, change the process? How can we make these lives better? How can we help these kids to succeed so that all of them are the star students?

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