The question is now, how this phenomenon can aid a learning process. If we merely asked if role-play could be used as an educational tool, it would not take long to find sufficient argument for a positive answer, and thereby legitimate its use. But that would probably harm the process of achieving recognition more than it would help, a point that I will return to below. As role-play was widely used as an educational tool in Denmark during the 1960s and 70s (see Høyrup 1975, Haslebo & Nielsen 1998), there is sufficient argument for assuming that it can be helpful, in order to turn the focus towards asking how.
In order to explore the learning potential of role-play, the exploration must be founded in an understanding of the learning phenomenon capable of containing the described phenomenon. A remarkable feature of role-play is that the participant must explore the embedded points. This point makes it sensible to explore the potential of role-play from an inductive-orientated perspective on learning. The learning perspective is therefore based accordingly.
From this part of the theoretical field, Lave’s (1997) theory on practice-orientated learning processes seems to be of particular interest, as it manages to grasp role-play as a participation in a simulated practice (Henriksen 2000). One of the key points in Lave’s theory is that even though learning is often seen as something that happens in a school, learning takes place elsewhere, and we evolve according to the activities we participate in during our everyday life. In order to explore role-play as a practice of learning from which the participant can evolve accordingly, perspectives from Lave’s perspective on learning will be presented as a part of the theoretical foundation.
Lave’s Perspectives on Learning
According to Lave, learning consists of three elements, a direction for the development, or a teleos, a practice for the process, and those pedagogical principles through which we assume that learning takes place. These perspectives will be used as the basis for our understanding of the learning potential of role-play.
Teleos
The concept of teleos is used to direct the learning process, not necessarily towards a
idea that facilitating a learning process which is unrelated to an external orientation is a pure waste of the participant’s time and effort (Lewin, in Høyrup 1975). The concept of teleos can be used to ask what purpose the developmental process is to serve, what it tries to facilitate. What are we actually trying to help the participant to achieve?
Looking at the developmental and educational process from a sociological point of view, the main aim is to qualify individual participation and contribution to contemporary society (Mørch 1995). This overall objective implies developing a participation in contemporary society, based on a comprehensive use of the individual’s personal gallery in a broad variety of social situations. A more concrete aim is provided by Dreier (1997), who sees development as a means to achieve participation in a certain practice, to evolve one’s personal participation in the current practice, and to evolve the current practice. This developmental process is, according to Ileris (2000), founded in the development of relevant professional and personal qualifications. Looking at the developmental process from the presented view on the formation of our experience, learning becomes a matter of evolving the discourse that we apply to the object. The concept of learning is therefore seen as “The acquisition of perspectives, developing the subject’s experience of an object, [to] such [a] degree, that it qualifies the subject’s ability to interact with the object” (Henriksen 2002, 54; 2003, 111). This perspective can be illustrated as a maths problem, in which the teacher equips the student with a relevant perspective, enabling the student to interact with the problem.
Seeing learning as the development of a new perspective which opens new means for interacting with the object seems to meet both the above criteria of Lewin and Dreier, and is furthermore interesting, as it shares the perspective focus with the role-play phenomenon.
Practice
Lave uses the attention to practice to discuss the relationship between the subject and the social practice’s reproduction of the world surrounding it (Lave 1997). This directs our attention to a distinction and relation between learning practice and professional practice. School teaching is the most widespread form of education in Denmark, whereas only a small part of the formal education is done through learning in professional practice. The point is to draw a distinction between whether learning takes place in the practice of utilisation, or takes place in a practice separated from this.
To meet Lewin’s criteria, the separated learning process must therefore aim at providing the participant with perspectives that reach beyond the learning practice. To do this, the process must help the participant to use the knowledge across contexts, in order to make the perspectives available in the utilisation practice. The point here is that the learning transfer from one context to another is not automatic, but must be facilitated in order to have effect (Lave 1988). This process is referred to as decontextualisation.
Another important point is that practice compensates for eventual consequences of the learning process. Most learning contexts manage to protect the pupil or student (and
the rest of the world) from the negative consequences of the learning process through mediation (see e.g. Lave & Wenger 1991).
The Pedagogical Principles
Hidden under Lave’s tricky way of putting it, there is an interesting point. Lave is not saying that we do not know how learning takes place, but rather that we cannot merely assume that learning takes place just because we teach something, or because a given perspective is available in practice. Nor can we, based on Luhmann’s concept of contingency, assume that the learning process is automatically orientated according to teleos, or that the perspectives are available to be used in practice.
This makes the organisation and preparation of a learning process a tricky job. Lave’s major point here is to stress that the learning process, or the process of decontextualisation, does not happened automatically, but must be facilitated and actively implemented into the learning programme. To further these processes, Høyrup (1975) recommends, on the basis of Lewin, to look upon the student as a whole. Instead of merely focussing on transferring knowledge, motivational factors and the integration of perspectives must be seen as a key part of the process.
In order to make the participant take part in the learning process, it is necessary to motivate him. This can be done in several ways, either by goal-orientation towards an attractive participation, by a disconfirmation of the participant’s perceived self-efficacy, or by the mere fun of the activities involved in the process. Using disconfirmation usually requires a lot of skill, but creates a lasting motivation grounded in the participant. The motivation is, however, the means essential to make the participant take part in the process.
Perspective integration is seen as an important part of making a perspective usable, and in order to make it usable across contexts. This integrative perspective acknowledges the participant’s precious knowledge as one of the most important factors in order to make the learning process work properly.
Focused exercises are crafted to make a perspective fit a specific problem – the discourse is sufficient to cover the object. These exercises are widely used to aid the learning process, but they often produce modularised knowledge which is only available when confronted with the specific problem (Lave 1988). In order to facilitate cross-contextual usage, the new (and eventually effective) perspective must be trained in a manner which challenges the participant’s existing perspective. The integrating exercise equips the participant with a discourse too short to cover the object, calling for the existing knowledge, in order to make the participant test both perspectives on the object. If successful, this method creates cognitive bindings between the old and new perspectives, facilitating associations with the new knowledge when the existing knowledge is triggered.
Integrative exercises are hard to use, but are especially interesting when trying to facilitate theory-practice transfers and relearning processes. Several factors influence
existing knowledge. If the perspective is rejected, the existing knowledge will be cemented, and if the perspective is unrelated to previous knowledge, the benefit becomes modularised.