The use of role-play in the science lesson: a study on discussion and conflict resolution.

Laura Colucci-Gray

School of Education, University of Aberdeen, Old Aberdeen, AB24 3FX,

Paper presented at the Scottish Educational Research Association Conference, Perth, 25-27 November 2004

Abstract

The teaching of controversial socio-scientific issues is core to an education for citizenship worldwide. An important aspect of this education is to develop the ability of citizens of a global society to deal with uncertainties. This involves the development of new approaches to knowledge as well as practical suggestions for approaching problems in which facts are contested and values are in conflict, the stakes are high and decisions are urgent. This paper reports on the experimentation of a role-play with 14-15 years old students. Students worked in small groups, they engaged with group discussion, role-taking and the nonviolent resolution of conflict. Discussion transcripts, researchers’ notes and semi-open ended questionnaires constituted the data. The results showed that role-taking can be a means for developing students’ cognitive and emotional involvement; it provides a context for addressing a complex issue and for reflecting on the nature and evolution of conflict. Reflections on the nature of science and science teaching, and the limitations of the study will be offered for discussion.

Keywords: role-play, socio-environmental controversies, conflict, consensus.

Introduction

According to Morin (2000) the awareness of the ineliminability of uncertainty is one of most important contributions from the knowledge of the 20th century. The failures of socio-economical predictions (in spite of their sophisticated mathematical tools), the growing mistrust in the myth of progress, the crisis of the future and the great socio-environmental disasters have reinforced awareness of the intrinsically uncertain character of human history. While there have been appeals for a better democratisation of science (Lubchenco, 1997), some authors argued that the crisis of science education can be understood within a wider planetary crisis (Morin, 2000; Orr, 1994) and that science itself may be in need of change (Gallopin et al., 2001).

There are themes and problems which are essential and relevant to us in our daily lives, both as individuals and members of society but which are rarely dealt with in schools, in their complexity and specificity. Conflict is a very common experience in everybody’s life, it is part of our social and family lives, also at school. Yet it very rarely addressed in school and most importantly is not made the object of reflection and open field for research. This research was configured as an in-depth study on a teaching and learning unit which introduced students to the exploration of conflict, through the role-play simulation of a complex and controversial socio-environmental issue. The rationale of this study was greatly influenced by curriculum development programs such as Science, Technology and Society (Solomon, 1993), in which role-play was a privileged tool for raising students’ awareness of current science–based issues and to develop abilities for citizen participation in democratic decision-making. Important reflections were also derived from development studies which framed the reflections on science and technology within the global context of international politics and development, bringing in issues of multiculturalism, difference and power (Giroux, 1992). An educational project which was based on the theme of conflict did not only concern the acquisition of content but it aimed at developing cognitive, relational and emotional skills. It aimed at empowering students to deal with important challenges of life in current societies, through a research mindset and with the recognition and synergic involvement of everybody’s own energies, knowledge, power and resources.

The study was initiated by some initial exploratory questions: what are the behaviours in a conflict circumstance? What are the consequences, feed-backs and outcomes of conflict? And also, can a conflict be “resolved”?

Starting from a small-scale project in a secondary school in England, this paper explored the use of an “old” and “contested” educational tool, role-play to carry out meta-reflections on a number of interconnected educational realms: the idea of knowledge (to include scientific knowledge); the idea of citizenship; the relationships between humanity and the environment (the Earth).

Background

Role-play is usually associated with a particular category of learning tools that have become known as “gaming exercises”, including also simulations and games. Collectively these techniques are known for providing participants with some form of imaginary or real world within which to act out a given situation. Tansey and Unwin (1969) reported that since the beginning of their use they were successful in promoting a high degree of commitment and involvement by the participants, inducing motivation. Also those students who would normally act as “trouble-makers” during the lessons often became effective leaders in the game.Drawing on the work of Wallace (2003), Camino and Marasso (personal communication) used role-play as a tool for dealing with a macro-conflict, proposing both an approach in the third person (knowing about theory and articulation of conflict) and an approach in the first person (recognising one’s own emotions and attitudes in a situation of conflict), which accounts for reflection on oneself as a fundamental requirement for action.

“Everyone is always and everywhere more or less consciously playing a role…” (Goffman, 1956).

The roots of a theory for role-play can be traced back to the studies on communication and social interaction of George Herbert Mead (1934) and Erving Goffman (1956). In describing this processes Goffman (1956) adopted a “dramaturgical approach”, in which individuals’ actions likened the performances staged by actors playing a role in front of an audience while the actor does his/her best to try to convey his/her feelings, his/her understanding of the situation and to “express and reveal” himself/ herself before the audience. In this view being in role and the practice of role means to achieve capability for action, which is not only in the form of the doing but also in the form of creative and intuitive thought, as we strive to engage the audience. Following the dramaturgical model of Goffman the established social roles can be recognised through their appropriate “setting”, “appearance” and “manner”, on the basis of projected character traits that have normative meanings. Higgins (2000) observed that social expectations operate as imperatives concerning a person’s cognitions, as well as his or her conduct during role enactment. “Just” preparing for role-enactment can influence how information is encoded and “retrieved” in the memory, and that even reasoning can be influenced by role enactment (e.g. the use or not use of base rate information). In the context of sociocultural studies, the works of Vygotsky (Claxton, 2004) showed the ability of people to unintentionally “pick up” their mental habits and values from those around them. Children for example learn from watching their elders, what to notice, what to ignore, what to laugh at and what to be afraid of. From such considerations it emerges that through the performance of a role, a person brings in the values, interests and knowledge of a particular social group and a specific context, in which the specific role originated. More recent studies on communication (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986) indicate that the audience’s receptiveness and engagement in the interaction are most often independent from the logical contents of the words the individuals might use, and logical reasoning from the side of the audience will be most unlikely. Rather they will depend upon those signs that Goffman says are given off by the individual. As Goffman reported:

"It is important for us to realise that we do not as a matter of fact lead our lives, make our decisions, and reach our goals on everyday life either statistically or scientifically. We live by inference" (Thomson, O. op. cit, p.15).

In such context a view of science which stretches beyond the validation of evidence in the assessment of actions in socio-environmental issues begins to emerge. Role-play introduces the dimensions of values, but also context and goals. In role-performance the dimensions of action and thought, and knowledge and values are inseparable.

Educational issues in relation to role-play

A number of post-structuralist theorists argued that people have a multiplicity of overlapping subject positions, both arising from everyday practice and through the identification with broader discourses. In line with such a view, role-performance takes on a more contingent character, becoming equal to the expression of a point of view which develops out of and coexists with a multiplicity of other perspectives. For some commentators this conception of free-floating subjects may at its extreme tend to dissolve into relativism and nihilism, in models of societies made of essentially dissociated individual subjects that are pursuing different interests. On the contrary in this research value was also given to the arising of forms of communality and solidarity, which are visible in a variety of biological communities, from ancestral bacteria (Margulis, 1999) to human communities, as shown by the chain of solidarities around the globe which constitutes what has being called the anti-globalisation movement (Sachs, 2002; Klein, 2000). A way to make sense of such discrepancies may be that of reconsidering the notion of role in the light of a more fluid concept of the self. This mechanism is better illustrated by the work of Shott (1979), who identified specific feelings that accompany role-taking. While affect may arise from the fulfilment or the frustration of individual needs and interests, Heron (1992) made a distinction between the more agitated character of emotion and the feeling of empathy. Heron (1992) indicates the educational value of empathy as the cultivation of the capacity of the psyche to participate in wider units of being, “to indwell what is present through attunement and resonance” (pp.16). This process is fundamentally different to that of consciously evaluating consequences as it is often spontaneous and unconscious, as we become able to “put ourselves in other people’s shoes”. Heron defines the domain of empathy as also that of participation, presence and resonance: the feeling of empathy has a creative dimension, by which we can place ourselves in communion with what we find and perceive as outside ourselves. Following the work of Hyde, the process of empathy also associated with heterocentric evaluation, at the same time enhances our own sense of identity (Hyde, 1955, reported in Heron, 1992). Yet as reported by Lifton (1993) empathy is a process that tends to be selective, and in some measure situational. Individuals may vary in this capacity, depending upon the educational experience and development of the self. Empathy requires to be capable of decentering, of stepping back from one’s own involvement to enter the mind of another, while an immature or fragmented self is often divided between the infantile tendency to separate and “own” and the adult’s search for integration and synthesis. Hence one of the problems which may occur with role-playing and which will need consideration is that of experiencing a series of temporary identifications in which one may “lose oneself” for a time, as opposed to empathy, which implies compassion and coherence. When dealing with school students I could reasonably expect difficulties and differences in relation to the specific context, age and gender as education through role-play was set to involve cognition at al levels: cognitive, emotional/relational and imaginative.

The socio-environmental issue of intensive prawn farming and the emergence of conflict.

The role-play used in this study dealt with the global, environmental and social issue of intensive prawn farming (Naylor et al., 1998). This activity spread massively – during the last ten years – along the coasts of many tropical countries. Promoted and funded by International Institutions in order to improve protein input in the diet, to offer new opportunities for employment, to raise the economies of developing countries, this activity has also produced widespread damage to the coastal ecosystems, and has weakened the subsistence economy of local populations. In the state of Tamil Nadu, local villagers organised themselves in a nonviolent protest movement against the growing shrimp industry, according to the gandhian tradition of Satyagraha (Rigby, 1997).

The understanding of the proposed issue required a multidisciplinary network approach: from natural sciences to economics, from ethics to law. For example, players were required to investigate food chains and ecological webs - both of them are in school science curriculum - within the context of global trade, as well as within the local scenery of the mangrove shrub. Drawing upon an established tradition in science education, this role-play activity was aimed at providing students with the opportunity to appreciate the dynamic and controversial aspects of science, as both a process and a product of a particular society and a key player in complex societal issues, which are characterised by the relationships between science, technology, society and environment (Solomon, 1993; Camino and Calcagno, 1995). Following the approach of Mitchell (2000), perspective-taking in role-playing was used to create a simulated public argument leading to the exploration of the many layers and perspectives embedded in public arguments, which are sometimes obscured by “yes – no” debating formats. Building on the use of role-play to simulate public arguments this research drew on the work of Moscovici and Doise (1991) to combine the influence of both cognitive and socio-emotional elements (e.g. acceptance of agreement) in decision-making. However the consideration that in India the controversy became a real conflict expressed by a broad and organised non-violent protest gave the opportunity to address the conflict and research constructive ways to deal with it. In amongst the various strategies which can be adopted to deal with conflict, this research was based on Galtung’s theory of nonviolent conflict transformation (Galtung, 1996). This approach was greatly influenced by the ideas that were exposed and put into practice by Gandhi (Weber, 2000) and they included: nonviolence towards oneself, towards others and towards Nature. Galtung maintained that conflict does not necessarily bring violence whereas behind many violent actions lie unsolved conflicts. Those conflicts which apparently end with the victory of one party are not really “concluded”, but they evolve towards further clashes, with an escalation of violence (which may direct or in direct). Galtung proposed to devise nonviolent contexts in which the parties in conflict endeavour to creatively transform their condition. This can start by framing the current conflict into a wider scenario and by proposing a multiplicity of solutions. These are different from those that were originally proposed and they contain the potential of satisfying the needs of all the participants involved.

This research made use of role-play to achieve two main interconnected aims:

-to give students the opportunity to explore the controversial aspects of an important issue in society, which involves them both personally and as members of a democratic, global community.

-to gain experience of conflict within a framework of nonviolence, reaching out for both the search of results and individuals’ self-transformation.

Especially in relation to the second aim I can anticipate that such an expectation would have been difficult to achieve within the available time and resources of this study. Such aims were long-term vision which informed my practice, while I worked towards more definite and specific objectives. In order to deal with conflict in a nonviolent way it is important to develop a variety of competences: dialogue, active listening, empathy, respect for others and research into the common needs. The role-play activity was therefore aimed at creating participatory contexts in which students practiced with “listening to others”, by being in other people’s shoes and by sharing and becoming aware of the preconceptions, the mental schemes and the inferences through which we grasp the sense and the meaning of messages out from our ineliminable subjectivity.

Research questions

The focus of this research is on the use of role-playing as a means to address and learn about conflict , exploring the attitudes and behaviour to deal with it creatively. This relationship is complex and the aspects attended here are:

  • students’ perceptions of their role as active learners;
  • the patterns of communication taking place in the classroom and amongst peers;
  • the articulation of conflict at both the micro and the macro levels.

Based on the background outlined above, the questions that this project set out to answer were:

Q1.Do the students take on a role and how far in their discussion does this happen?

Q2.Does role-taking help students to build consensus?

Q3.How do the students approach conflict and the cooperative search for consensus? What is the nature of their decision?

Q4.What do the students learn from the experience?

The scenario of the role-play and the characters