According to Resnick and Wilensky (1998)1, while role-playing activities have been commonly used in social studies classrooms, they have been infrequently used in science and mathematics classrooms. Speculate on why role playing activities may not be promoted in math and science and elaborate on your opinion on whether activities such as role playing should be promoted. Draw upon direct quotations from embodied learning theories and research in your response.
Winn (2002) provides us with a framework that is grounded on the concepts of embodiment, embeddedness and adaptation. The idea is that our learning experiences not only contain our brains processing of our surrounds, but how we interact with the environment and how our senses interact with the environment. Learning is a whole body experience.
Role-playing activities are becoming more and more common in the everyday classroom. In Newfoundland and Labrador, over the last few years, one of the main ideas that’s been focused on is the idea and the importance of play. As we move towards a world that involves a lot of screen time the emphasis of playing is very important, in my opinion. One area where role-playing is demonstrated most frequently in my practice is in kindergarten. With play-based learning, children are playing store, restaurant, etc. and not even realizing how much they are learning while doing so. These activities coincide with the idea of embodied learning as it lets students learn with their whole body and interact with their surrounding environment.
Resnick and Wilensky (1998) explain that role-playing activities rarely take place in the mathematics and science classroom. This article is over 20 years old, so I believe that the idea of incorporating these activities into the math and science classroom has changed and become more common over time. I do think that one of the main reasons why it wouldn’t be used, however, is that teachers don’t know how to successfully implement it into their classroom. Teachers are just uncertain how to use embodied learning in their practice.
I also believe that, even still, many teachers feel they don’t have the time to do so. While they may think in an ideal world they would be able to do this, they just don’t have the time to do these activities because they have so much other curriculum to cover. This is why I really enjoy the idea of play-based learning. Bringing play into the curriculum allots for these time-consuming but very real-life role-playing activities. One role-playing activity that I used in my teaching practice was playing ‘store’. This allowed students to practice addition and subtraction of decimals, with and without regrouping, as well as concepts of money. Students created their own stores. They took turns playing the worker or the customer. They had to take money, and give change, while doing the correct calculations. They loved this activity. I have posted some pictures I took of this activity below.
References:
Resnick, M. & Wilensky, U. (1998). Diving into complexity: Developing probalistic decentralized thinking through role-playing activities. Journal of Learning Sciences, 7(2), 153-172.
Winn, W. (2002). Learning in artificial environments: Embodiment, embeddedness and dynamic adaptation. Technology, Instruction, Cognition and Learning, 1(1), 87-114. Retrieved online March 9, 2013 from http://www.hitl.washington.edu/people/tfurness/courses/inde543/READINGS-03/WINN/winnpaper2.pdf