Role Playing:
Role play involves imagination, and … “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein
Purpose of Role Playing
Role play stimulates their imagination and “enhances their social development, encourages friendship through cooperation, listening and turn taking”. Therefore, role play is a vital activity for our children. Our children can learn many skills and attitudes during role play, and learn how to be co-operative (teamwork) and be empathetic with others. They can learn to express all their feelings. They also can learn about other cultures and improve their language and movement skills. During role plays children can experience school activities like literacy and numeracy. In the playing shop, children can “encompass all the aspects of the curriculum”. They can learn about money, about politeness and the right way to ask questions and respond etc. Role play can help children to make sense of their world. “Imaginative play not only aids intellectual development but also improves children’s social skills and their creativity. In addition it gives children a chance to play out events that they have observed or experienced in real life.” And this means also situations they might have some problems to deal with. In fact, role plays can help to “explore moral issues and problems safely”.
Role play stimulates their imagination and “enhances their social development, encourages friendship through cooperation, listening and turn taking”. Therefore, role play is a vital activity for our children. Our children can learn many skills and attitudes during role play, and learn how to be co-operative (teamwork) and be empathetic with others. They can learn to express all their feelings. They also can learn about other cultures and improve their language and movement skills. During role plays children can experience school activities like literacy and numeracy. In the playing shop, children can “encompass all the aspects of the curriculum”. They can learn about money, about politeness and the right way to ask questions and respond etc. Role play can help children to make sense of their world. “Imaginative play not only aids intellectual development but also improves children’s social skills and their creativity. In addition it gives children a chance to play out events that they have observed or experienced in real life.” And this means also situations they might have some problems to deal with. In fact, role plays can help to “explore moral issues and problems safely”.
Principles for Effective Role Playing:
As a teaching technique, role playing is based on the philosophy that meanings are in people, not in words or symbols. If that philosophy is accurate, we must first of all share the meanings, then clarify our understandings of each other’s meanings, and finally, if necessary, change our meanings. In the language of phenomenological psychology, this has to do with changing the self-concept. The self-concept is best changed through direct involvement in a realistic and life-related problem situation rather than through hearing about such situations from others. Creating a teaching situation which can lead to the change of self-concepts requires a distinct organizational pattern.
One helpful structure for role playing follows:
1. Preparation
a. Define the problem
b. Create a readiness for the role(s)
c. Establish the situation
d. Cast the characters e. Brief and warm up
f. Consider the training
2. Playing
a. Acting
b. Stopping
c. Involving the audience
d. Analyzing the discussion
e. Evaluating
It is important to note that all of them focus on group experiences rather than on unilateral behavior of the teacher. The group should share in the defining of the problem, carrying out the role playing situation, discussing the results, and evaluating the whole experience. The teacher must identify the situation clearly so that both the characters and the audience understand the problem at hand. In casting the characters, the wise teacher will try to accept volunteers rather than assign roles. Students must realize that acting ability is not at stake here but rather the spontaneous discharge of how one thinks the character of his role would react in the defined situation. It is important to evaluate role playing in the light of the prescribed goals. Categorizing behavior is often overdone and gets in the way of the learning process. Evaluation should proceed on both group and personal levels, raising questions concerning the validity of the original purpose.
Basic Role Playing Procedures
Procedure of the Role Play
- Prepare class for role-play
· Present an artificial problem, situation or event that represents some aspect of reality
· Define the problem, situation and roles clearly.
- Give clear instructions
· Determine whether role-plays will be carried out using student volunteers in front of the class (the teacher may or may not play a role), in partnerships/small groups with every student playing a role, or in small groups with role-players and observers.
· Divide students into groups, if appropriate.
· Model the skill with a scripted role-play.
- Act out role-plays
· Students follow the procedure outlined by the teacher to act out role-plays.
Unless the teacher is playing a role, it is helpful to walk around the room and observe how students are experiencing the role-play and offer coaching to students who are stuck. Discussion (small group and whole class)
· Begin by allowing players to communicate feelings experienced during the roleplay.
· Have students identify sexual health skills that were demonstrated during the role-play.
· Determine actions that strengthen or weaken these skills (i.e. body language).
· Discuss how this role-play is or isn’t similar to real life.
· Identify ways of using identified sexual health skills in real life situations.
Alternatives to Traditional Procedure
· Have students write role-plays as scripts.
· Have students write down responses and then role-play in front of the class.
· Have students generate a list of challenging “lines”, then have a student read the lines to the class and have each student give a response.
· Have students develop and act out plays.
Tips for Using Role-Play
· Begin with fairly easy situations and work up to more challenging ones.
· Be aware that some students may feel threatened or self-conscious. Using humor can help dispel embarrassment. Using role-plays that exaggerate weak responses might break the ice.
· Reduce the level of abstraction or complexity so that the students may become directly involved with underlying concepts.
· If students find it difficult to determine skills which model sexual health, they could observe successful role models or ask experts to suggest approaches.
Benefits of Role-play Strategy
1. Student interest in the topic is raised.
2. Active Participation.
3. Long-term retention.
4. It enhances communication and interpersonal skills.
5. It can be used with individuals or in group situations.
6. It teaches empathy and understanding of different perspectives.
7. It help individuals to learn to accept both their own feelings and those of others.
8. It develops confidence and self-efficacy.
9.Provides teacher immediate feedback about the learner’s understanding and ability to apply concepts.
10. It develops competence.
11. It is useful for a range of topics, including interviewing, counseling skills, personal relationships, and team working.
12. They require mental and physical activity e.g. gesturing to put forward a point.
13. Reduces discipline problems which often arise from boredom and lack of motivation.
Limitations of Role-play Strategy
1. Role play may awaken previously subdued or suppressed emotions.
2. Less effective in large groups (Chaos).
3. Teacher must accept her new role where she/he does not dominate the class anymore.
4. Embarrassment for some students.
5. Can lack focus unless well planned and monitored.
6. Can be unpredictable in terms of outcomes.
7. Can be time-consuming
