Designing for classroom feasibility: Teacher-mediated iterative co-design of a sustainability-focused board game

Teachers are increasingly expected to address sustainability in formal education, yet classroom implementation is often constrained by limited time, curricular pressure, and the availability of classroom-ready resources. This study reports on the teacher-mediated, iterative co-design and classroom enactment of Sus Chef , a tabletop board game designed to support classroom engagement with sustainability issues in food systems under authentic school conditions. Guided by a design-based action research orientation, the study involved 14 teachers across seven schools who participated as co-design partners and facilitated 22 gameplay sessions with 823 students across primary and secondary levels. Mixed-methods data were collected through teacher surveys, interviews, debrief and reflection sessions, focus group discussions, design documentation, and student post-game feedback. In one participating school, a retrospective post–then–pre survey (n = 183) was administered following gameplay using the final refined version of the game to explore students’ perceived learning across selected sustainability-related topics. Findings indicate that gameplay supported student engagement and sustained classroom dialogue by anchoring abstract sustainability concepts in tangible mechanics such as recipes, ingredient sourcing, perishability, and emissions-related trade-offs. At the same time, classroom feasibility was strongly mediated by teachers’ facilitation practices and by design features related to rule clarity, pacing, cognitive load management, and usability. Iterative refinements informed by teacher and student feedback—most notably the introduction of modular gameplay levels and facilitation scaffolds—contributed to smoother classroom enactment and improved manageability within typical lesson constraints. Rather than advancing claims about learning effectiveness, this study contributes empirically grounded insights into how teacher mediation and iterative design refinement shape the feasibility of game-based sustainability interventions in real classrooms. The findings offer transferable design-for-enactment considerations for researchers and practitioners seeking to develop and implement interactive learning tools under everyday educational constraints.