Communicating STEM Teaching Careers Through Persuasive Game Design: A Focus Group Study

In the UK there is a national shortage of teachers in STEM disciplines, with recruitment challenges compounded by high attrition rates among early-career teachers. To address this, we are developing a persuasive video game to inform STEM undergraduates aboutteaching careers while helping them assess their fit for the profession. This paper presents the first stage of our design process: codesigning with potential end-users through paper prototypes andfocus groups. We conducted focus group interviews and individual semi-structured interviews with STEM undergraduates (n=9, aged 18-23) involving career discussions and interactive play sessions with a paper prototype of our narrative game, TeachQuest. Using thematic analysis, we identified two themes related to teaching career perceptions (Extrinsic barriers shaped by prior experience & Confidence in skills and qualities influence intrinsic motivation) and two themes related to game design preferences (Content and Reflection). Our findings reveal novel insights about the skills and qualities undergraduates believe are required for teaching, and demonstrate how paper prototypes can elicit detailed feedback on persuasive game design. We contribute design guidelines for persuasive career recruitment games that emphasise embedded reflection mechanisms, authentic decision-making, and balanced representation of career realities. These guidelines extend beyond teacher recruitment to inform the design of career exploration games more broadly.