Cooperative Games

Aims & objectives

In the ATTEMPT project, the learning objective consists in increasing communication and
relational skills of teachers and parents, to help them to develop coping and empowering
strategies to better face bullying situations involving their children and students.

Target group & international/intercultural composition of the group & team

The project is based on a previous enquiry on bullying, involving both adults (parents, teachers and institutions) and children.
The project brings together the competences of the following organisations:
Social cooperative COOSS MARCHE ONLUS, Italy
University of Urbino, Italy
Baobab, Spain
CEFERH (Centre de recherche et de formation en ressources humaines), France
TP-Theatre, Sweden and
Y.E.S. Forum, Germany

Training methods used & main activities

Starting from suggestions of the enquiry, the new project intends to experiment innovative communication practices among parents, teachers and children to help them to develop coping and empowering strategies to better face bullying situations. The project will therefore aim to identify the most serious relational and communication problems teachers and families meet when a bullying situation emerges and to design a training course to develop coping strategies. Games involve emotions, personal relations and the opportunity to have fun: they activate both cognitive and emotional aspects. A wide range of games exist, which can be adapted to the different educational settings they are used on and to the objectives they aim to meet.

Outcomes of the activity

Cooperative games technique allows
comparing behavioral techniques of the actors involved in a conflict situation (for instance,
parents/teachers) and reveals specific asymmetric character of these relations. Technique
underlines the necessity of finding alternative consensual relations through the listening to
others and sharing common objectives.

Your tasks and responsibilities within the team

For the ATTEMPT project I coordinated the workshops in Italy and Germany using two games:
1. CILADA (TRAP)
It is said that, during the Franco-Prussian war, a huge snowfall forced the armies to stop
fighting for quite a long period. To pass time, the French soldiers invented a game where 1
officer and 3 soldiers were involved. A particular chessboard was designed for this purpose,
with circles / squares that players have to reach through lines linking them. The officer can
move freely backward and forward, while the soldiers can only move forward. To win:
a) the officer has to reach the extreme side of the chessboard without being surrounded by
the soldiers;
b) the soldiers have to corner the officer to prevent his progress to the victory.
The game caught the attention of the famous mathematician John Nash2, who analysed it
and showed that the rules governing this game are the same governing the whole economy:
companies can achieve their goals only when they use the right strategy.
In ATTEMPT, the game is adapted to the following setting: parents and teachers (the
soldiers) have to fight against the bullying (the officer). At the beginning of the game parents
and teachers can neither communicate nor look at each other. Each of them tries to obstacle
bullying with individual initiatives, but without success: bullying always wins. In a second
step, participants are allowed to communicate: they can discuss and agree strategies which
will finally allow them to win.
2.2. QUORIDOR
Quoridor 3 is a game requiring a square board with
cells. Each team has a colored pawn, which starts
from a side of the board and has to reach the
opposite side to win. Each team can use five
“obstacles”, which can be inserted horizontally or
vertically between the cells either to hinder the
others’ passage (obstacles cannot be jumped, but
only bypassed), or to build ones’ own way to
victory.
3. Educational implications
CILADA clearly demonstrates that participants can win whatever problem only when they
learn to communicate and collaborate to find effective strategies. Identifying responsibilities
is not enough: to win, players have to understand each other and to collaborate in finding the
right thing to do.
QUORIDOR aims to underline the importance of using the available resources to affirm
oneself more than to prevent and obstacle the others’ progress.
Games can help the participants to develop planning and reasoning skills, to anticipate and
properly face problematic situations, to adopt proper actions and strategies in concrete
situations. Games are able to underline participants’ strengths and weaknesses and to
promote change and teamwork: sharing the same goals, participants tend to create a
constructive communication, where weaknesses can be identified and overcome.

I worked on this training for 3 days as a full time trainer.