Author: Rochelle Almeida
Introduction:
A few years ago, I taught a GLS Sophomore seminar entitled ‘International Migration: Globalization’s Last Frontier’. Being an immigrant to the United States myself, I am, needless to say, pro-immigration and was delighted to discover that most of my students—about 12 in number—were equally liberal in their attitudes towards both individual and global mass-movement. I found, however, about four students with decidedly different views—they were basically anti-immigration (of individuals as well as of mass populations). When it came time to discuss the pros and cons of legal obstacles to crossing international borders, students were rather aggressively pitted against one another and the narrative grew heated as the debate progressed.
In my role as moderator, I noticed that two of these four dissenting students, although listening animatedly to the discussion, did not enter into verbal participation. Although I tried gently to invite them to express their views I found them rather reticent to engage. Eager to find out why they remained inarticulate, I probed during private conversations with them in my office. I discovered that the students in question felt overwhelmed by the passion and aggression of their liberal classmates. Being on the quieter, shyer, less assertive side, they were reluctant to enter into argument with their peers. Enthusiastic about including them in the discourse, I asked myself, “What can I, as the instructor, do to urge and encourage verbally-challenged students to engage with controversial content during discussion-centered pedagogy without making the classroom an unpleasantly contentious space?” This question has undoubtedly worried instructors through the ages—but it has certainly come into its own in recent times as international political turmoil has polarized students and faculty members.
Students refrain from verbal participation for a variety of reasons: fear of being shouted down or fear of being mocked or ridiculed. Sometimes, it is simply a matter of personality: some students are less confrontational than others. Often, however, it is a much deeper seated problem—a fear of losing friends in class or of losing the teacher’s favor. An inability or unwillingness to voice views freely and fairly can cause frustration, anger, and even resentment. These negative feelings can be directed towards classmates, instructors, and themselves. What can an instructor do to prevent situations such as these from escalating into a general mood of negativity or from creating a general distaste for the course?
On googling pedagogical methodology for balancing discourse in the contentious classroom, I came upon various recommendations such as:
- Role-Playing
- Role-Switching
To these two, I add what I call
- Personal Narratives
In this segment, I will deal with the manner in which I implemented Role Playing in my classroom.
Role-Playing
During the next few weeks, I resolved to give role-playing a try. By no means a novel pedagogical device, it has been used with success in many teaching and learning situations—from second-language acquisition to courses on cross-cultural preconceptions. Employed as a device in the field of higher learning, role-playing is defined as a series of activities through which students simulate a scenario by assuming specific roles. It enables students to work through a situation and develop strategies for viewing a perspective from an alternative point of view.
In their article for the American Psychological Association, psychotherapists Richard L. Levenson and Jack Herman posit the notion that play therapy can promote insight and/or corrective emotional experience.1 Richard Zwolinski states that “Generally, role-playing works well with motivated, intelligent patients…”2 I attempted to use it in my sophomore classroom for the first time and I have continued to use it quite often and in varying contexts over the years.
According to Stephanie Nickerson, an instructional consultant, “One of the reasons role-play can work so well is because of the power of placing oneself in another’s shoes.”3 Nickerson, however, is also of the opinion that, “Role-play is a special kind of case study, in which there is an explicit situation established with students playing specific roles, spontaneously saying and doing what they understand their ‘character’ would, in that situation.”4
Here, I beg to differ. In order to succeed as a pedagogical device, role-playing, in my experience, ought to be conducted under a few set conditions:
- Explain the imaginary scenario with clarity.
- Grant adequate rehearsal time: Students need to be given the opportunity to prepare the plot and script of their scene in order to make it most realistic and convincing.
- Grant creative freedom to explore varied situations: allow their imaginations free reign.
My approach differs from Nickerson’s mainly with regards to spontaneity versus preparation. In my experience, role-playing—taken, as it is, from the arena of theatrics—requires rehearsal. Not all students are equipped with the skills required to spout a monologue without preparation.
Here is how I implemented the technique: the scenario was inspired by a situation in which my students differed radically on the question of whether or not countries ought to maintain open borders. In light of the impact of global terrorism, the rise of fundamentalist networks with international tentacles such as ISIS, Al-Queda and Lashkar-e-Taiba, and hugely successful money-laundering methods permitting clandestine arms-trading, a few of the students felt that governments are justified in curtailing or closing immigration opportunities. How, they asked, are the authorities able to assess ‘good’ immigrants from ‘bad’ ones (to borrow a phrase from Nikesh Shukla’s book, The Good Immigrant).5 Then followed a discussion on vetting—background checks, examination of police records, etc.
Inevitably, our discourse led students to make a clear distinction between immigrants and refugees. Once we defined clearly that immigrants are usually relatives of citizens, specialized technical personnel, highly talented sports personalities or performing artists, students realized that refugees belong to a separate and distinct category: they are mass-flows that cross borders suddenly, without plan or preparation, usually as a form of escape from life-threatening situations such as famine or flood, warfare or murderous regimes.
Discourse then focused on international policy regarding refugees who have no legal avenues to cross borders except for the sympathy of liberal governments. In recent years, this subject has acquired renewed topicality and urgency as right-wing conservative administrators have spoken vociferously for the exclusion of fleeing populations.
The majority of my students, i.e. those with less conservative, more generous attitudes– supported mass-migration that would bring humanitarian relief without stretching the resources of well-endowed countries. There were some, however, who felt less benevolent—not because they were reluctant to share global resources such as food, shelter and medication, but because the infiltration of terrorist operatives and the founding of dormant sleeper cells that become fertile ground for the hatching of plots involving mass-violence were real fears for them.
To get the ‘game’ off the ground, I asked for six volunteers—three would play the role of immigrants/refugees seeking entry from a troubled nation into a Western one. Three would play the role of border control personnel tasked with assessing cases to make decisions. Acceptance would result in the issuing of a document granting landed immigrant status, while rejection would mean immediate deportation. Finally, because I wished to involve the entire class (not just the six volunteers), I asked the non-performing students (also about six in number) to play the jury: they would listen attentively to cases placed before the immigration officer (the judge, so to speak), and huddle together to come to a consensus as to whether or not the immigration official had made the right decision.
With a weekend in-between for preparation, my students arrived, eager and excited. I found out later that they had met in their dorms to work on the assignment as couples—although it was not intended to be a team effort, it worked well in that model. All the performers also met as a group. Each couple wanted to make certain that the scenarios they expected to project were not repeated by other teams of ‘actors’. I had taken pains to assign roles to those students who usually felt reluctant to speak up in class. To my surprise, they were thrilled to be included as ‘actors’. By seeking active involvement of the more reticent students in the ‘skit’, as it were, I had drawn them into the field of inquiry. Because they would be speaking, not for themselves, but in the guise of the character that they had been chosen to play, they felt far freer to express themselves without unease, threat of mockery or criticism.
Every student had spent weekend time researching the migrant crisis in Western Europe. Their research had led them to varied global environments fraught with contemporary controversy and debate: the ‘Jungle’ in Calais, barbed wire fences and water cannons in Hungary, dangerous waters surrounding Southern Italy, and the Canary Islands where makeshift sea-craft have landed regularly with refugees in precarious stages of survival. Other students had read about stowaways, convoluted routes taken by impoverished migrants fleeing war zones and about extortion-level fees charged by ‘agents’ responsible for shipping human cargo through forbidden waters. Through excellently composed ‘scripts’, they brought the human crisis wrought by war and totalitarian regimes into sharp focus. Willy-nilly, the role-playing session became entangled with lessons on contemporary history and its aftermath.
Topics that were out of the purview of a structured lecture-driven class suddenly took center stage as student ‘actors’ played the roles of a starving 10-year old boy from Eritrea who found himself in Sicily without a word of Italian; a 72-year old grandfather from Afghanistan who fled Kandahar in the dead of night with his son and granddaughter to cross the desert into Pakistan and from there to Encino, California (a scenario obviously borrowed from Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner);6 and a 32-year old French-speaking harki from Algiers attempting to join family members that had preceded him into the banlieus of Paris, France, because he was ostracized in his own country after independence.
I was amazed and delighted by the inventiveness of my students who placed themselves in cultural locales completely different from anything with which they are familiar. They not only assumed varied personae, but they scripted entire monologues or dialogue or whole scenes that gave voice to unfortunate men and women by articulating some of the reportage they had seen in the press and online. They threw themselves into the assignment with gusto. A couple of them actually donned costumes such as a ragged shawl over the shivering grandfather, and props like a tin bowl in the hand of the starving child. Those who had never known they had acting talents suddenly discovered them. Others, who had always loved the stage, found themselves in their element as they emoted, changed voice and accent, used movement and gesture to make themselves understood to a foreign listener, to reach out to their audience and, ultimately, to convince.
We then advanced to the second stage of the assignment: some students playing border controllers scrutinized the petitioners carefully and listened attentively to their stories of hardship and survival. One of the officers chose to be generous in granting entry. A couple of others attempted to turn the refugees away. They offered relevant questions such as: How do we know you have no ties to a terrorist organization? How do we gauge your attitude towards America and Americans? The refugees were offered convincing reasons for their rejection: America could only extend succor in limited amounts. Potential settlers had not been vetted. How would the refugees rehabilitate themselves in an alien environment without knowledge of local language, customs, or culture? Would they not become permanent burdens on the state and its already-stretched resources?
As might be imagined, arguments were sound, valid and forwarded confidently. But the objections of these strict border personnel were quickly evaluated by the student audience (the jury) who judged them on a case-by-case basis. They unanimously demanded that all three potential settlers be permitted to enter legally. In one case, the objections of the immigration officer towards the Algerian was overruled and the harki found safe passage into France. Of course, the point was noted that border personnel can only act in accordance with the governmental directives they receive.
As a class, we concluded without dissension that there are no glib solutions to the current mass-movement crisis. Discourse was much less contentious after these performances. Students had been forced to view the refugee crisis from unfamiliar perspectives. I cannot be certain that the exercise changed minds—and indeed that was not a goal. Role-playing did provide a perfect vehicle through which those dissenters who had difficulty speaking up, found the medium by which to articulate their stance. I, as the instructor, no longer spouted my personal views on the subject, but created a calmer, less quarrelsome, atmosphere for the expression and contestation of a plethora of views. Thus, learning ceased to be lecture-driven and became student-centered instead.
Pavey and D. Donoghue summarize the benefits of using role-play pedagogy as such:
…to get students to apply their knowledge to a given problem, to reflect on issues and the views of others, to illustrate the relevance of theoretical ideas by placing them in a real-world context, and to illustrate the complexity of decision-making.7
Footnotes
1 Levenson, Richard L. and Jack Herman, “The Use of Role Playing as a Technique in the Psychotherapy of Children”. In Psychotherapy Theory and Practice, American Psychological Association. Vol. 28 No. 4, January 1991, pp. 660-666. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232423903_The_use_of_role_playing_as_a_technique_in_the_psychotherapy_of_children
2 Zwolinski, Richard: “Therapy Tools: Role Playing”. https://blogs.psychcentral.com/therapy-soup/2011/01/therapy-tools-role-playing/
3 Nickerson, Stephanie: “Role-Play: An Often Misused Active Learning Strategy,” Essays on Teaching Excellence: Towards the Best in the Academy, Vol. 19, No. 5, 2007-2008, http://podnetwork.org/content/uploads/V19-N5-Nickerson.pdf
4 Nickerson, Stephanie: “Role-Play: An Often Misused Active Learning Strategy,” Essays on Teaching Excellence: Towards the Best in the Academy, Vol. 19, No. 5, 2007-2008, http://podnetwork.org/content/uploads/V19-N5-Nickerson.pdf
5 Shukla, Nikesh (Ed): The Good Immigrant. London: Unbound, 2015.
6 Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. Riverhead Books: 2003.
7 Pavey J. and Donoghue D. (2003): “The Use of Role Play and VLEs in Teaching Environmental Management. Planet, Vol. 10, pg. 7.