Using role play

• Using role play as a teaching strategy

o Can be structured or free flowing
• Important features
o Most important feature is an unrehearsed dramatization where students
improvise behaviours that show how they think their character would act
o Class is given general information on the situation and each ‘actor’ is given
specific information on their character
o Given time to talk about roles, then act out their roles in accordance with the
interpretation of the character
• Provides an opportunity for students to become more deeply involved in thinking about
how they would react in real world situations
• Can be designed to help learners understand feelings and perspectives of others
• Help students develop specific skills such as how to present themselves at an interview,
how to introduce themselves to a stranger or how to ask for help in a foreign country
o Students are imaging themselves in a different situation rather than pretending
to be someone else
o Might have everyone participating
• Specific roles over a longer period in order to realise what a particular occupation might
be like
o Role playing an occupation in economics
• Pretending to be something other, either living or non-living
o Science- role play an element of the periodic table
o Known as analogy role play
• Teacher is responsible for planning, organising, facilitating and monitoring the role play
o Ensure role play is a learning experience, not simply just an activity
• Role plays are not simulations, as they give students the opportunity to have freedom
over their choices as they would in real life
• Role play can be used to:
o Acquire knowledge
o Apply knowledge to develop further understanding
o Attitudinal change
Reasons to use role play:
The SCASA logo is a tree of knowledge that represents the growth and expansion of
students in school. The tree (stem and crown) is analogous with the growth of a young adult
whose abilities and qualities are developed from diverse sources of learning through the
educational process (the roots). The stem reaches upwards and the crown spreads outwards
moving into a future world and its community.

As teachers, it is important to remember that teaching and learning within the classroom
should not purely be focussed on the academic. Learning should involve the cultivation of
academic knowledge, the development of the person and the development of interpersonal
skills and understanding to facilitate student’s connections with and understandings of
community, culture and the world.

Role play can be used as a teaching tool to enable students to develop these essential
personal, academic and interpersonal skills and knowledge, and thrive through their
education.

Reasons for using role play:

 Learning through role play involves the whole person, (intellect, feeling and bodily
senses) and therefore tends to be experienced more deeply and remembered longer
than less active learning experiences
 Vital that role play is integrated into your overall teaching program and nor seen by
students as a reward or a filler activity.
 You need to be clear about the outcomes you are trying to achieve

Personally: (stem)

 Can develop student’s self-confidence, self-esteem and self-image and a range of

communication and social interaction skills
 Provides an opportunity to deal with complex social, moral, ethical and emotional
issues in concrete ways in a safe environment
 Students can experiment, take risks and think critically and creatively
  Provides students with valuable opportunities to use their experience and
imagination to explore values and issues that are highly relevant to their needs and
culture, in their own language, and with stimulation and instant feedback from their
peers

Academically (roots):

 Effective learning takes place when teachers challenge students with problems that
are beyond their existing level of experience and facilitate the process of finding the
solution to such problems (social constructivism)
 Engages students in activities that bring realism to their learning and help make it
relevant. Transforms the content students are studying from information into
experience
 Encourages participation vs learning by absorption
 Emphasises the application of knowledge in real situations
 Can help EALD students understand important concepts that are difficult for them to
understand through verbal explanations

Universally (crown):

 Can help students understand the feeling and attitudes of others by experiencing
situations rather than just hearing about them
 Learners can look at issues from new perspectives and appreciate the complexity of
real world problems and understand that complex problems rarely have simple
solutions.
 Enables students to explore historical or contemporary situations in which there are
conflicting emotions, POV, biases and problems caused by differences in race, age,
gender, religion, nationality or ethnic background and so on. Students can become
aware of the differences in POV and more sensitive to the feelings of others.
 Citizenship skill can be developed by showing the successful and unsuccessful
methods that people use to solve intergroup and interpersonal problems

ICT:
 The effective outcomes of role play can also be achieved with the integration of ICT.
 There are numerous role playing games available for computers, mobile devices and
gaming consoles.
 Some are suitable for developing students thinking and decision making skills
 For the integration of role play and ICT to become a beneficial learning experience,
the game needs to be designed explicitly to achieve identified learning goals
 To facilitate effective learning experiences, a role-playing game may have: a
purposeful structure and narrative for learning, meaningful problems to solve and an
immediate motivation for pursuing the knowledge required
8 Steps to preparing for and using role-play
1) Develop the resource
2) Review your role play
3) Develop confidence
4) Brief your students
5) Select participants
6) Clarify expectations
7) Conduct the role play
8) Debrief the experience

Suggestions for using Role Play

• Teaching relationship skills – provide opportunities for students to consolidate and
communicate feelings, attitudes, values and problem solving strategies.
• Teaching languages – allow students to demonstrate their abilities in a real world
context
• Role-play as assessment – particularly pertinent in VET courses, for example
demonstrating hospitality skills.
• Foster a trusting and confident classroom – consider using role-play as part of your
strategy to build a positive classroom climate.

Reflecting on Role-play
• Understanding – did students connect to the content and get the point of the
activity?
• Comfort/distress – was the activity too confronting for any students?
• Authenticity – did students take the lesson seriously?
• Differences – how did outcomes differ between performers and observers?
• Outcomes – were the results of the lesson worth the effort to make the role-play
successful?
• Improvements – what will you change about the activity next time?
Issues to consider…
“It is argued that role-play can be counterproductive for weak and/or unprepared students.
Role-play may be a popular teaching method but teachers should consider how format and
preparation can impact learning outcomes.” Department of History, Monash University,
Clayton Campus, Australia. (2015)
There are many issues to consider when implementing role-play as an effective teaching
strategy. Depending on a multitude of factors, a role-play activity can either be a huge
success or a dismal failure. The most obvious of these factors is that the students may be
unenthusiastic participants, and will not fully utilise the learning experience. The teacher
must ensure the students are well prepared for the activity for it to be successful, which can
be very time consuming (preparing briefs, organising groups, delegating roles, reflective
practice etc.) It is also very difficult to assess the level of individual learning in a role-play
activity, due to the large amount of collaborative learning required.

• Roleplay is not considered an efficient teaching strategy for all areas of teaching.
• It can be very time consuming for the teacher.
• It takes a lot of in-class learning time.
• Students may be reluctant to participate, especially if the teacher is not enthusiastic
about the task.

Can you think of a role-play activity at school or university that did not go as planned?
What were the main issues?

Notes
Roleplay is not considered an efficient teaching strategy for all areas of teaching. For
example, it is not appropriate to model how to light a Bunsen burner using a creative role
play. It can also be very time consuming for the teacher; preparing the brief and assigning
roles for each student. A role-play also uses a large amount of the student’s class time, as
they have to plan, prepare, perform and reflect. The reflective process is a very important
part of role-play, however not every student will take it seriously, which will impact the
learning from the activity.
The main issue to consider, when dealing with adolescents, is the level of participation and
enthusiasm the teacher may or may not receive. Whilst junior students (primary level) often
demonstrate engagement and active participation, senior students (secondary level) are
more self-conscious and reluctant to show enthusiasm for the task. How the teacher
presents the task, and assigns roles, will play a big part in ‘setting the classroom
environment’. In a classroom where the students are comfortable to demonstrate their
creative ability, and are comfortable working with their peers, a role-play activity would be
welcomed by most of the students. On the flip side, if the students are in a hostile working
environment, who feel self-conscious around their peers, and are reluctant to participate in
class discussions, a role-play activity would not be appropriate. Drawing on the idea of a
‘goldilocks effect’, the classroom environment must be ‘just right’ for an effective role play
activity, because if the students are too comfortable, the role-play may become off task and
the students will be too loud or distracted.
It is also difficult to measure the level of learning from a role-play activity- as each role-play
is different, which may present a challenge to the teacher.
References

Baruch, Y. (2006). Role-play teaching: Acting in the classroom. Management Learning, 37(1),
43-61. doi 10.1177/1350507606060980. Retrieved from https://doi-
org.ipacez.nd.edu.au/ 10.1177/1350507606060980

Killen, R. (2014). Effective teaching strategies. Cengage Learning Australia. Retrieved from
http://www.ebrary.com.ipacez.nd.edu.au

Le-Math. (2013). MATHeatre: teaching and learning mathematics through mathematical

communication activities. Retrieved from http://www.le-
math.eu/assets/files/MATHeatre-Guidelines-V1-September2013.pdf

Marsh, C. (2011) Becoming a teacher: knowledge, skills and issues (6th ed.). Australia:
Pearson.

School Curriculum and Standards Authority. (2014). About us. Retrieved from
https://www.scsa.wa.edu.au/about-us/about-scsa

Stevens, R. (2015). Role-play and student engagement: Reflections from the classroom.
Teaching in Higher Education, 20(5), 481-492. doi: 10.1080/13562517.2015.1020778.
Retrieved from https://doi-org.ipacez.nd.edu.au/ 10.1080/13562517.2015.1020778

Strategies for the Social Studies Classroom. (n.d.) Role Play/Simulation. Retrieved from
https://otis.coe.uky.edu/ccsso/cssapmodules/sbp/sbp/Role%20PlaySimulation.html