Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

Educational wargaming has gained increasing attention in higher education andprofessional military education as a form of experiential and game-based learning. Despite this growing interest, empirical research on educational wargaming remainsfragmented. This article presents a semi-systematic review of empirical studies oneducational wargaming published between 2014 and 2024. In addition to mappingempirical research, the review introduces a conceptual framework for analysing howlearning is articulated, operationalized, and theoretically grounded.Across fifteen peer-reviewed studies, the review examines three interrelated questions:what contexts, game formats, and learning objectives characterize educationalwargaming; how learning is conceptualized, operationalized, and empirically examined;and how learning theory is integrated with wargaming theory and practice. Theanalysis draws on the Presage–Process–Product (3P) model to structure comparisonsacross research designs, educational settings, and game formats. The findings showvariation in how educational wargaming is designed and studied. While many studiesreport positive learning outcomes, such as increased engagement, improved decisionmakingskills, and conceptual understanding, approaches to assessing learning areoften inconsistent and limited. The review identifies gaps in the literature, includinglongitudinal research, insufficient attention to facilitation and debriefing processes,and weak integration between wargaming practices and learning theory.

Organisationer eftersträvar kreativitet för innovation och utveckling. Kreativt arbete kräver frihet men formas samtidigt av begränsningar, eller ramar, i sitt sociala sammanhang. Dessa ramar kan vara ekonomiska (budgetar och tidsplaner), estetiska (silriktlinjer och kvalitetskrav) eller organisatoriska (arbetsmetoder och beslutsprocesser). Vilka ramar som ska tas hänsyn till och hur dessa ska tolkas är något som aktörer i kreativa projekt gemensamt arbetar fram, och i denna påverkansprocess kan idéer både flätas samman och möta motstånd. Baserat på detaljstudier av kommunikation inom konst och spelutveckling visar vi i detta kapitel hur deltagare driver kreativa processer framåt genom "påverkansprat". Kapitlet ger läsaren redskap för att själv analysera och främja kreativitet i olika branscher och organisationer, något som har stor relevans för organisationspedagogisk forskning och utvecklingsarbete.

Professional military wargaming constitutes a form of simulation-based training in which participants collaboratively manage unfolding tactical scenarios under institutional constraints. Conducted as digital, map-based exercises in officer education, such wargames require cadets and instructors to coordinate decisions, responsibilities, and interpretations of simulated events in real time. This study engages with the role of laughter in such simulated military operations, examining how laugher and “light-heartedness” (see Lymer, Lindwall, and Sellberg, 2025) functions as a mediator between professional and frivolous framings of wargaming as a pedagogical activity. 

This follows an emergent set of studies opening the “black box” of simulator practices (see for example Lymer & Sjöblom, 2024 for a review), by examining laughter as a collaborative resource in both gameplay and debriefing phases of wargaming. The interactional functions of laugher in simulator practice has previously been studied by Lymer, Lindwall, and Sellberg (2025), and the present study extends this focus to the realm of military education. Pedagogical wargaming has had relatively little scholarly interest, but Frank (2011) provides an relevant study of how pedagogical and competitive framings of wargaming counteract each other. 

Drawing on approximately 25 hours of audiovisual data from naval wargames in the Swedish Defence University’s officer program, we adopt a multimodal conversation-analytic approach (Mondada 2019) to examine how participants coordinate action through talk, gaze, bodily orientation, and the timing of laughter. Rather than treating laughter as an expression of internal emotion, we analyze it as a situated, sequential practice that shapes participation and accountability (Glenn 2003; Jefferson 1984).

The analysis shows that laughter plays a key role in organizing collaboration under conditions of competitive pressure. During gameplay, cadets deploy laughter to frame tactical moves as clever or provisional, to acknowledge miscalculations without undermining team cohesion, and to negotiate shifts between competitive and pedagogical orientations. In moments of simulated failure or escalating tension, laughter enables participants to recalibrate the seriousness of the activity, sustaining joint engagement while preserving professional alignment. In debriefings, instructors strategically join or resist such laughter to rekey events as objects of collective reflection, thereby redistributing epistemic authority and guiding shared meaning-making.

By tracing how laughter coordinates transitions between action and reflection, we demonstrate how professional learning in simulation is accomplished through embodied, collaborative interaction. Wargaming emerges not simply as a pedagogical technique, but as a social setting in which roles, responsibilities, and standards of professional judgment are continually negotiated. In line with SimPro’s focus on collaboration in simulation, the study highlights how seemingly minor interactional practices contribute to the collective production of professional knowledge. Through detailed analysis of laughter in action, the paper advances understanding of simulation-based learning as a fundamentally social and situated process.

References

Frank, A. 2011. “Gaming the Game: A Study of the Gamer Mode in Educational Wargaming”. Simulation & Gaming, 43(1), 118-132. 

Glenn, P. 2003. Laughter in Interaction. Cambridge University Press.Jefferson, G. 1984. “On the Organization of Laughter in Talk about Troubles.” In Structures of Social Action, 346–369. Cambridge University Press.Lymer, G., O. Lindwall, and C. Sellberg. 2025. “Laughter, Failure Talk, and the Sensitive Nature of Negative Feedback.” Classroom Discourse.Mondada, L. 2019. “Contemporary Issues in Conversation Analysis: Embodiment and Materiality, Multimodality and Multisensoriality in Social Interaction”. Journal of Pragmatics 145: 47-62

Ledarskap är ett centralt villkor för lärande och därför ett av de centrala forskningsfälten inom organisationspedagogik. Teorier om ledarskap är mycket omfattande och i kapitlet görs därför en genomgång av ett begränsat antal ofta refererade teorier med fokus på avgörande skillnader i hur ledarskap förhåller sig till medarbetarskap. Det rör sig om skillnader som även visar sig få betydelse för hur villkoren för lärande för såväl medarbetare som ledare behandlas. Dessa avgörande skillnader har vi valt att dela upp i tre bilder där det i samtliga bilder framträder olika villkor för lärande.

Under en rektors arbetsdag fattas en mängd beslut, från snabba korridorsbeslut till mer formella ledningsgruppsbeslut. Men hur går detta egentligen till i praktiken? Den tidigare forskningen kring rektorer och beslutsfattande präglas av vad som i denna bok kallas generisk forskning och som ger en bild av hur rektörer bör tänka när de fattar beslut eller vad rektorer säger att de gör, men saknar den kontextuella substans och djupare förankring som gör den tillämpbar i praktiken. Frågan om hur det går till när skolledare samtalar och påverkar mötessammanhang, med utgångspunkt i inspelningar av samtal, har varit relativt underbeforskad. De föregående kapitlen har visat hur ledarskap kan delas mellan rektorer (kapitel 1) och utövas holistiskt genom distribuerat ledarskap (kapitel 2). Detta kapitel kompletterar dessa perspektiv genom att zooma in på en konkret arena där skolledarskap faktiskt utövas - i vardagliga samtal under skolledningsmöten. Kapitlets syfte är trefaldigt: att ge skolledare och andra aktörer fördjupad förståelse för hur beslutsfattande faktiskt går till i mötessammanhang, att visa hur interaktionsanalys som vetenskaplig metod kan användas för att undersöka den egna praktiken, och att bidra med praktiknära kunskap som kan utveckla möteskultur och beslutsprocesser i skolan.

This presentation focuses on the potential of naval wargaming for how military cadets collectively develop battlefield acumen. Through interaction analyses of video-recorded material from officer training in a digitally mediated wargame context, the study examines how interactions between cadets shape a distributed battlefield acumen, sometimes with the aid of military instructors. With a particular focus on a critical interaction phase – where contingencies are noticed, and future courses of action are introduced – the study investigates how cadets negotiate a shared situational understanding during complex naval scenarios.

Hulterström (2024) defines battlefield acumen as a crucial cognitive capacity for military success, encompassing situational awareness, problem-solving, and decision-making under uncertainty. While Hulterström primarily conceptualizes battlefield acumen as an individual capacity, he explicitly identifies team dynamics and collaboration in wargaming as a vital area for future research. This study responds to Hulterström's call by empirically investigating the collective dimension of battlefield acumen, aligning with established research on situational awareness in military contexts (Endsley, 2015; Stanton et al., 2017), which increasingly recognizes the distributed and social nature of awareness in complex operational environments.

The groups operate within a staff structure where cadets assume leadership roles, significantly impacting the negotiation and development of collective battlefield acumen. Drawing on authority-in-interaction (Stevanovic & Peräkylä, 2012), preliminary analyses explore how parts of this acumen emerge sequentially through epistemic and deontic negotiations between participants and focus on how cadets assert, challenge, and acknowledge each other's knowledge claims (epistemic negotiations) and decision rights (deontic negotiations) during gameplay. This approach aligns with previous research on how authority relations shape joint decision-making processes (Clifton et al., 2020; Bennerstedt & Svärdemo Åberg, 2024).

By "opening the black box" of moment-by-moment interaction, the study illustrates how the group's collective battlefield acumen is not the sum of individual understandings but rather a dynamic, socially negotiated practice that emerges in interaction. This work lays the foundation for future research that could combine interaction analysis with pre- and post-testing methodologies, potentially creating a more comprehensive understanding of how wargaming environments facilitate the development of both individual and collective battlefield acumen.

References

Bennerstedt, U., & Svärdemo Åberg, E. (2024). Educational leadership in collegial decision-making? How course leaders and teachers participate and influence decisions in planning meetings. Qualitative Studies, 9(3), 8-41.

Clifton, J., Larsson, M., & Schnurr, S. (2020). Leadership in interaction. An introduction to the Special Issue. Leadership, 16(5), 511-521.

Endsley, M. R. (2015). Situation awareness misconceptions and misunderstandings. Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, 9(1), 4-32.

Hulterström, P. (2024). From Play to Power: A Philosophical Inquiry into How Educational Wargaming Can Help Cultivate Battlefield Acumen. Åbo Akademi University Press.

Stanton, N. A., Salmon, P. M., Walker, G. H., Salas, E., & Hancock, P. A. (2017). State-of-science: Situation awareness in individuals, teams and systems. Ergonomics, 60(4), 449-466.

Stevanovic, M., & Peräkylä, A. (2012). Deontic Authority in Interaction: The Right to Announce, Propose, and Decide. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 45(3), 297-321.

Wargaming is a longstanding educational method used in military training to enhance officers' decision-making and tactical acumen. The current security environment has led to increased interest in diverse wargaming formats among military and civilian stakeholders (Hirst, 2024). Despite this resurgence, empirical research on instructional interactions within wargaming contexts remains sparse.

Drawing upon studies of instructional interactions in simulations (Sellberg, 2017, 2018; Sellberg & Lundin, 2017) and occasioned instructions (Lindwall, Lymer & Greiffenhagen, 2015), this research explores military instructors’ pedagogical interventions during wargaming exercises. Using ethnomethodologically informed conversation analysis of roughly 10 hours of video from naval tactical education at the Swedish Defence University, the study examines interactional and embodied interactions between instructors, cadets, and the digital, map-based wargaming environment.

The analysis identifies three primary intervention patterns: guiding questions prompting tactical reflection, explicit calls for meta-reflection at pivotal moments, and corrective interventions that reshape hasty decision-making processes. These interventions are characterized by their situated nature, being sensitive to specific game events and emerging tactical situations while simultaneously maintaining broader educational objectives.

By closely examining these occasioned instructions, the study highlights how instructors reveal critical simulation elements otherwise inaccessible to cadets, such as resource depletion, altered tactical conditions, and the necessity for reevaluation of plans. Specific attention is given to embodied interactions—including gestures, physical positioning, and visual orientations—that facilitate collective understanding. These findings contribute both to our understanding of instruction-in-interaction in complex learning environments, as well as to the development of pedagogical strategies for military educational wargaming.

Although decision-making is central to development and change in higher education, few studies unpack how leadership is enacted and negotiated in situ in collegial planning tasks where decisions are at stake. This article addresses this gap in educational leadership by examining influencing work in decision-making processes at a Swedish university. It explores educational leadership in course-planning meetings with course leaders and teachers. The empirical material consists of video recordings of meetings from two teams with challenging conditions: not only was the data recorded during the pandemic, but the teams also had a high teacher turnover. Drawing on the tradition of leadership-in-interaction, this article explores educational leadership in meeting interaction by illustrating and contrasting how course supervisors and teachers participate in and influence decision-making on pedagogic and didactic designs. Analyses of empirical episodes show how team members struggle to find common ground in the past and formulate decision proposals for educational change in backward- and forward-looking cycles. A key finding is how the trajectory of decision-making processes differs between the studied teams. The article discusses high teacher mobility as an organizational constraint that limits the collective competence of course teams, providing problematic conditions for smooth decision-making and, thus, educational change and leadership. This constraint places a heavy burden on course leaders to navigate ambiguities of knowledge, power, and emotion in interaction that highlight underlying assumptions about the course leader’s role as a collegial leader without managerial decision-making power.