"First of
all," he said, "if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get
along better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until
you consider things from his point of view ..."
'Sir?'
" ... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
(Lee, 1989)
"Roles do
not emerge from the self, but the self may emerge from roles."
(Moreno, 1972)
What
is a Controversial Issue?
"A controversial
issue involves a problem about which differing individuals and groups urge conflicting
courses of action. It is an issue for which society has not found a solution
that can be universally or almost universally accepted. It is an issue of sufficient
significance that each of the proposed ways of dealing with it is objectionable
to some section of the citizenry and arouses protest."
(Fraser, 1969)
There is no shortage of controversial issues in the curricula of primary, secondary or tertiary institutions anywhere in the world. These issues may be environmental, social, political, religious, ethical, economic, or more likely they will contain some or all of these dimensions. They may be global, regional, national or local in scale, or they may appear at a variety of scales of resolution.
But whatever their nature and scale, controversial issues present educators with a number of dilemmas. What role should the teacher adopt in the teaching of controversial issues? Should s/he assume the role of the neutral chairperson (Stenhouse, 1969)? Should the teacher play devil's advocate emphasising viewpoints which are being ignored, overlooked or underemphasised? Should the teaching of controversial issues seek to modify or simply inform existing attitudes? Practically or ethically, can the teaching of controversial issues ever be founded on didactic techniques because of the danger of the overt or perceived inculcation of values? Can the teaching of controversial issues seek simultaneously to achieve cognitive, affective and active gain? If role play is used to affect attitude change, how can changes in attitude be assessed in practical, formal terms?
There is no doubt that many areas of education require teachers to develop appropriate attitudes in students. Nowhere is this more clearly stated than in environmental education.
"To foster
clear awareness of, and concern about, economic, social, political and ecological
interdependence in urban and rural areas; to provide every person with opportunities
to acquire the knowledge, values attitudes, commitment and skills needed to
protect and improve the environment; to create new patterns of behaviour of
individuals, groups and society as a whole towards the environment."
(UNESCO, 1978)
"Our environment
will not stand up to the pressures that are now being put on it by increasing
human population and activity. We recognise that the most effective way to ensure
its protection and enhancement in the long term is to bring about change in
people's attitudes and behaviour towards it."
(Scottish Office, 1993)
Role
Play
Role play is a very important pedagogical tool in dealing with controversial issues. It creates the opportunity for a number of facets of an issue to be examined in detail by groups and individuals and also for a whole group to benefit from the combined work of its members. As part of a values education approach it should inform an individual's own attitudes by revealing understandings of the values and attitudes of others. Although individuals may never be able to accept the rationality of other people's beliefs, for example when a Christian studies Hinduism, they can comprehend the rationality of Hindu practices if they understand beliefs on which these practices are based.
In gaining this insight into the rationality of the actions of others (Watt, 1974) our own attitudes will at the very least be more informed even if they do not change. There are three main theories as to how role play may assist the process of attitudinal change (Williams & Williams, 1987):
• incentive
theory
• dissonance theory
• identification theory
Incentive theory states that people modify their attitudes because there is some form of reinforcement or reward for doing so; the reward could be monetary or consist of praise. Dissonance theory argues that attitudes are changed when they are seen to be inconsistent with an individual's other attitudes or actions. Identification theory suggests that attitudes change when people develop a strong degree of association or identification with a character or group they have represented in a role play.
In the context of the role play described in this paper it seems unlikely that either dissonance or identification theory are likely to achieve significant attitude modification if students are allowed to adopt roles which replicate their own attitudes towards an issue. Under these circumstances there would be little dissonance and a high degree of pre-identification with the attitudes associated with the roles assumed in the exercise. No attempt was made to create specific incentives to achieve attitude modification in this exercise.
The exercise described below required students to adopt roles with which they professed not to agree. This created dissonance between their own attitudes and those implicit in the role which they assumed. The exercise exposed students to information, gave them a choice between alternatives and introduced them to behaviour and attitudes that they would normally avoid, which are all conditions that promote dissonance (Wicklund & Brehm, 1976). The field research approach was designed to foster close identification with the roles that students were asked to adopt. Students were asked to represent one of a number of groups; they were not required to adopt named, individual roles within their groups. However they were given the freedom to negotiate with other groups within the general framework of the exercise. In this respect there was a combination of two of the four levels or stages of involvement in role play that Dawson (1989) recognises.
Lee (1993) points out the importance of framing a role play. A frame is simply a point of view through which an event can be considered. The closest frame is to be in the event. Enjoyable though this approach may be, real time drama is too emotionally charged to create good role play. In the role play described below, students were asked to reconstruct the meaning of an event which had already occurred, a proposal to expanding skiing facilities. Heathcote (Lee, 1993), refers to reconstruction as framing at the level of authority. This level of engagement or framing should allow authentic contact with the issue without the role play being clouded by a high degree of emotional attachment.
Lee also points
out that it is important for the staff organising role plays to be able to shift
roles during the event, gradually becoming more immersed and involved. During
the role play the staff adopted roles consistent with the exercise; in this
case they assumed the role of consultants during the fieldwork and discursive
phases of the role play. At the beginning and end of the role play it is important
that the teacher role is manifest, the teacher role was clearly obvious at the
start and conclusion of this case study.
Case Study
"You cannot
teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself."
(Galileo, 1987)
The controversial issue examined was the proposal to extend skiing in the Northern Corries of the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland. The proposed site for the new skiing facility was Lurcher's Gully, part of which is a site of special scientific interest (SSSI). There was a clear clash of environmental and economic interests. The environmental concerns were largely about the visual impact of the new skiing development as well as the damage to fauna and flora in the SSSI and the surrounding area. The economic arguments were mainly about jobs and increased tourism; these had a much stronger local flavour.
A group of 23 fourth year B. Ed. (Primary) students following an elective course in 'Conservation and Development' were given the task of investigating this issue as part of a residential field course. One day had been allocated to the exercise by the two tutors accompanying the group. The investigation was largely fieldwork based, but the follow-up was to take the form of a debate. Groups were allocated one of six roles which they were to assume during the fieldwork and discursive phases of the exercise. Three groups were asked to assume roles that broadly supported the skiing development, while the other three were given roles opposed to the development.
It was considered important that individuals were allocated roles that helped to inform and develop attitudes, rather than roles which reinforced their existing view, for the practical and theoretical reasons that have already been outlined. It was felt that informed insights were much more likely to emerge if students were asked to adopt roles and scrutinise attitudes with which they did not appear to agree or were not familiar. The problem was to find a way of doing this which was neither complicated not time consuming nor overly artificial. It would be an obvious benefit if differentiation for group selection could be achieved during this process of clarifying attitudes.