Role Playing in History Teaching Empirical Analysis of Selected Aspects

1 Abstract This dissertation concludes teaching experience of several years which was dedicated to examining the possibilities of role playing in history teaching. The theoretical part offers an excursion into the area of didactic literature and observes the importance which is attributed to role playing by general teaching methodology, teaching methodology of history, personal and social education as well as drama education. The author focuses especially on recent examples of role playing in history teaching, she comments and interlinks them. The rules and principles for practical usage of role playing in history teaching are provided at the end of the theoretical part. The empirical part describes the progress of two-phase action research realized during the years 2007-2011 at grammar school with four-year study programme. At the beginning of the empirical probe there were two general questions: Can the role playing in history teaching help the development of students' personality? Can the role playing in history teaching help to fulfil the educational goals of history teaching? These were gradually more specified and modified according to the progress of action research. The main subject of interest was observing the students' development in the area of working in groups of different sizes, role playing..