Active learning, Role-play; Pedagogical method, Leadership in practice, Mana

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Key words: 

Active learning, Role-play; Pedagogical method, Leadership in practice, Mana-

gement program

In this article we discuss how and why role-play supports students in gaining insights into 

complex leadership situations. We give voice to the students by illustrating their experiences 

in a role-playing activity involving a human resource management issue designed, performed, 

and evaluated as part of a management program. The results show that the role-playing sup-

ports the students by stimulating them to understand the issue from various perspectives, 

hence performing an overall change of perspectives. The role-playing exercise also enabled the 

students to create a collective understanding of the situation. The active social interactions 

and conversations of role-playing contributed to establishing a sense of community among 

the students. We argue that role-play could be a viable and forceful pedagogical method 

whereby teachers give their students the opportunity to prepare for practice. However, to 

implement role-play as an alternative method of learning requires that the method is a part 

of the institutional learning space.

Department of Service Management, Lund University

Ulrika Westrup

*

 och Agneta Planander

 

Role-play as a pedagogical method to prepare students 

for practice: The students’ voice 

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issn

 

2000-7558 

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Artikel

Högre utbildning

Vol. 3, Nr. 3, 2013, 199-210

* Författarkontakt: [e-mail] 

introduction

The significance of active learning is becoming increasingly acknowledged as a way of increasing 

the involvement, motivation, and responsibility of students in higher education. These aspects 

are discussed in various deep learning approaches (Kivinen and Ristelä, 2002; Trigwell, Prosser 

and Waterhouse, 1999; Willmott, 1994). Several, such as Kolb and Kolb (2005, 2010), Kayes, 

Kayes and Kolb (2005), and Bassey (2010), stress that concrete experiences are the basis for 

students’ reflections in higher education. Role-playing is a pedagogical method that belongs 

to active learning. The pedagogical method is, mainly, described as suitable for achieving un-

derstanding an issue and ”forcing” students to be independent. However, the method is rarely 

proposed when students have to learn something quickly and based on a large number of facts 

(Andersson, 2005). Several academic disciplines use role-play to incorporate active learning into 

teaching such as psychology, law, history, medicine, nursing, and business and administration. 

Numerous studies have reported that role-play is positive for students’ learning; for example, 

the method provides the opportunity to get a deeper understanding of an issue and stimulates 

further interest in the subject (Rao and Stupans, 2012; Ruhanen, 2005). McCarthy and Ander-

son (2000) have compared the effectiveness of learning based on role-play with more traditional 

teaching methods, and argue (2000, p. 290): “Our results suggest that using certain active lear-

ning techniques in the classroom may well enable students to absorb and retain information 

just as well as, if not better than, the more traditional methods.” Another argument is that role-

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