Introducing advanced economic topics to primary school students: The game of the goose

Resumen

Open science has become a policy priority in the European Union. Accordingly, knowledge dissemination is increasingly an essential part of academic work. However, this dissemination tends to focus on the results already obtained from research projects and not so much on disseminating predoctoral work. Moreover, the very specificity of predoctoral work usually distances it from people’s everyday reality.In response to this, this paper presents an experience focused on making accessible to primary school students an economic issue that is not normally introduced until advanced university courses, such as is the concept of inequality of opportunities and its potential socioeconomic implications.The specific case described here is the presentation by a doctoral student of her thesis topic during the science week in which primary and secondary schools are visited in order to involve students in the work carried out at the university. In this case, the topic of inequality of opportunities is introduced to children aged between 6 and 11 years old through an adaptation of the well-known game of the goose. To begin with, players are given (in)opportunity cards that reflect people’s life circumstances and determine in which position they start, then the traditional rules that role hazard spaces in the game are replaced by opportunity and handicaps cards that might lead them to gain/lose positions in the race(life).