Becoming A More Critical, Autonomous, Reflective Learner

PRILHE Project - Lecturer’s Toolkit
Group Work: role play
Group-work is often used when doing projects, or when students are going to do research but it can also take the form of a role
play or simulation. This can create a stimulating setting to promote reflective autonomous learning for both students as well as
teachers. One of the interviewed teachers from Sweden described a role-play with the following scenario,
According to Swedish rules the municipality invites the public/citizens to a consultation procedure meeting, a meeting
with the purpose to consult the public before executing societal plans. The purpose of the role-play is to give students
who are going to work as societal engineers an opportunity for experiencing and acting in such a community meeting
and analysing difficulties, possibilities and consequences of those meetings.
The role-play is based on a real situation that occurred some years earlier. The municipal plan was to compress a
residential area with single-family houses and to set up some apartment housing as well as a group house for people
with special needs. The houses were planned to be built in a big green space that was used for recreation. The
students are told to read all documents like lists of names, correspondence between the public and the civil servants
as well as letters to the editor of the local newspaper. A role-list is prepared beforehand with fictitious names which
correspond to real persons from the real case. The group of about eight students individually prepare their own roles
beforehand so they can take part in the meeting actively and get ready to argue the pros or cons of the compression
of the residential area from the selected perspective. The interviewed teacher took the role of chairman and two other
teachers acted as residents prepared to give fuel to the discussion if it ebbed away. Afterwards the role-play is
analysed by students and teachers, both in content and method, i.e. how people in their roles acted in the situation
e.g. emotional acting, a knowledge-based acting. The group discussion is about how to react to people and handle
them in this kind of meeting. Another issue to analyse is the form of democracy that this kind of meeting produces.
When is it a democratic meeting and when is it a societal information meeting, what does democracy demand and how
can different conflicts of interests be approached
References
Darkenwald, C.G. 1996
Davenport E. & Hall, H. (2002)
Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., and
Smith, K. A. 1991
Wenger, E., & Snyder, W. (2000)
Group Learning, International Encyclopedia of Adult Education
and Training
Organizational knowledge and communities of practice
Cooperative Learning: Increasing College Faculty Instructional
Productivity. ASHE-FRIC Higher Education Report No.4
Communities of practice: the organizational frontier
A.C. Tuijnman (ed.) Pergamon, 1996
In B. Cronin (Ed.). Annual Review of Information
Science and Technology (Vol. 36,. Medford, NJ:
Information Today, pp. 171-227.
Washington, D.C.: School of Education and Human
Development, George Washington University
Harvard Business Review (January/February), 139-
145.
Zander A. 1982 Making Groups Effective Jossey Bass, San Francisco
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