The
version of Barnga, which MacGregor offers trainers and teachers, is not the one
I prefer to use. However, it provides a
great outline of how to proceed when carrying out a simulation. A version,
which is simular to the version I often
employ in training teachers and students is from The Intercultural Project
(2013).
CONCLUSION
"In Barnga participants experience the
shock of realizing that despite many similarities, people of differing cultures
perceive things differently or play by different rules. Players learn that they
must understand and reconcile these differences if they want to function
effectively in a cross-cultural group.
Participants play a simple card game
in small groups, where conflicts begin to occur as participants move from group
to group. This simulates real cross-cultural encounters, where people initially
believe they share the same understanding of the basic rules. In discovering
that the rules are different, players undergo a mini culture shock similar to
actual experience when entering a different culture. They then must struggle to
understand and reconcile these differences to play the game effectively in
their "cross-cultural" groups. Difficulties are magnified by the fact
that players may not speak to each other but can communicate only through
gestures or pictures. Participants are not forewarned that each is playing by
different rules; in struggling to understand why other players don't seem to be
playing correctly, they gain insight into the dynamics of cross-cultural
encounters." --The Interculture Project
Three
real-world events which the classic game, Barnga, simulates well from my
perspective are:
(1)
driving on an international highway or in multicultural city roadways--i.e.
where accidents happen due to false assumptions of a variety of driving
cultures coming together,
(2)
meeting, living and working with people from different countries, and
(3)
working in a new company or in a new department in a large sprawling university
campus.
Among
these three types of real-world events, which Barnga simulates well in less
than a half hour, are thousands of subsets of real world phenomena, which are
also represented by the simple Barnga "game". In short, a well-designed simulation can
symbolically and mentally take students and trainees to entirely new lands or
it can help them explore their present reality in a way that they have not been
able to discuss or analyse thoroughly before now.
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