The mock conference as a teaching tool: Role-play and conplay in the classroom
In our ostensibly secular age, discussing the real-world contexts and impacts of religious traditions in the classroom can be difficult. Religious traditions may appear at different times to different students as too irrelevant, too personal, or too inflammatory to allow them to engage openly with t...
Authors: | ; ; |
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Contributors: | ; |
Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
[2018]
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In: |
Teaching theology and religion
Year: 2018, Volume: 21, Issue: 1, Pages: 60-72 |
RelBib Classification: | AG Religious life; material religion AH Religious education CD Christianity and Culture FB Theological education ZF Education |
Further subjects: | B
Embodied Pedagogy
B Risk B Controversy B Commitment B role-play |
Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
Summary: | In our ostensibly secular age, discussing the real-world contexts and impacts of religious traditions in the classroom can be difficult. Religious traditions may appear at different times to different students as too irrelevant, too personal, or too inflammatory to allow them to engage openly with the materials, the issues, and each other. In this Design & Analysis article Aaron Ricker describes an attempt to address this awkward pedagogical situation with an experiment in role-play enacted on the model of a mock conference. This description is followed by four short responses by authors who have experimented with this form of pedagogy themselves. In Conplay, students dramatize the wildly varying and often conflicting approaches to biblical tradition they have been reading about and discussing in class. They bring the believers, doubters, artists, and critics they have been studying into the room, to interact face-to-face with each other and the class. In Ricker's experience, this playful and collaborative event involves just the right amount of risk to allow high levels of engagement and retention, and it allows a wide range of voices to be heard in an immediate and very human register. Ricker finds Conplay to be very effective, and well worth any perceived risks when it comes to inviting students to take the reins. |
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ISSN: | 1467-9647 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Teaching theology and religion
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/teth.12423 |