Learning Political Theory by Role Playing

Role playing is more likely to promote active learning amongst undergraduate students than a traditional university lecture. This teaching method has been employed effectively in disciplines such as history and in area-studies subjects such as Middle Eastern politics in which students assume the role of particular historical or political agents. However, it is not obvious how role playing might be used to teach political theory. In this article, I discuss a role-play exercise that I devised and consider how it helped to promote what Paul Ramsden calls a ‘deep-holistic’ approach to learning amongst undergraduate students in a second/third year subject in political theory.