Role playing in the science and math classroom I think has been neglected as a teaching style to promote student learning. It is true these techniques are often employed in social studies so I am trying to consider why they are not generally a part of the sciences.
Role playing may provide opportunities for students to learn with meaning as it can help them to understand the place of using these tools in life. Meaningful learning in my opinion increases student motivation because it gives their learning purpose. Of course this also depends on what the definition of role playing is…. I would argue that in science class even performing collaborative investigative activities like laboratory experiments could be consider a style of role play….. one without a set outcome, in fact the students would be discovering the outcome while they were involved in the role play, think of it like dramatic improv perhaps!
The use of immersive virtual worlds may be the future of providing these meaningful learning role plays in the science and math disciplines. Having students immersed in an investigation and even the possibility of stimulating their senses is an exciting idea indeed. I have often considered myself an advocate for experiential learning as I believe it provides purpose and real meaning to supplement student curriculum objectives. If that means performing a laboratory experiment, field work at a real world site or immersion in a virtual environment where students have the ability to use their visual, auditory and tactile senses then there may be some real opportunity for students to become engaged in what they are learning. Perhaps we have been and will continue to role play in science and mathematics, it was just a matter re-evaluating what role playing is in that context, and with virtually immersive environments becoming more possible students will able to experience their learning in even more ways in the future.
Often I think when we learn and teach about concepts in science and math we follow a more regimented structure to planning and curriculum delivery. We are less “free” to decide what is right and wrong when it comes to providing solutions to complex problems. Especially in math I think students often have difficulty mastering the numerical concepts because they have trouble relating to the content, they simply don’t understand why they are learning complex mathematical problems and how they are important for anything. Math being a tool is often taught from a theoretical perspective which is often advanced for young students who have no need for those concepts at that point in their lives. We see a bit more real world application example in the sciences as those disciplines often use mathematical tools to come to solutions to problems. Perhaps not using role playing techniques more often has contributed to this problem of students not relating to subject matter.