Role-Playing: The Unexpected Way to Level Up Your Teaching Skills
"Ditch the lecture, embrace the drama! Discover how role-playing workshops can transform educators and revolutionize the learning process."
Since 1997, the medical program at the Faculty of Medicine of Marília (Famema) embraced Problem-Based Learning (PBL). This approach empowers students to actively build their knowledge, connect existing understanding with new challenges, think critically, communicate effectively to solve problems, and value the learning process. Activities occur in small groups, each guided by a tutor who facilitates learning by mediating the process.
Tutorial sessions typically involve two key phases: problem introduction and problem conclusion. Initially, the tutor introduces a problem, encouraging group discussion and hypothesis generation. These discussions lead to learning questions that drive individual research using reliable literature and relevant sources. Subsequently, students share their findings and collaboratively synthesize information to address the initial questions comprehensively.
Today, medical and nursing curricula integrate two core educational units: the Professional Practice Unit (UPP), which immerses students in real-world healthcare settings using problem-solving, and the Systematized Educational Unit (UES), which utilizes case studies and ABP. While professionals trained through active learning methods demonstrate better communication, problem-solving, and organizational skills (Gomes et al., 2009), traditional teaching approaches can hinder effective facilitation. Therefore, active teacher involvement is essential to transform pedagogical and professional practices, ensuring theory aligns with practice.
Role-Playing as a Tool for Tutor Learning
A study on role-playing in teacher training reported that the activities were relevant and that role-playing helped facilitate learning. It placed tutors in the role of students, making them protagonists in the learning process. The authors said this experience encouraged new perspectives and perceptions and sensitized tutors to the tutorial process.
From Historical Simulations to Educational TTRPGs
A historical role-playing project assigned students to portray King George III, his advisers, and members of Parliament selected to reflect the divisions of opinion at the time; another project assigned students to King Charles I and his councillors. More recent work, published May 9, 2025, examines how players acquire historical knowledge through role-playing mechanics and fictional narratives, as well as their preferences for presenting historical information. That research considers what these findings imply for designing educational tabletop role-playing games.
The Power of Role-Playing: More Than Just Pretend
Role-playing, often seen as a theatrical exercise, offers a potent method for educators to step outside their comfort zones and experience learning from a student's perspective. By simulating tutorial sessions rooted in ABP, teachers can explore the challenges and opportunities inherent in this pedagogical approach. This immersive experience fosters empathy, encourages reflection, and ultimately enhances teaching effectiveness.
- Foster knowledge construction through collaborative exploration.
- Promote relational learning through shared experiences.
- Encourage critical reflection on the tutorial process.
Reviews Point to Experiential and Perspective-Taking Potential
A state-of-the-art review of 32 peer-reviewed studies published between 2000 and 2023 examined role-playing in English as a Foreign Language and English as a Second Language contexts. The review highlights its potential to facilitate experiential learning and promote cognitive, affective, and self-related outcomes. A 2026 fNIRS hyperscanning study on music psychodrama describes perspective-taking as important for generating insights and alternative solutions, and links it with empathy development. Separately, a 2023 teaching article characterizes role-playing as a simple, adaptable, and cost-effective strategy compared with simulations and standardized patients, which it says can be expensive and require extensive training.
Transforming Teaching, One Role at a Time
The findings from these workshops highlight the significant potential of role-playing as a catalyst for change in teacher training. By actively engaging in simulated scenarios, educators gained fresh perspectives, confronted their challenges, and developed a deeper understanding of the student experience.
Expertise and the Learning Experience
A 2023 self-study of a teacher-education course involving the design, testing, and playing of tabletop role-playing games set out to explore how student teachers’ levels of TRPG expertise affect their learning processes and outcomes. In teacher education, role-play has also been described as experiencing a problem under unfamiliar constraints, allowing participants’ own ideas to emerge and their understanding to increase. This account frames role-playing as a form of role-training intended to increase teachers’ awareness of different aspects of their work. A 2025 meta-analysis examined 12 articles comprising 22 effect-size samples and included subgroup analyses of moderating variables.
Teacher Education as a Site for Innovation
A 2026 article on the future of the teaching profession presents teacher education as a site for innovation, reflection, and transformation. It argues that engaging with emerging trends and issues can help stakeholders contribute to a teaching profession that is resilient, inclusive, and responsive to challenges. Another source identifies technological advances and changing educational philosophies as drivers of shifts in teachers’ roles, including predictions around personalized education. These sources point to an evolving context for teacher preparation, though they do not establish specific future outcomes for role-playing.
Role-Play Across Education and Nursing
A 2025 systematic review set out to evaluate role-playing in nursing education, focusing on pedagogical outcomes and challenges. It describes role-playing as a proposed tool for improving clinical skills, knowledge, and professional behavior, while framing the evidence as something the review investigates. A broader education resource discusses role-play’s benefits, types, best practices, and cross-disciplinary uses. Together, these sources place role-playing within a wider educational conversation while underscoring that its outcomes and implementation challenges depend on the context examined.
Participants specifically valued the opportunity for reflection, knowledge exchange, and the ability to 'revisit our practices' and 'feel our difficulties'. This underscores the importance of creating dedicated spaces for reflective practice following role-playing activities.
Ultimately, the use of role-playing in teacher training not only enhances pedagogical skills but also fosters a more empathetic and responsive teaching approach. As one participant noted, it's about 'rescuing the role of the tutor as facilitator of the learning process' – a crucial step towards empowering both educators and students alike.