Role-Playing as a Tool to Facilitate Learning, Self Reflection and Social Awareness in Teacher Education

Meaningful learning in the tertiary sector benefits from the inclusion of a variety of teaching and learning techniques including active learning. Role-plays are one type of active and participatory learning activity that creates interaction between students and a simulated scenario. This reality can serve to open the minds of participants to issues they need to be able to deal with in their chosen careers. This paper reports role-plays in four different learning applications: the first was in a multicultural education class and simulated a microcosm of society where students took on the roles of minority groups. The second reports on a history class that provided simulations of key battles of World Wars One and Two. The third was in mathematics for primary teachers’ class where the students simulated experiences as children in mathematics classrooms, parents and teachers speaking to each other and teachers teaching children. The fourth was in a leadership class for final year Early Childhood and Primary pre-service teachers, and involved role-play of an interview during the management of an unsatisfactory work performance by a staff member. The findings show that in each case the objectives of having students experience a simulation of reality were met