Peer Review

Power & Identity: A Role Play Lesson Plan

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Dec 24, 2020 by Sociology

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

This is a lesson plan for a role-playing activity, highlighting issues of power relations in situations between “students” and the “instructor.” In the role-play, “students” enact various identities in the classroom. After the role play, small group discussion provides opportunities for reflection on how to handle appropriately the various situations. The exercise is designed for instructors in higher education to promote a safe learning environment by decreasing the power dynamic between the instructor and students.

Type of Material:

Development tool
Workshop and training material
Open education resource

Recommended Uses:

Team assignment, in-person class activity.

Technical Requirements:

Internet browser

Identify Major Learning Goals:

By using this lesson plan, students will be able:

To reflect on situations and power relations that teachers may face on a regular basis in the classroom
To creative a more open and inclusive classroom
To assess their own instructor communication and facilitation skills
To develop inclusive teaching techniques through role-playing, peer evaluation, and sharing

Target Student Population:

K-12 and college faculty

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

For background, students should read chapter 6 in Bain’s What the Best College Teachers Do (2004) or equivalent.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

Presents relevant discussion questions about creating an inclusive classroom environment
Applicable activity for instructors across multiple grade levels, diverse subjects or courses, and teaching experience

Concerns:

The scenarios provided for the role-play are too short to provide the needed realistic interactions between the student and teacher. In their role-play, students could easily rely on their own negative stereotypes of, for instance, people with mental and physical health issues, and LGBTQIA+ students. In addition, scenarios highlighting issues of racism, sexism, and working-class marginalization should be made more explicit. As such, the activity may have limited long-term learning value. Also, the concept of power relations between students and teachers needs to be made more explicit in the scenarios and in the debriefing of the activity.

As part of the lesson plan, there should be a brief summary of the literature of power in the classroom (and not just the reference to the Bain reading) to explain how the scenarios are constructed and what students should learn from the scenarios. In order words, the socioloigical or social-science framework should be clearly made explicit in justifying this role-play activity.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

The lesson plan is a useful tool to introduce the topic of student-teacher interactions in the classroom and to get students to reflect on the scenarios.

Concerns:

The exercise does not function as a stand-alone learning tool
There are no facilitator or instructional materials to guide the lesson or points of development and learning
Instructors will need to use supplemental learning materials and/or other external resources to develop prerequisite knowledge and re-enforce content with real world applications

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

The lesson plan is relatively straight-forward to implement in a physical classroom setting.

Concerns:

The content and instructions are not clear and difficult to interpret or imagine without a detailed example in writen form or in a video
There is limited data supporting the effectiveness of the activity in creating awareness or changing teaching practices

Other Issues and Comments:: This exercise may be considered as a supplemental resource or learning tool on creating an inclusive classroom for instructors in K-12 and higher education.
Creative Commons: