Improvised Role Play as ‘thinking otherwise’

Ann-Christine Frandsen, Giulia Achilli, Anupam Mehta and Keith Hoskin,
Strategic Research area 5: Engaging through the responsible business education lab.

For the past eight months or so, we have been convening a series of workshops for Centre for Responsible Business and College of Social Sciences colleagues who are interested in exploring role play as a pedagogical tool. The aim of these workshops was to enable a space where colleagues could collectively reflect on the potential of role play for responsible and sustainable business education.

Our workshops offered an opportunity to experiment, reflect, and imagine new ways of teaching and learning through embodied practice, improvisation, and dialogue. Participants came from different disciplinary backgrounds, bringing diverse perspectives on how role play could work within their own teaching contexts. This diversity proved extremely valuable in helping us think through the opportunities and challenges of role play as pedagogy.

In what follows, we share some thoughts and reflections around what we discussed as food for thought and an invitation to those who may wish to engage with role play further.

Themes emerging from the workshops

A number of themes and reflections emerged across the workshops. These have informed our ongoing conversations and plans for a larger, systematic project.

• Role play as ‘thinking otherwise’. We discussed how role play allows for a different kind of thinking — one that is grounded on reflection and empathy. The act of taking on a role, improvising, and responding to others in real time encourages students to engage emotionally and imaginatively, helping them question assumptions and open up new perspectives.

• Improvisation, uncertainty and reflection. When role play is improvised, it does not rely on fixed scripts or predictable outcomes. Instead, students are asked to respond spontaneously to evolving situations, where there is no predetermined ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ course of action. This uncertainty mirrors the complexity of real-life organisational and ethical challenges. It follows that this improvisational aspect has the potential to make students more aware of how they make decisions and relate to others under pressure. We also noted that much of the learning happens in the debrief; in reflecting as a group on what unfolded during the role play. Discussing emotions, reactions, and interpretations helps students connect experience with theory and recognise the value of discomfort and ambiguity in learning.

• Inclusion and participation. A recurring discussion concerned how role play can support inclusive learning environments. While some students might feel empowered by the opportunity to experiment and express themselves, others might find the experience challenging. This raised important questions about role play facilitation and the importance of creating a ‘safe space’, raising the question of how educators can ensure that all voices are heard and that students feel safe enough to take risks.

• Assessment. We also discussed how the use of role play interacts with curriculum design, including how to use role play to assess learning outcomes and how to align such methods with established curricula. Here, we could learn from the outstanding work done in the Medical School, Pharmacy Interactive Studies Unit (ISU), at the University of Birmingham. While role play offers rich learning opportunities, it also challenges conventional notions of student assessment and performance.

The discussions in workshops reinforced our belief that role play offers powerful possibilities for teaching and learning, especially in the context of responsible and sustainable business education. This is because role play encourages active participation rather than passive reception of knowledge. Role play helps students develop empathy by putting themselves in someone else’s shoes. It fosters critical reflection through the experience of complexity, ambiguity, and moral dilemmas, and prompts collaboration and dialogue for addressing the interconnected challenges of business and society. These qualities make role play a pedagogical tool that aligns closely with broader conversations about how to educate for sustainability, ethics, and social responsibility.

We also see role play as an opportunity to build a community of educators and researchers interested in experimenting with embodied, creative, and participatory approaches to learning and teaching. We warmly invite colleagues who share our curiosity and interest in role play to join us in this ongoing work.

Authors’ notes:

If you would like to participate in this project or contribute ideas, please contact Ann-Christine (a.frandsen@bham.ac.uk) and Giulia (g.achilli@bham.ac.uk).

We are also happy to share a summary of the workshop discussions and materials — please just get in touch.