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The use of clinical role-play and reflection in learning therapeutic communication skills in mental health education: an integrative review
Solrun brenk rønning.
1 Faculty of Health Sciences and Social Care, Molde University College, Molde, Norway
Stål Bjørkly
2 Centre for Research and Education in Forensic Psychiatry, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway
Background: An important goal in mental health education is for students to develop their ability to provide care and help to people with different degrees of mental problems. Positive experiences with the use of clinical role-play and subsequent reflection inspired us to investigate whether previous empirical studies had evaluated similar methods of teaching and to scrutinize the effects on students’ development of therapeutic skills and clinical reflection.
Method: An integrative review was conducted to search the literature for findings from both qualitative and quantitative research. Systematic searches of literature were done in Ovid (MEDLINE, PsycInfo), Cinahl, Cochrane, ScienceDirect, SweMed, Norart, ProQuest, and Google Scholar.
Results: The systematic literature search provided 42 full-text articles and four articles met the inclusion criteria. The results suggest that role-play in health education enhances students’ therapeutic and communicative skills. Nevertheless, there is limited research on the use of role-play in teaching therapeutic skills, and few studies that investigate how role-play affects students’ reflections on own practice. The literature search did not discover studies investigating whether practicing role-play in educational settings has consequences for clinical practice.
Conclusion: Based on this current review, role-playing in supervised groups seems to promote reflection and insight not only for students in the patient and therapist roles, but also for peers observing the group sessions. According to the included studies, clinical role-play facilitates helper–user equality and increases students’ involvement, self-efficacy, and empathic abilities in mental health practice.
Introduction
In mental health education students practice skills in a safe environment in order to become safe, predictable and competent practitioners. However, students are likely to have conflicting experiences as they move between the classroom and practice in terms of understanding the user’s experience and trying out skills they have learned. 1 – 3 It has been emphasized for decades that the development of phenomenological understanding and therapeutic attitude is best achieved through practice-based training in groups, eg, Rogers. 4 Group-based reflection in learning therapeutic communication skills may be implemented through teaching formats, such as simulation techniques, role-play and reflective practice. Below we discuss briefly some aspects of these formats with emphasis on hallmarks and differences.
Simulation techniques
Simulation involves performing a role in an interaction, either through roleplaying or by using a professional, trained standardized patient. 5 The idea of using standardized and simulated patients originally came from the neurologist Howard Barrows. 5 , 6 Barrows defined a “simulated patient” as a regular person who has been trained to present symptoms and signs of a particular diagnosis. 5 , 7 The Researchers in Clinical Skills Assessment defined a “standardized patient” as a person with or without a certain disease who has been trained to describe either their own problems or those based on observations of other patients. 5 , 8 In role-plays, students play the role of a patient they have met, thus exploring attitudes and feelings as part of professional development. 5 At the part-time continuous education program of mental health care at Molde University College, supervised reflection groups, which include clinical role-play and joint clinical reflections on the actual role-play, have been an important part of the education for 20 years. Students bring anonymized case descriptions of patients from their daily work in mental health care to their reflection group and practice psychotherapeutic communication approaches by the use of clinical role-play, clinical reflection and supervision. The student who brings the case role-plays the patient, and fellow students role-play the therapist and other members of the patient’s social network ( Table 1 ).
Note: a Person trained to describe own problems or problems based on observations of others role-play the patient (standardized patient) or person trained to present symptoms of particular diagnosis role-play the patient (simulated patient).
These simulation techniques share important similarities, but there are also major differences. The main differences are the role the student takes in the interaction, whether reflection is used as a significant part of the simulation, and whether practicing psychotherapeutic communication approaches are essential in the role-play.
As mentioned before, students are likely to have conflicting experiences as they move between class and practice. 1 , 9 This study will focus on role-play, which is one of the most established forms of simulation and has been used for decades in teaching students clinical skills. 1 , 3 , 10 For almost 100 years, reflective thinking has been described as a continuous assessment of knowledge .11 Yet, there seem to be few studies that investigate methods combining reflection and role-play in teaching mental health, and whether doing so, bridges the gap between knowledge from class and practice.
Guided role-play in teaching therapeutic skills
The use of role-play in mental health education allows students to become active participants and at the core of their learning. 1 Because textbook descriptions cannot adequately communicate what it feels like to be disturbed or in conflict, Scheffler 10 , 12 introduced a method for teaching the interview of a psychiatric patient in early 1970s. Students played the roles of both the client and the interviewer. At that time, students in training were normally asked to identify with the role of the professional, and it was unusual to ask students to role-play the client. In Scheffler’s model, students were assigned roles that involved doing a subjective selection of the characteristics of a specific diagnosis and explaining and enacting the selection in role-play. The method was successful in decreasing students’ anxiety, enabling them better to understand concepts and skills and enhancing identification with the client. 10 , 12 Martin and Kahn 13 also described a method whereby the students role-played patients and doctors during simulated medical interviews. They indicated that this approach helped students increase their insight into patients’ behaviors and doctors’ common reactions. Wasylko and Stickley 14 described experiences with the use of role-play in the education of psychiatric nurses. They argued for more drama in education because it equalized the position of participants, teachers and students and promoted empathetic understanding between all participants. They also believed that it could be a valuable tool for the development of empathy and reflective practice. Saeterstrand 15 outlined how role-play prepared nursing students for mental health practice. Role-play prepared students for difficult situations that could arise in the clinic, and students switched from an individual- and symptom-oriented focus to one on interpersonal relationships. In addition, they became familiar with their own reactions and vulnerabilities. This practice relates to the humanistic and person-centered philosophy of Carl Rogers. 16 Rogers believed in the individual’s power for healing and learning. Role-play enhances and facilitates personal and professional growth as it increases students’ ability to learn what it is like to be in others’ shoes and, through that experience, develops empathy and reflection. As a result of this kind of learning, the student develops greater capacity for treating others with the respect and understanding required in mental health care. 1
Reflective practice
There are different definitions of reflection. Dewey 11 promoted the concept of reflective thinking in the first half of the 20th century and described it as an active, continuous and careful assessment of any belief or form of knowledge in the light of the justification and conclusion that supports the belief or knowledge. 17 Mann, Gordon and MacLeod 17 emphasized that models for reflection include critical reflection on experiences and practices that show the need for more learning. As professional identity evolves, reflection can help integrate different forms of learning that require professional understanding and perspective, and that value the professional culture. Integrated knowledge depends on an active approach to develop new understanding and new knowledge to add to existing knowledge. Reflection helps a professional to become more self-regulated, conscious and self-critical. 17 Schön 18 defined clinical reflection related to action as “reflection-in-action,” whereby students reflect on their own experiences during clinical practice and then, after the clinical experience, reflect on the actions they took, critically examining what they did and learned, or what worked and what did not work.
A preliminary search of the literature showed that simulation techniques are highly important in clinical studies, and there were quite a few studies on the use of standardized patient and simulation. However, there was less, or hardly any, research on the use of role-play coupled with subsequent reflection for practicing psychotherapeutic communication skills. Based on the positive experiences at Molde University College and the scarcity of publications on this approach, we conducted an integrative review of the literature with the following research questions:
- Have previous empirical studies evaluated similar methods of teaching?
- Does clinical role-play have a positive effect on students’ development of therapeutic or communicative skills?
- Does role-playing the patient has a positive impact on therapeutic skills and clinical reflections?
An integrative review was chosen because we wanted to scrutinize the literature for findings from both qualitative and quantitative research. This type of review is important in evidence-based practice as it invites investigating different aspects of a phenomenon by including different methods. 19 We used the five stages of review that Whittemore and Knafl 19 recommended for integrative reviews: 1) problem identification, 2) literature search, 3) data evaluation, 4) data analysis, and 5) presentation in the traditional introduction-method-results-discussion structure. “Problem identification” is presented in the introduction and method sections, “Literature search” in the method section, “Data evaluation” in the results section, and “Data analysis” and “Presentation” in the discussion section. In addition, the process of the review, including the identification and selection process, was based on the PRISMA statement and the PRISMA flow chart. 20
Problem identification
Scheffler, 12 Martin and Kahn 13 and McNaughton et al 5 emphasized the importance of students role-playing the patient to help them explore attitudes and feelings as part of their professional development. The recognition of attitudes and feelings following role-plays seems similar to Dewey’s 11 , Schön’s 18 and Mann and colleagues’ 17 definitions of reflection. Hence, we found it natural to combine clinical role-play and clinical reflection as research aims for this review. Because there are different therapeutic and communicative approaches, we included empirical research that investigated the teaching of therapeutic communication skills that aimed to help persons with mental health problems.
The inclusion criteria were that the studies had to report empirical results from 1) the educational use of role-play and subsequent clinical reflection, 2) within the context of training therapeutic communication skills and 3) for university students studying mental health on at least the bachelor’s level.
The review excluded articles that were not empirical research articles; investigated “standardized patients”; did not address teaching mental health; investigated simulation using manikins or avatars; did not investigate clinical role-play; investigated just reflection; investigated role-play, but failed to include reflection; and investigated simulation due to physical symptoms (see Table 2 in data evaluation).
Number and reason for excluded full-text articles
Note: a Studied simulation to recognize physical symptoms, did not investigate role-play, investigated role-play with students’ role-playing patient role, but failed to include its impact on clinical reflection.
Literature search
Papers in English or Scandinavian languages were included. Literature on standardized patient and classic simulation, as defined in the introduction, were excluded, as were studies investigating role-playing without focusing on reflection.
To find as many studies as possible, there were no limitations concerning research methods used in the studies. It was also desirable to find research that was as new as possible, but, because research seemed to be scarce on the subject, there were no limitations on the year of the studies. Systematic searches of literature were done in Ovid (Medline, PsycInfo), Cinahl, Cochrane, ScienceDirect, Swemed, Norart, Proquest and Google Scholar with the following keywords, in different combinations (see Figure 1 ): mental health, mental health nursing, psychiatry, student, teaching, training, education, supervision, guidance, reflection, reflection group, role-play, drama, meaning, outcome, effect, percept, experience, learning, therapeutic skills, helping skills, psychotherapy, and therapy. The searches were done between April 2016 and April 2018. We conducted an update on October 1, 2018.
Literature search a
Notes: a Example on search done in Ovid. Limits: peer-reviewed; 1860 to current; English or Scandinavian language.
Data evaluation
A total of 1,505 articles were retrieved in the literature searches, of these, 24 were excluded due to duplication. Three articles were identified by hand searches by checking the reference lists of the full-text articles. The first author did the first stage of analysis by evaluating titles and abstracts of 1,484 articles. In cases of doubt, she consulted the second author for a joint decision. A total of 1,442 articles were excluded because they covered neither reflection in teaching mental health care or therapeutic approaches nor the use of role-play and reflection. In Stage 2, the first and second authors did an independent evaluation of 42 full-text articles. Consensus decision yielded 15 articles to be scrutinized, organized and coded in a literature matrix. They were categorized according to country of origin, purpose of the study, method, participants, results and conclusion. In addition, a decision was made on whether they presented role-play and clinical reflection in teaching or learning therapeutic skills for university students. The further analysis (Stage 3) was done in three steps based on independent assessments of inclusion by the first and second author and consensus decision in case of disagreement. First, studies investigating reflection were sorted into one group (n=3) and the use of role-play in teaching therapeutic skills in mental health care (n=12) in another. Second, studies that investigated role-play were divided into two groups: role-play using other than students in the patient role (n=5) and role-plays with students in the patient role (n=7). Finally, studies investigating the effect of role-playing on both the therapist and patient in the context of learning therapeutic communication skills and students’ reflections (n=4) were analyzed by the use of a final literature matrix Figure 2 , Tables 2 and and3 3 ).
Included studies a
Note: a Studies that met the following inclusion criteria: pedagogical clinical role-play students played both client and clinician, clinical reflection, training therapeutic skills, university students.
Identification and selection process based on the PRISMA flow chart. Adapted from Moher D, Liberati A, Tetzlaff J, Altman DG, The PRISMA Group. Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement. PLoS Med. 2009;6(7).20
The systematic literature search provided 42 full-text articles that were scrutinized (see Figure 2 ). Four articles met the inclusion criteria (see Table 3 ) and 38 were excluded (see Table 2 ). The origin of the included studies was one from Norway, 21 one from Australia 22 and two from the USA. 23 , 24 The studies were published between 1993 24 and 2016. 23 Two of the studies used quantitative methods 22 , 24 and two used qualitative methods. 21 , 23 The number of participants varied from 31 24 to 107 participants. 22 Three of the four studies incorporated written surveys or questionnaires, 22 – 24 the fourth one conducted focus group interviews 21 (see Table 3 ). The included articles covered four topics: role-playing in learning helping skills, a role-play-based approach to teach clinical communication, role-play activities concerning auditory hallucinations, and the use of role-play to teach psychiatric interviews.
Role-playing in learning helping skills
Guttormsen, Hoifodt, Silvola and Burkeland 21 investigated whether the course “First aid in case of suicide,” where role-play was an important method of teaching, was suitable for medical students. Forty-seven (62%) of 76 students who participated in the course were interviewed in focus groups consisting of 2–12 students. The participants said that they were more prepared to help persons in danger of suicide after the course. They expressed that trying out important knowledge in role-plays increased their understanding and raised awareness about their own feelings. This improved their professional self-efficacy. Participants in the study reported it was useful to practice specific situations and receive direct feedback on their skills. They experienced important learning both when practicing helping a person in danger of suicide and when role-playing the person in suicidal danger. The participants found it useful taking on the patient’s situation and thus getting familiar with emotional reactions that occurred in the situation of the role-play. 21
A role-play-based approach to teach clinical communication
Using an evaluation questionnaire, King, Hill and Gleason 22 evaluated a new role-play-based approach to teaching clinical knowledge and communication in mental health for medical students. The role-play-based learning (RBL) method contained a batch of teaching modules that each included the narrative of a patient and guidelines for the facilitator. The students received scenarios for the patient, relative or corresponding health professional a week ahead of the session. The students role-played both the doctor and the patient roles. After the role-play, there was a group discussion and a feedback session. In total, 130 medical students from three educational institutions received the questionnaire. The questionnaire asked about the number of sessions attended and then asked the participants to respond to a selection of statements using a five-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree ; 5 = strongly agree ). Finally, the students were asked five open-ended questions and two structured questions. A total of 107 students (79%) completed the questionnaire. They had attended an average of 5.4 of the 6 sessions. The participants were positive about the features of the sessions and found them engaging, informative and relevant. Their experiences in the role-plays were evaluated as challenging but valuable. They reported that by experiencing the patient role, they developed greater understanding of the patient’s point of view. Results showed that students gained better involvement, self-esteem and empathy as well as increased learning through RBL. It was also good preparation for practice and exams. The results also indicated that RBLis unique and flexible and could be used in other disciplines as well. In addition, it is cost-effective and safe. 22
Role-play activities concerning auditory hallucinations
Fossen and Stoeckel 23 investigated bachelor nursing (BSN) students’ personal experiences of hearing voices through simulation and role-play activities related to this. The study used an interpretive phenomenological approach and data were collected through written surveys replied to by 40 BSN students in their first mental health didactic course. The intervention of the study was a hearing-voices simulation package and role-play activities developed by one of the researchers. It consisted of 1) an orientation to the hearing voices package, 2) participation in the simulation, 3) participation in role-plays, 4) a debriefing session and, finally, 5) written surveys. During the simulation, the participants wore headphones and experienced an imitation of hearing voices while they completed different tasks. In the role-play session, a student experiencing hearing voices was admitted to the emergency unit for evaluation. The participants worked in pairs with one playing the role of a nurse, and the other, the role of a person experiencing auditory hallucinations. In the debriefing after the role-play, students could ask questions and receive answers. Finally, data for the study were collected through surveys. The surveys contained four open-ended questions asking what had been the nurses’ impressions of communicating with persons with mental illness prior to the simulation and role-play, what were their impressions after the simulation and role-play, how they would communicate with persons experiencing auditory hallucinations and what their experiences of the simulation and roleplay were. In advance of the study, the students had reported that they were anxious and unsure about communicating with people hearing voices. After the simulation and role-plays, they felt safer and gained new understandings and attitudes about communicating with patients who hear voices. Students explained how acknowledgment of a person hearing voices changed their way of communicating. They also explained how their perspectives changed as a result of the simulation and role-play and that they gained more empathy and respect for patients with mental illness. 23
The use of role-play to teach psychiatric interviews
Wolff and Miller 24 described and discussed role-playing techniques for teaching psychiatric interviews where medical students performed different roles, including the patient role. They then conducted a quantitative study whereby a survey was designed and distributed to students who had participated in role-playing exercises. Third-year medical students in their clinical psychiatry rotation at an inpatient unit met with the ward’s physician once a week for supervision and instruction. During the first meetings, they used role-playing to learn the patient interview. The physician set the roles and started by taking the role of the patient. After 10 mins they changed roles and one of the students was given the opportunity to play the patient. At the end of the meeting, they stopped the interview and discussed the session. A survey was designed and distributed to 46 students: 31 (68%) replied to the survey. Of the 31 responses, 71% felt that the experience had made them more aware of patients’ feelings, and 90% indicated that the role-play had made them more aware of their own feelings; 84% felt that the experience could be used in other rotations; 94% used the skills learned during their rotations and 74% said they could utilize the skills in other rotations. The students felt that the interviewer role was more difficult to portray than the patient role, but that the exercise was a good method for teaching interviews. The results signify that for those students who replied to the survey, the role-playing was considered useful. The students found they were better at understanding their own and patients’ feelings. The results also showed that the skills could be beneficial in other medical school rotations as well. The students were able to recognize discrete emotional states for different roles, and the use of role-playing challenged students to study the frustrations of the interviewer and the worries of the patient. In overcoming students’ anxieties regarding interviews, it helped them become more empathic and effective in facilitating the doctor–patient relationship. 24
The purposes of the included studies were slightly dissimilar. Three of the studies investigated role-play as an approach and technique of teaching, while the last investigated the students’ experience with role-play as a learning activity. Despite the aims of the studies were a little different, the results seemed to match. All of the studies report that students developed their attitudes and therapeutic understanding, and that the use of role-play increased the students’ learning. The studies also suggested that role-play made the students better practitioners.
As mentioned above, an important goal in mental health education is for students to develop their ability to provide care and help people with different degrees of mental problems and disorders. That there seem to be different approaches to achieve this inspired us to do an integrative review of the literature to analyze empirical findings on the use of role-play with subsequent reflection on developing psychotherapeutic attitudes and skills. The results suggest that role-play enhances students’ therapeutic and communicative skills. Nevertheless, there is limited research on the use of role-play in teaching therapeutic skills and few studies that investigate how role-play affects students’ reflections on own practice. The literature search also did not discover studies investigating whether practicing role-play in educational settings has consequences for clinical practice.
The preliminary literature search found some studies that had investigated the effect and outcomes of therapeutic skills training, but not its influence on reflection. 25 – 27 There seems to be scarce research on the benefits of fellow students participating in reflections and feedback following a role-play. In this review, studies exploring role-plays with students in both the role of the therapist and the patient were included. It was interesting to discover that from all the full-text articles considered, only studies investigating role-plays where student played both roles had findings related to the development of students’ reflections.
According to two of the studies, it looks like role-play has the potential to enhance students’ therapeutic and communicative skills, eg, Guttormsen et al; King et al. 21 , 22 Students seem to experience important learning by putting themselves in the patient’s position and, by that, discovering their own reactions to the situation. 21 , 23 In addition, students appear to become more empathic and better at understanding their own and their patients’ feelings through the use of role-play. 22 , 24 Experiences from role-play seem to increase students’ reflections on their own practice and those reflections naturally affect how they approach others. 21 – 24 So, how would role-play and subsequent reflection affect students’ clinical practice? In what ways would patients notice changes in a health professional after RBLcompared to one without this experience? When students get the opportunity to “perceive” a patient’s situation, it may be an important doorway to familiarizing themselves with other persons’ experiences. On the other hand, some students may be blinded by their own experience from a role-play and lose or overlook others’ experiences. Dewey 11 described reflective thinking as an active, continuous and careful assessment of knowledge. Mann et al 17 described reflection as an active approach to developing new understanding to existing knowledge. All of the studies included in this review investigated role-playing from the position of both therapist and patient. Still, none of the studies reported students’ reflections as described by Dewey and Mann and colleagues. 11 , 17 Despite that results showed that students’ reflection increased through role-playing and that students became more confident and better at communicating with patients after having experiences from this educational intervention.
A role-play-based reflection model developed at Molde University College was briefly presented in the introduction of this article. One main difference between that model and the ones investigated in the studies of this review is that instead of practicing procedures and daily clinical assessments, the aim of our approach is to apply clinical communication from basic principles of four psychotherapeutic perspectives. By learning more than one psychotherapeutic perspective, the students obtain a wider understanding of the other and the interaction between them. The students are advised to use more than one psychotherapeutic perspective, particularly when one perspective fails to establish and secure a growth-oriented relationship. Other differences are that our training is continuous over 2 years and that it is required that the student role-playing the patient actually is well acquainted with the actual patient.
In this review only studies investigating role-plays where students played both the therapist and the patient role were included. The findings indicate that students seem to experience important learning and appear to be more empathic by putting themselves in the patient’s position. Mental health care education that incorporates role-playing should give students the opportunity to experience and understand a patient by testing the patient role. By role-playing a patient already known to the student, it becomes easier for the student to come close to the other person’s views, perceptions and emotions. This may inform his or her understanding and capacity to help the other person. It is our experience that by learning different therapeutic perspectives it is more likely that students develop therapeutic flexibility.
The literature search in this review did not provide any research on models like the clinical supervision model at Molde University College. In general, research on the use of clinical role-play and clinical reflection seems limited. There might be different reasons for that. It could be that this method of teaching is rare. Another explanation could be that this model of teaching is so common that none ever cared to do research on it.
The most obvious suggestion for future research is to increase the number of studies. There are enormous human and financial resources invested in mental health education. We would be surprised if the scarcity of research on role-play reflects the real picture of what goes on in this type of education. Hence, our first suggestion is to conduct descriptive research on the presence and rates of this educational approach. Moving to another research design, controlled studies with monitoring of the effect of role-play are called upon. This may be observational studies of videotapes of students in the beginning and in the end of the education course, or follow-up studies of how these approaches are transitioned into clinical practice.
Limitations
Limitations of the retrieved studies.
Even though results found that students did reflect differently after they had experienced RBL, none of the retrieved studies aimed specifically to investigate how role-play affected students’ reflection. Three of the articles did not demonstrate how the role-plays were acted out; only Wolff and Miller 24 had excerpts of role-play in the article.
Fossen and Stoeckel 23 collected data after the students had been debriefed with one of the researchers following the role-plays. This could have affected the results. The use of surveys could have biased the data saturation since they did not get the chance to ask follow-up questions like an interview design would allow for. On the other hand, collecting open-ended-questions data from 40 informants yielded a larger sample than one usually finds in qualitative interviews. Finally, there was no information concerning drop-outs.
Guttormsen and colleagues 21 interviewed students in focus groups to gather data for the study. However, the dynamics in the group may have affected the findings. Some may have had a stronger position than others in the group, and this could have influenced what the students said. The fact that one of the interviewers was the students’ teacher may also have caused bias. These limitations were all mentioned in the article. In addition, the themes of the interview guide were inadequately described in the article, and this hampers interpretability and complicates the assessment of the internal validity of the study.
Wolff and Miller 24 emphasized the limitation that only 67% of the students responded to the survey. In addition, since the students did not have an alternative method of learning and there was no control group, lack of comparability complicates the evaluation. The fact that only descriptive statistics were used reduces the quality of this research.
King, Hill and Gleason 22 collected questionnaire data from 107 of 130 students completing psychiatric rotation. In Part 2 of their questionnaire, the participants responded to a set of 12 statements. Ten statements were about RBL, one about problem-based learning (PBL) and one about whether the student preferred topic lectures rather than role-playing. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of internal consistency for all 12 items was 0.81. Since the questionnaire had more than one category (RBL, PBL and topic lectures), it may not be reliable to report alpha for Part 2 of the test as a whole. The large number of questions would also increase the value of alpha. 28 They presented results that show that respondents were positive about all items of RBL compared to PBL. However, they rated many more items of the RBL than for PBL. If they had rated the same number of items of RBL and PBL, the results could perhaps have been different.
Limitations of the integrative review
The literature search provided few studies that investigated the use of clinical role-play in the development of therapeutic skills, reflection and understanding. A reason for the scarcity of results could be that we should have used other key words or other relevant databases that we did consider. Another limitation could be that only one researcher reviewed the titles and abstracts, so that important findings could have been missed at that stage. An additional limitation could be that we used similar pedagogical methods, which could have affected the data analysis. An asset in using integrative review is that the approach allows for a mix of different methodologies. The mix of methods in an integrative review has the potential to result in a comprehensive description of complex approaches and important theories thus providing a broader picture of a phenomenon, which can be valuable in evidence-based practice. However, the combination of different methods increases the risk of failure and requires a systematic and well-formulated approach to the data analysis. 19 To avoid this limitation, we used the five stages of review that Whittemore and Knafl recommended for integrative reviews.
The aim of this integrative review was to investigate how clinical role-play influenced students’ development of therapeutic communication skills and clinical reflection. We only found four studies meeting our inclusion criteria. However, this review illuminates pedagogical processes with role-playing, supervision and reflection in the development of therapeutic, professional and interpersonal competence. Role-playing in supervised groups seems to promote reflection and insight not only for students in the patient and therapist roles, but also for peers observing the group sessions. According to the included studies, clinical role-play facilitates helper-user equality and increases students’ involvement, self-efficacy and empathic abilities in mental health practice. Further research is called for concerning mental health nursing students’ experiences with role-playing both the therapist and patient roles. It would be especially important to investigate this in the context of learning psychotherapeutic approaches and their possible impact on students’ development of clinical reflection and practical skills.
Acknowledgment
We declare that we had no funding for this research.
The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.
Essays on Role-playing
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Designing Role-Plays Games To Improve Students Learning Dissertation Methodology Examples
Methodology
Research Questions Will the strategy of designing role-playing games in the history class be an effective strategy to improve the students’ performance? What will be the expected average improvement of the improvised strategy? How will the students perceive the new learning method? How will we ensure that the students did not improve their mean score through other factors? How will we validate the results for credibility? Hypothesis HA: Group A will perform better than group B with SSL English students improving their mean grade at the end of the fall.
Hypothesis B: Group B will perform averagely but slightly lower than Group B.
The Use of Roll Play in The Class Room
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Published: Nov 15, 2018
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Literacy Skills in Role Play
Role play used to help bullying.
- Role-play is the acting out of the part of a person or character, this can be done when you're pretending to be another person and using your imagination to speak, think and even feel like that character. Role play is important for children to improve their social development as it encourages friendship through listening, cooperation and taking turns with one another.
- Role play is a fantastic way for children to stimulate their imaginations and enhance their social development. Moreover, empathy is encouraged when role play situations are in the class room, as it is good to understand and share their feelings with each other. It is also good When children set the context and in order for the teachers to support the learning and gently observe the children. The intellectual and social development of a child is very crucial as it plays a very big part in the growth of both thought and languages. (Wright2016).
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How do you write a role play essay?
Writing a play, a novel, a poem or a screenplay all involve different specific methods or techniques. But all of them require some imagination and the creation of a tale from either facts or fiction. In all cases, imagining ones self in the story, or actually participating in enacting it are types of role playing.
So, start with a character - they can be like you or like someone you admire, or even someone you despise. Then put them in a situation - it may be very imaginative, or commonplace. Then start to write what you think they would do next... and next... and next... and so on, in a manner consistent with their character.
A conclusion is more satisfying to a reader, but it is not necessary simply for the exercise in creating a role-play scenario.
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Role of play in children Expository Essay
Children are known to select increasingly demanding physical play as they continue to grow before they reach adulthood. Child plays give them a greater opportunity to develop muscle control and coordination. At the ages of between eight to twelve years, boundless amounts of energy and enthusiasm are hallmarks of their play.
It is thus common to find children in this age group enjoying running, tumbling, climbing on jungle gyms, and swinging. As the kids grow in motor skills and confidence, they begin more advanced forms of play such as roller skating, skipping rope, skate boarding, and throwing and catching. The increased physical abilities of children and coupled with their improved coordination also allows them to participate in team sports and other organized activities in which their physical ability affects the outcome of the games.
Play helps children develop important mental concepts. It is through play that children learn the meaning of important concepts such as ‘up’ and ‘down’, ‘hard’ and ‘soft’. Play also contributed to a child’s knowledge of building and arranging things in sets. Children actually learn to sort, classify, and probe several issues concerning their growth and development.
Play is actually important even as a child grows during the later childhood years. At the age when children reach grade 4 to 5, vigorous play is still important. Children of this age group vary widely. These children vary in size, interests, activities, and abilities. These differences actually influence every aspect of their development.
Child plays are important because they help children participate in events and activities that they have seen other people participate in. playing outdoor games also helps children to learn to sense differences in their world as the season changes and as they observe other subtle changes in their environment every day.
The emulation of different activities and events are actually in line with Piagetian and Vygotskian theories of play. For instance, there is a certain game that requires the player, who is a child, to act as a fire fighter. The child will put on a rain coat and a firefighter’s hat.
He then rushes to rescue his teddy bear from the pretend flames in his play house. The child is practicing what he has previously learned about firefighters. This situation actually supports Vygotskian theory. Thus, children will always practice whatever they have learned in certain aspects of life thereby constructing new knowledge. It is therefore clear that play has a valuable role in the early childhood classroom (Mayesky 2009).
A child gains an understanding of his or her environment as he or she investigates stones, grass, flower, earth, water, and anything else. Through these experiences, the child eventually begins to make their own generalizations. For instance, they learn that adding water to earth makes mud, a paddle of water disappears in sand and the inner part of a milkweed pod blows away in the wind.
They also learn simple logics such as the fact that wet socks can be dried out in the sun. Also, as children play, they develop spatial concepts because they climb in, over, and around the big box in the yard. Children learn how to clarify concepts of ‘in’, ‘over’, and ‘around’. There are still many other reasons to support child play. Playing is important to any child as long as the kind of play is acceptable and relevant according to the adult’s perspective (John 1996).
Reference List
John, M. (1996). Children in Charge: The Child’s Right to a Fair Hearing. Bloomington: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Mayesky, M. (2009). Creative Activities for Young Children. Artamon: Cengage Learning.
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IvyPanda. (2018, September 20). Role of play in children. https://ivypanda.com/essays/role-of-play-in-children/
"Role of play in children." IvyPanda , 20 Sept. 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/role-of-play-in-children/.
IvyPanda . (2018) 'Role of play in children'. 20 September.
IvyPanda . 2018. "Role of play in children." September 20, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/role-of-play-in-children/.
1. IvyPanda . "Role of play in children." September 20, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/role-of-play-in-children/.
Bibliography
IvyPanda . "Role of play in children." September 20, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/role-of-play-in-children/.
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Essay: Role Playing Games
In my other life, I’ve been thinking about digital media, computer games, and archaeology of contemporary American culture. These musing may be why Evan Higgins’s essay, “Role Playing Games” resonated with me.
It also happens to be a very fine essay that appears in NDQ 87.1/2.
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Role Playing Games
I grew up watching video games, not playing them. I’m the youngest of four—“the baby.” This meant a lot of things when I was little, but at the age of four, it mainly meant I wasn’t allowed near the video game console unless my older siblings were around. My sister, Chloe, is the eldest child in my family and the only girl. My early memories of her are indelibly tied to video games. They center on watching her play the original Sonic the Hedgehog game and its poetically named sequel, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 . These games were some of the few we owned for our first console, the Sega Genesis. We spent hours with them.
My childhood family room was roughly rectangular and could comfortably fit our family of six. It had cream-colored walls, off-white carpet, and centered on a turquoise mantelpiece. On one of the walls adjacent to the mantelpiece was a patterned beige, red, and green couch. On the other wall sat the TV, ensconced safely in its forest green cabinet. Attached to it was the plastic black console that introduced my family to video games. We aptly referred to it as “the Genesis.” In winter, my brothers and I watched my sister play the Genesis while gathered around a matte-black space heater. In summer, we laid on our backs trying to catch rays of sun shot into the room through the skylight.
On screen, Sonic careened over the 16-bit landscape of tropical islands, underwater caverns, and industrial wastelands. Speed was (and is) Sonic’s selling point, as opposed to Super Mario’s jumping ability. His early games showcased a frenetic world alive with neon joy. The safety I felt in these moments is hard to explain.
Video games were a family activity back then. When my brother Brandon bought a hand-held Gameboy Color a couple of years later, I stuffed myself into the crevice between the couch and the wall to get the best view. Boxed in, with the minuscule screen taking up my vision, I lost myself in the world of whatever game he was playing.
I think video games were something of a refuge for my sister as well. Growing up, Chloe was a tomboy with black girl hair and a white mother who couldn’t manage it. She is beautiful, but during her adolescence, her good looks were hidden under acne and chicken pox scars. She was stylish and goofy but also awkward and sulky. Of all the siblings in my multiracial family, she had the hardest time being “mixed.”
With four siblings spaced evenly over eight years, each of us experienced a different stage of our school system’s progressing attitudes toward multiracial kids. Chloe, eight years my senior, was never at home with either white or black classmates; she instead found solace in a Southeast Asian-American clique. Brandon, five years older than me, spent much of his teens bouncing back-and-forth between black and white friends, failing to find a space for himself until late in high school. But by the time Ariel, who is two years older than me, and I reached high school, we were able to cross racial lines at ease. We hung out with various demographics separately, together, or not at all. This path wasn’t available to my sister less than a decade before. Her route through school was much more difficult due to its absence.
All this didn’t matter when she turned on the Genesis.In these worlds, she wasn’t just someone else; she was someone with power, purpose, and poise. Part of what makes video games so alluring is their ability to let us inhabit characters who change the world around them, rather than the reverse we’re so used to. And though she bared little resemblance to the super-powered hedgehog, when she picked up the controller she was him—a reflection in electric blue and 90s ‘tude. That is, until our mom called “dinner” and the Genesis went off. Then the spell was broken. She was back to being herself, surrounded by obnoxious brothers, bemused classmates, and desperately trying parents.
By the time Chloe entered high school, she’d “aged out” of video games. Whatever sort of power they held for her was gone. I remember feeling this loss acutely. No more than six or seven, I requested she play Sonic over and over again—but she wouldn’t. Even as a child, as the baby, I felt viscerally her having moved on.
I think I wanted her to keep playing games so desperately because I saw in her a version of the skillful gamer I hoped to become. I think she stopped playing them when she could no longer see a version of herself on the screen. As I started playing video games over the next few years—rather than just watching them—I also struggled to recognize myself in the protagonists I controlled on screen. Eventually, I caught a glimmer during my own teen angst. This recognition gave me strength when I’ve never felt more powerless and isolated.
In 2001, after moving into a new house on the outskirts of my leafy, suburban hometown outside Washington, DC, my dad’s company moved out west to California. Over the next five years he struggled to maintain work, as I matriculated to the same high school Chloe attended almost a decade before, Watkins Mill. But where she had found a school without a place for her, the version of Watkins Mill I entered was open to ambiguity.
I hung out with friend groups of varying backgrounds while there: One centered around our black plurality football team, another on the white majority lacrosse team, while others were too vague in origin to categorize. These groups were diverse in their own right, but more importantly, they intertwined. They sat together at lunch, hooked up, hosted and attended the same parties. It was far from a utopia for mixed-race (or POC in general)—I was called out regularly by classmates for being too “white” or too “black,” for instance—but overall my diverse heritage opened more pathways for friendships than it closed at Watkins Mill.
During the same span of years, I fell in and out of video game series. Moments of pure joy stand out: Racing my brothers in Mario Kart 64 during endless snow days, naming my rival in Pokémon Silver after my best friend, controlling the mute protagonist of Grand Theft Auto III for the first time at a sleepover. But I never thought of myself as a “gamer,” that term used to erect a barrier as often as to establish a bond. That changed when, after my first two years at Watkins Mill High School, my family moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, for my father’s work. It wasn’t until I left Watkins Mill that I realized how progressive the school was.
A former boss at a summer job in Charlotte told me the city adopted the slogan “Gateway to the New South” in the 1980s. I can’t verify this, but I think it’s apt for the rapidly expanding version of the city I encountered in the late aughts. Charlotte’s downtown, once purely a commercial district, was then adding apartments, restaurants, and a monorail. I noticed the growing pains as much of the city’s exterior was replanted, even while the roots stubbornly remained. The same was true of the city’s subconscious. During my junior year at Myers Park High School, one of the most affluent public schools in North Carolina, I faced a type of racism that was entirely new to me. At Myers Park, there was a casual but firm assumption that races didn’t mix socially. I imagine it’s akin to what my sister went through in her own time at high school.
I rely on the word ambiguous to describe my looks. I have a rounded nose, medium-sized lips, thick eyebrows and small, almond-shaped eyes set in deep bags hidden by glasses. In the summer, I would fail the Brown Paper Bag Test. The rest of the year, I might pass. I’ve been mistaken for and told that I resemble nearly every race. My classmates during my junior year at Myers Park High School struggled with this ambiguity. Unsurprisingly, I fell in with one of the few racially mixed cliques after several weeks of hiding in the bathroom at lunch to escape the shame of eating alone.
Myers Park, as opposed to Watkins Mill’s single sprawling structure, is laid out like a traditional college campus. Buildings surround a central lawn with dirt pathways and leafy trees that throw off shade. At the top of the quad is the cafeteria. Seating spills out of it in the form of picnic tables. I ate lunch with a multiracial clique of three other students at one of these tables most days for a few months that year. What initially attracted us to one another was our recent transfer status. What kept us together, for a time, was our love of video games.
The leader of our group was a white stoner who moved from outside Asheville, a hippie vacation spot in Appalachia with a not-so-secret opioid problem. I was closest with him, and we thought of ourselves as the intellectuals of the group. At the time this meant talking about the unfairness of “the system” in vague terms. The highlight of our friendship came one afternoon when we got stoned at my house, played Gears of War (a post-apocalyptic game featuring a quartet of brawny bros), and ate Chick-Fil-A that my mom picked up. He spoke often of returning to his brother who was back home with a serious drug addiction, but I think he was secretly relieved to have escaped. And crushed by guilt for feeling this way.
The other two were the serious gamers in our bunch. One of the two described himself as a Filipino-American army brat. He was a pathological liar, though, so it’s hard to say for sure. He made up stories of his father killing people on a whim or his wild threesomes with girls. Then, when tested, he collapsed into rolling belly laughs, neither confirming the stories nor denying them. When he talked about The Legend of Zelda games, a storied high-fantasy adventure series, his eyes lit up with something purer. He reminisced about sailing over the open blue ocean in The Wind Waker or riding a horse across the grassy plains in Majora’s Mask . The absolute freedom of the protagonist must have seemed boundless to this army brat whose life often changed drastically without his input. The independence these games offered was far too sacred for him to embellish or fabricate.
The last boy in our group was an East Asian student who didn’t talk much, I suspect, because of a language barrier. He played more video games than the rest of us combined. He also missed days of school sporadically. Upon his return from these absences, he would inform us he had faked sick to play Tales of Symphonia , Devil May Cry 3 , or another game with similarly dashing heroes for thirty hours on end. He told us about these capers in the cadence of a joke. I wonder now if he was missing school because of something more acute. I certainly was when I pleaded to stay home.
I wish I could say I found in this group a glimpse of those sun-drenched afternoons gathered around the Genesis. I wish I could say our trio formed a second family that spent hours together playing and talking about video games. I wish I could say we stayed bound together though a lack of preciousness around race.
After Thanksgiving Break that year, I arrived at lunch one day to find the East Asian student gone from our table. Two white skater girls were sitting in the places he and I usually occupied.
I looked to the stoner, the one I was closest with. “Hey, man, what’s up?”
“Hey, man,” he sarcastically mimicked as the army brat laughed. The girls stared at me, uninterested.
“Uh, what’re you guys up to?” I asked, on the back foot already. Prior to moving, I was comfortable around girls. That was before I gained weight and lost self-esteem.
“I think we’re just going to hang around…you know,” he responded. By not giving me any information, he provided me with everything I needed to know. I was confused about why this was happening and who these girls were. I was certain I was dismissed.
“Okay, guess I’ll see you around,” I said as I walked away.
After I was a few feet away, the army brat yelled out, “No, you won’t!” The whole table broke into laughter—except the stoner. He looked chagrined. It was pretty mild as far as bullying went but felt all the more brutal for it. I was alone, again, sort of.
I had played and watched games all my life, but my time with these kids expanded the types I was comfortable with. Video games, like every other type of media, have a difficulty curve that results from countless factors, which can be strategic, narrative, dexterity-based, or otherwise. These kids taught me that, like most literacies, video game competency just takes time and patience. They had opened a door even as they locked me out.
Over the next few months, I spent hours in my bedroom immersed in games I had always wanted but had been too intimidated to play. During my junior year of high school, we lived in a temporary single-family house. It was simultaneously new and shabby, with a distinct feeling of having been assembled hastily. My small, dark room above the kitchen had a lone window and was crowded with books, graphic novels, and DVDs. The TV my parents guiltily gave me sat opposite the bed, surrounded by video games and their respective consoles. I found solace in the worlds they allowed me to visit. None more so than that of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic .
Knights of the Old Republic , as its many fans will tell anyone within shouting distance, is the best representation of the Star Wars mythos outside the original trilogy of films. Less talked about is the game’s character creator that allows players to determine the race and gender of its avatar and savior. It’s by no means the first game to do this, but it was the first I played that did. And because of this, it was the first time I controlled a protagonist who looked like me.
The mainstream video game industry, like its television and film counterparts, relies heavily on white, male protagonists. Players who fall outside this singular demographic can easily play dozens of games every year without ever controlling a single character who looks like them. This leaves minority players with a world of stories where characters who resemble them are absent or, worse, clichés and villains.
At the time, I probably would have downplayed how important seeing a heroic version of myself on screen was to my devotion to Knights of the Old Republic . The five different characters I created during my playthroughs, all of which present as black, speak otherwise.
This game was the first to give me a glimpse of a hero who looked like me. It did it at a time when I had never felt less visible. Not unlike my sister, I saw in my avatar all the agency missing from my life. Unlike her, the avatar I used to change the world looked like me. Sure it was a token recognition, but that made it no less heady. I returned again and again, unaware that what drew me to the game was, in part, this soft acknowledgment of myself. Sometimes, seeing is believing.
After a while, I fell in with a larger, more formal group, the Myers Park Rugby team. I joined this club late in the fall after football proved too punishing a sport to play without friends. The Myers Park Rugby team, at that time, was almost entirely white and made up of a mixture of stoners and jocks. I got on well with them but occasionally ran into the racism I noticed elsewhere.
One day, I received a ride home from a match. It was me and three or four of my closest friends from the team inside a weathered minivan borrowed from the driver’s parents. The car was full, and I sat in one of the two middle seats. Outside, we drove past blossoming trees, lush and green in the early spring. As we talked about the match, the subject changed slowly to how things were different up North. The rest of the people in the car were white and raised in Charlotte.
“Well, at my old school, black and white people are friends,” I said. It must have sounded like a dig. I probably meant it as one. Regardless, it confused the driver.
“We’re friends with black people,” he said.
“Yeah, but they hang out together at my old school,” I replied.
“There are black people at some of the parties we go to,” he countered.
“Yeah, but, like, we all sit at the same tables at lunch.”
“Huh,” he responded eventually, “weird.”
And then silence.
“You know I’m black, right?”
More silence.
“Yeah, but not like them,” he finished eventually.
I’ve had a version of this conversation for as long as I can remember. My blackness is not only a constant source of confusion but when asserted, it’s often questioned. Here, though, was a new wrinkle. The driver was claiming he hung out with black people while not wanting to admit he was currently doing just that. This was one of the first times I encountered someone “comfortable” with another race in the abstract but not the actual. Prior to this, I had mostly experienced the reverse.
I don’t remember how this conversation wrapped up. I’m sure I argued back, but I doubt what I said lingered. What surprised me was how divided the driver saw blacks and whites—the respective races of my parents. I shouldn’t have been. This same divide was mirrored on the quad every day at lunch. There were different groups, jocks, stoners, headbangers, etc., but they were mostly sorted along racial lines. That night, after I was dropped off, I fell into a game that showed me a world less hostile to my existence: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas .
The Grand Theft Auto series is one of the few franchises recognizable outside the video game community. This is largely due to its well-deserved, pearl-clutching infamy. San Andreas , the series’ sixth major entry, is both violent and sexist. The game allows you to murder thousands of civilians with little repercussion, as well as play a dating mini-game focused on seducing “girlfriends.” A sample bit of the humor found within is the ability to use a large, purple dildo as a weapon. But when I played it in 2007, it gave me another dose of hope through recognition.
The protagonist of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas , CJ, is a black gangster from a facsimile of Compton, California. He’s newly released from jail, a gangbanger and a murderer. He’s also a devoted family man, a faithful friend, and an anti-drug crusader. He’s the first sympathetic black protagonist I controlled in video games. Sure, Knights of the Old Republic allowed me to choose various characters with the same skin tone as me, but San Andreas is a game where the main character isn’t just darker skinned.
He is black.
During my first playthrough of this game, I lived in a predominantly, white, affluent Southern town; Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas takes place in a gang-controlled replica of Los Angeles. It’s hard to think of two more disparate parts of the country. But I saw in CJ’s unapologetic blackness something of myself. This blackness is reflected throughout his actions. When CJ encounters a cop, he is immediately on edge, filled with the fear that is the legacy of how his people have been treated. When CJ interacts with those who share his struggle, there’s an inherent warmth. It was impossible for me to not recognize myself in these moments.
San Andreas did more, though, than just show me I wasn’t alone. It pointed toward somewhere I couldn’t see myself finding again, somewhere with a place for me.
Around New Year’s Eve of last year, I brought out a Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, a contemporary console of the Genesis my sister played so many years ago. We were in my parent’s new single-family house in Northern Virginia. They moved back to the DC area after four years in Charlotte. This current house is a rental with hardwood floors, yellow walls, and low ceilings. The family room, which is adjacent to the dining room, is bursting with furniture my parents collected as they upsized and downsized over the past decade.
That evening my sister, her husband, and her two little boys were visiting as well as my girlfriend, Kate. I figured the console would calm the stir-crazy kids, who were rebelling after having to sit past the end of dinner. Maybe I also hoped my sister would pick up the controller and start playing. After getting the NES from upstairs, I plugged it into the flat-screen TV over the mantelpiece where new stockings hung, our old ones lost to time and multiple moves.
As I booted up the original Super Mario Bros. , my ploy both worked and failed. Rather than my sister getting up to play, my brother-in-law, Eric, came over to join. We played for about an hour, taking turns, changing cartridges, and teaching the restless kids how to use the controller. They enjoyed watching us play but had none of the same zealous rapt that consumed me when I was their age. My sister also became bored after a few moments of initial recognition and never picked up the controller. She claims she’s lost her ability to play video games, but I wonder if this ageing-out would have happened if she had discovered avatars that more closely resembled her.
There’s a famous reveal that occurs at the end of the original Metroid video game for the NES. After playing through the entire game as an apparent robot, the protagonist Samus Aran removes its helmet to reveal that “it” is a “she.” Of course, Samus is still white with (at the time) red hair, but she’s also recognized as the first major female video game protagonist. She remains one of the few heroines continually at the helm of a AAA series—the big-budget movie equivalent of the video game world.
I wonder what would have happened if my sister had controlled this courageous heroine instead of that blue hedgehog. I wonder if she would have kept playing. I wonder if she would have recognized a portion of herself in Samus. I wonder if this recognition would have shown her she wasn’t powerless. I wonder if this empowerment would have convinced her the world had space in it for her. It had for me.
Evan Higgins is a writer based in Brooklyn. He’s written on interactive projects for major video game studios and indie developers, as well as television companies like HBO. His nonfiction work has been published on Slate and Quartz . He holds a masters in comparative media studies from MIT.
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Study Today
Largest Compilation of Structured Essays and Exams
Essay on Importance of Play for Children and Students
January 21, 2018 by Study Mentor Leave a Comment
Life is vast. Life is complex. Life is sublime. To sail through the complexities of life we always need quality time. In all these hurdles, obstacles of life playing keeps us alive, young. It plays the vital part in our life. Without it life becomes dull, boring.
Play makes us feel enthusiastic about life. When we talk about play the words like revitalization, freshness, rejuvenation comes to our mind. Playing is something that while doing it we find ourselves away from all the hindrances, obstructions and obstacles of life.
Table of Contents
Definition of play in today’s world
Play has been an integral part of human life as playing gives us enthusiasm to enjoy life. The type of play we used to play has been changed throughout the time, but playing has been still a significant part of our life.
The type of playing we used to play included jumping around, hopping and the play which children used to play without any goal or motive just for fun every day. That kind of playing were called free play without observation of anyone. Free plays were unorganized.
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In today’s modern world the cities have become more crowded, the people have become more career oriented, the safety has become a concerning issue and time has been of limited source. Nowadays play includes art lesson, music lesson, sports coaching etc. that boosts confidence and enhances social skills.
The type of playing is no more of free play because it is not about only fun but also about taking steps towards goal. Parents are also preferring this kind of play over free play because it involves physical goods with mental and practical benefits and safety of children.
Play in our modernized world has no age limit. Almost all age group are involved in play.
“Play is the highest form of research” – Albert Einstein
Play as an integral part of childhood
“Play is so integral to childhood that a child who does not have the opportunities to play is cut off from a major portion of childhood.”
As we have mentioned earlier that play holds an important key factor in a child’s life and play no more involves free play. Play with motive is good but free play shapes a child in way more than we can imagine.
Children should indulge free play as it makes them more imaginative, innovative without any pressure and improves brain function as children think, interact, meet, laugh with each other. Playing improves the power to focus.
Playing ameliorates the learning process of a child as it involves most of the brain work with an enjoyable environment. By playing children learn. In our modernized world parents think that education should be the highest priority for their children.
In this cut throat competitive world, they are forgetting the fact that play is the practical way of learning. In a recent study it is found that kids do better learn while they have given recess. Play enhances emotional growth and makes more sociable. It is the main factor for building self-esteem and self-confidence.
“Do not keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play” – Plato
Importance of play for an Adult
“ We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
The above saying holds the truth as most people think that playing is only for children and there should be age limit to play. It is also true that play is a work of child. In our hectic environment to feel young and alive we should bring the child among ourselves. Play makes us enthusiastic and lively by bringing the child in us.
As an adult, people stick to television sets or smartphones to relieve stress. But this is the worst way to relieve ourselves from hectic environment and to have a healthy body as our body needs movement and mind needs cheerfulness. Play is the best way for relaxation and enjoying yourself free from all work and tight schedule.
Playing improves the productivity in work as it stimulates the brain function and builds emotional growth. It is found that most of the companies are also introducing leisure time and indoor plays for their employees.
Play as a key factor for sound health
“A sound mind resides in a sound body.”
A person needs strong body and mind to fulfill the purpose of life. A mentally or physically weak person cannot achieve the goal in life. Life becomes burden for a sick person. Wealth or power cannot make a person happy without mental or physical well being.
Playing increases the power of concentration and tolerance. Playing relieves stress which makes us mentally strong. It builds the immune system strong resistance to diseases.
People do intense workouts to have a sound body. Instead of doing intense workouts playing is far better as it involves pure fun and creativity. As we live in a world of tightly scheduled, workaholic environment to feel stressed and feverish is unavoidable. Playing enhances the ability to withstand the pain.
Playing vital for social and emotional growth
“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”
As human beings are called social beings, we cannot live without being sociable or to live alone. So, it is important for us to be amiable with others. Playing involves activities like meeting, sharing, trusting, interacting, laughing with each other. Be it a child or an adult everyone needs to play as it
involves the above activities which are the main factors for social growth. Fun, laughing, sharing activities makes the relationship bonds stronger. A playful and friendly nature helps to make new friends, to build business relationships. Playing in groups is a practical fun way of group activities which teaches us how to coordinate and leadership qualities.
“Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant.”
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Have you Burn Crackers this Diwali ? Yes No
Should college essays touch on race? Some feel the affirmative action ruling leaves them no choice
CHICAGO (AP) — When she started writing her college essay, Hillary Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. About being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana and growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. About hardship and struggle.
Then she deleted it all.
“I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18-year-old senior at Lincoln Park High School in Chicago. “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.”
When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in higher education, it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions. For many students of color, instantly more was riding on the already high-stakes writing assignment. Some say they felt pressure to exploit their hardships as they competed for a spot on campus.
Amofa was just starting to think about her essay when the court issued its decision, and it left her with a wave of questions. Could she still write about her race? Could she be penalized for it? She wanted to tell colleges about her heritage but she didn’t want to be defined by it.
In English class, Amofa and her classmates read sample essays that all seemed to focus on some trauma or hardship. It left her with the impression she had to write about her life’s hardest moments to show how far she’d come. But she and some of her classmates wondered if their lives had been hard enough to catch the attention of admissions offices.
“For a lot of students, there’s a feeling of, like, having to go through something so horrible to feel worthy of going to school, which is kind of sad,” said Amofa, the daughter of a hospital technician and an Uber driver.
This year’s senior class is the first in decades to navigate college admissions without affirmative action. The Supreme Court upheld the practice in decisions going back to the 1970s, but this court’s conservative supermajority found it is unconstitutional for colleges to give students extra weight because of their race alone.
Still, the decision left room for race to play an indirect role: Chief Justice John Roberts wrote universities can still consider how an applicant’s life was shaped by their race, “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability.”
“A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination,” he wrote.
Scores of colleges responded with new essay prompts asking about students’ backgrounds. Brown University asked applicants how “an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you.” Rice University asked students how their perspectives were shaped by their “background, experiences, upbringing, and/or racial identity.”
WONDERING IF SCHOOLS ‘EXPECT A SOB STORY’
When Darrian Merritt started writing his essay, he knew the stakes were higher than ever because of the court’s decision. His first instinct was to write about events that led to him going to live with his grandmother as a child.
Those were painful memories, but he thought they might play well at schools like Yale, Stanford and Vanderbilt.
“I feel like the admissions committee might expect a sob story or a tragic story,” said Merritt, a senior in Cleveland. “And if you don’t provide that, then maybe they’re not going to feel like you went through enough to deserve having a spot at the university. I wrestled with that a lot.”
He wrote drafts focusing on his childhood, but it never amounted to more than a collection of memories. Eventually he abandoned the idea and aimed for an essay that would stand out for its positivity.
Merritt wrote about a summer camp where he started to feel more comfortable in his own skin. He described embracing his personality and defying his tendency to please others. The essay had humor — it centered on a water gun fight where he had victory in sight but, in a comedic twist, slipped and fell. But the essay also reflects on his feelings of not being “Black enough” and getting made fun of for listening to “white people music.”
“I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to write this for me, and we’re just going to see how it goes,’” he said. “It just felt real, and it felt like an honest story.”
The essay describes a breakthrough as he learned “to take ownership of myself and my future by sharing my true personality with the people I encounter. … I realized that the first chapter of my own story had just been written.”
A RULING PROMPTS PIVOTS ON ESSAY TOPICS
Like many students, Max Decker of Portland, Oregon, had drafted a college essay on one topic, only to change direction after the Supreme Court ruling in June.
Decker initially wrote about his love for video games. In a childhood surrounded by constant change, navigating his parents’ divorce, the games he took from place to place on his Nintendo DS were a source of comfort.
But the essay he submitted to colleges focused on the community he found through Word is Bond, a leadership group for young Black men in Portland.
As the only biracial, Jewish kid with divorced parents in a predominantly white, Christian community, Decker wrote he constantly felt like the odd one out. On a trip with Word is Bond to Capitol Hill, he and friends who looked just like him shook hands with lawmakers. The experience, he wrote, changed how he saw himself.
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“It’s because I’m different that I provide something precious to the world, not the other way around,” he wrote.
As a first-generation college student, Decker thought about the subtle ways his peers seemed to know more about navigating the admissions process. They made sure to get into advanced classes at the start of high school, and they knew how to secure glowing letters of recommendation.
If writing about race would give him a slight edge and show admissions officers a fuller picture of his achievements, he wanted to take that small advantage.
His first memory about race, Decker said, was when he went to get a haircut in elementary school and the barber made rude comments about his curly hair. Until recently, the insecurity that moment created led him to keep his hair buzzed short.
Through Word is Bond, Decker said he found a space to explore his identity as a Black man. It was one of the first times he was surrounded by Black peers and saw Black role models. It filled him with a sense of pride in his identity. No more buzzcut.
The pressure to write about race involved a tradeoff with other important things in his life, Decker said. That included his passion for journalism, like the piece he wrote on efforts to revive a once-thriving Black neighborhood in Portland. In the end, he squeezed in 100 characters about his journalism under the application’s activities section.
“My final essay, it felt true to myself. But the difference between that and my other essay was the fact that it wasn’t the truth that I necessarily wanted to share,” said Decker, whose top college choice is Tulane, in New Orleans, because of the region’s diversity. “It felt like I just had to limit the truth I was sharing to what I feel like the world is expecting of me.”
SPELLING OUT THE IMPACT OF RACE
Before the Supreme Court ruling, it seemed a given to Imani Laird that colleges would consider the ways that race had touched her life. But now, she felt like she had to spell it out.
As she started her essay, she reflected on how she had faced bias or felt overlooked as a Black student in predominantly white spaces.
There was the year in math class when the teacher kept calling her by the name of another Black student. There were the comments that she’d have an easier time getting into college because she was Black.
“I didn’t have it easier because of my race,” said Laird, a senior at Newton South High School in the Boston suburbs who was accepted at Wellesley and Howard University, and is waiting to hear from several Ivy League colleges. “I had stuff I had to overcome.”
In her final essays, she wrote about her grandfather, who served in the military but was denied access to GI Bill benefits because of his race.
She described how discrimination fueled her ambition to excel and pursue a career in public policy.
“So, I never settled for mediocrity,” she wrote. “Regardless of the subject, my goal in class was not just to participate but to excel. Beyond academics, I wanted to excel while remembering what started this motivation in the first place.”
WILL SCHOOLS LOSE RACIAL DIVERSITY?
Amofa used to think affirmative action was only a factor at schools like Harvard and Yale. After the court’s ruling, she was surprised to find that race was taken into account even at some public universities she was applying to.
Now, without affirmative action, she wondered if mostly white schools will become even whiter.
It’s been on her mind as she chooses between Indiana University and the University of Dayton, both of which have relatively few Black students. When she was one of the only Black students in her grade school, she could fall back on her family and Ghanaian friends at church. At college, she worries about loneliness.
“That’s what I’m nervous about,” she said. “Going and just feeling so isolated, even though I’m constantly around people.”
The first drafts of her essay focused on growing up in a low-income family, sharing a bedroom with her brother and grandmother. But it didn’t tell colleges about who she is now, she said.
Her final essay tells how she came to embrace her natural hair. She wrote about going to a mostly white grade school where classmates made jokes about her afro. When her grandmother sent her back with braids or cornrows, they made fun of those too.
Over time, she ignored their insults and found beauty in the styles worn by women in her life. She now runs a business doing braids and other hairstyles in her neighborhood.
“I stopped seeing myself through the lens of the European traditional beauty standards and started seeing myself through the lens that I created,” Amofa wrote.
“Criticism will persist, but it loses its power when you know there’s a crown on your head!”
Ma reported from Portland, Oregon.
The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
The role private equity firms play in newspaper industry layoffs
The news industry got off to a brutal start in 2024 with hundreds of layoffs. And the trend has not let up — nor is it surprising given the last couple of decades.
If you read a local newspaper, chances are you've seen it get smaller over the years, with fewer pages and fewer local reporters filling the pages that are left.
In her book, " Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy " author Margot Susca writes that these changes have been part of a new era of journalism — an era she says needs to end.
Susca will be in Cincinnati for an event April 11 to discuss her book , which examines the last 20 years of American chain newspaper ownership and investment.
She joins Cincinnati Edition to discuss how she says private equity firms are giving newspapers the squeeze and what the next era of journalism could look like.
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New York Takes Crucial Step Toward Making Congestion Pricing a Reality
The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted to approve a new $15 toll to drive into Manhattan. The plan still faces challenges from six lawsuits before it can begin in June.
By Winnie Hu and Ana Ley
New York City completed a crucial final step on Wednesday in a decades-long effort to become the first American city to roll out a comprehensive congestion pricing program, one that aims to push motorists out of their cars and onto mass transit by charging new tolls to drive into Midtown and Lower Manhattan.
The program could start as early as mid-June after the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that will install and manage the program, voted 11-to-1 to approve the final tolling rates, which will charge most passenger cars $15 a day to enter at 60th Street and below in Manhattan. The program is expected to reduce traffic and raise $1 billion annually for public transit improvements.
It was a historic moment for New York’s leaders and transportation advocates after decades of failed attempts to advance congestion pricing even as other gridlocked cities around the world, including London, Stockholm and Singapore, proved that similar programs could reduce traffic and pollution.
While other American cities have introduced related concepts by establishing toll roads or closing streets to traffic, the plan in New York is unmatched in ambition and scale.
Congestion pricing is expected to reduce the number of vehicles that enter Lower Manhattan by about 17 percent, according to a November study by an advisory committee reporting to the M.T.A. The report also said that the total number of miles driven in 28 counties across the region would be reduced.
“This was the right thing to do,” Janno Lieber, the authority’s chairman and chief executive, said after the vote. “New York has more traffic than any place in the United States, and now we’re doing something about it.”
Congestion pricing has long been a hard sell in New York, where many people commute by car from the boroughs outside of Manhattan and the suburbs, in part because some of them do not have access to public transit.
New York State legislators finally approved congestion pricing in 2019 after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo helped push it through. A series of recent breakdowns in the city’s subway system had underscored the need for billions of dollars to update its aging infrastructure.
It has taken another five years to reach the starting line. Before the tolling program can begin, it must be reviewed by the Federal Highway Administration, which is expected to approve it.
Congestion pricing also faces legal challenges from six lawsuits that have been brought by elected officials and residents from across the New York region. Opponents have increasingly mobilized against the program in recent months, citing the cost of the tolls and the potential environmental effects from shifting traffic and pollution to other areas as drivers avoid the tolls.
A court hearing is scheduled for April 3 and 4 on a lawsuit brought by the State of New Jersey, which is seen as the most serious legal challenge. The mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., Mark J. Sokolich, has filed a related lawsuit.
Four more lawsuits have been brought in New York: by Ed Day, the Rockland County executive; by Vito Fossella, the Staten Island borough president, and the United Federation of Teachers; and by two separate groups of city residents.
Amid the litigation, M.T.A. officials have suspended some capital construction projects that were to be paid for by the program, and they said at a committee meeting on Monday that crucial work to modernize subway signals on the A and C lines had been delayed.
Nearly all the toll readers have been installed, and will automatically charge drivers for entering the designated congestion zone at 60th Street or below. There is no toll for leaving the zone or driving around in it. Through traffic on Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive and the West Side Highway will not be tolled.
Under the final tolling structure, which was based on recommendations by the advisory panel, most passenger vehicles will be charged $15 a day from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays, and from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends. The toll will be $24 for small trucks and charter buses, and will rise to $36 for large trucks and tour buses. It will be $7.50 for motorcycles.
Those tolls will be discounted by 75 percent at night, dropping the cost for a passenger vehicle to $3.75.
Fares will go up by $1.25 for taxis and black car services, and by $2.50 for Uber and Lyft. Passengers will be responsible for paying the new fees, and they will be added to every ride that begins, ends or occurs within the congestion zone. There will be no nighttime discounts. (The new fees come on top of an existing congestion surcharge that was imposed on for-hire vehicles in 2019.)
The tolls will mostly be collected using the E-ZPass system. Electronic detection points have been placed at entrances and exits to the tolling zone. Drivers who do not use an E-ZPass will pay significantly higher fees — for instance, $22.50 instead of $15 during peak hours for passenger vehicles.
Emergency vehicles like fire trucks, ambulances and police cars, as well as vehicles carrying people with disabilities, were exempted from the new tolls under the state’s congestion pricing legislation .
As for discounts, low-income drivers who make less than $50,000 annually can apply to receive half off the daytime toll after their first 10 trips in a calendar month. In addition, low-income residents of the congestion zone who make less than $60,000 a year can apply for a state tax credit.
All drivers entering the zone directly from four tolled tunnels — the Lincoln, Holland, Hugh L. Carey and Queens-Midtown — will receive a “crossing credit” that will be applied against the daytime toll. The credit will be $5 round-trip for passenger vehicles, $12 for small trucks and intercity and charter buses, $20 for large trucks and tour buses, and $2.50 for motorcycles. No credits will be offered at night.
Grace Ashford contributed reporting.
Winnie Hu is a Times reporter covering the people and neighborhoods of New York City. More about Winnie Hu
Ana Ley is a Times reporter covering New York City’s mass transit system and the millions of passengers who use it. More about Ana Ley
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Tania Holz. The aim of this assignment is to write a self-critique based on a role play, and reflect critically upon my strengths and limitations, that relates to the theory and knowledge regarding the use of communication and interpersonal skills, and how and when to build rapport, empathy, listening and active listening communications within ...
Role play is a type of pretend play where children get into character and act out a role or real life context. Role play is an active, social activity where children can get into character and use role play to reflect on and develop their knowledge of a topic. Whist role play is a fun, and a 'playful' activity, it is also a key component of ...
Published: 01/01/2020. Role play is a simulation technique that involves learners acting out events or scenarios designed to closely replicate real practice settings. It can be used to help nursing students integrate theory into practice. This is because role-play scenarios closely imitate real clinical scenarios which require students to apply ...
Role-play prepared students for difficult situations that could arise in the clinic, and students switched from an individual- and symptom-oriented focus to one on interpersonal relationships. ... Papers in English or Scandinavian languages were included. Literature on standardized patient and classic simulation, as defined in the introduction ...
Role playing is a teaching method widely used to enhance students learning and engagement, by allowing them to adopt specific roles and interact with others in simulating real-world scenarios ...
Role Play as a Simulation Method (A Theoretical Overview) According to Rogers and Evans (2008) role play is a vital training aid in the process of acquiring knowledge, values, skills and attitudes among learners of different ages. According to Barrett (2003) role play is defined as a particular form of simulation that analyzes the interaction ...
Role playing is an active pedagogical approach where students engage in relevant scenarios in order to gain cognitive, affective, and/or behavioral understanding. They may "act out" imaginary characters or, in some instances, play themselves. Additionally, scenarios may be contemporary or historical (Golwitzer, 2018).
When we appreciate the important role play serves in a child's learning about self and world, we give children the time and opportunity to engage in the self-initiated play that is the surest way for them to fully realize all of their intellectual, emotional, and social potential. —David Elkind, The Wisdom of Play:
A Study On The Role Play Development Teaching Essay. Play is almost universally recognized as an integral factor in children's learning and development. For example, Macintyre (2001, 4) quotes Isaacs' 1933 description of play: Play is "the crucial component in children's development," and adds that everyone "concerned with young ...
Stuck on your essay? Browse essays about Role Playing and find inspiration. Learn by example and become a better writer with Kibin's suite of essay help services.
Download. In this essay I am going to be reflecting on the role play when I was a General practitioner and meeting a patient who is 55 years old , self-employed and has type 1 diabetes . I will be demonstrating the working skills with one-to-one client. It will also look at the effective communication, listening and good technique of asking ...
The essays may discuss the psychological benefits of role-playing, explore how it can be used to enhance creativity, or examine the social dynamics that occur when people engage in role-playing. They may also offer practical advice for those looking to start playing games or discuss the history of role-playing and its evolution over time.
Role Play Reflection The goal of this role play was to practice completing an assessment on a family, while using motivational interviewing. Since my group only had two people, our role play consisted of a social worker and a student, who was exhibiting behavioral problems in school. By using the motivational interviewing technique, our goal as ...
Reflective Essay On Role Play. Decent Essays. 959 Words. 4 Pages. Open Document. Role Plays. The role play that impacted me the most was Danielle's and Cassandra's. It increased my understanding of cultural competency because I never considered what the process for establishing and renewing accessible entrances/ramps actually was.
Yates proposes the idea of escape as a common thread in society of which everyone dreams, but no one can capture. Due to their desire to escape reality, April, Frank, and Helen turn to acting and role playing to change their personalities through hiding flaws, putting on a happy façade, and playing house. Read More.
You are also suggested to employ the best Role-Playing writing practices showcased by professional authors and, eventually, craft a top-notch paper of your own. However, if writing Role-Playing papers completely by yourself is not an option at this point, WowEssays.com essay writer service might still be able to help you out. For instance, our ...
Role play is important for children to improve their social development as it encourages friendship through listening, cooperation and taking turns with one another. Role play is a fantastic way for children to stimulate their imaginations and enhance their social development. Moreover, empathy is encouraged when role play situations are in the ...
Ur points out that the factors that affect the success of role-play are: "the teacher's enthusiasm; careful instructions; clear situations and roles; and making sure that the language they will need to carry out the role-play". 4.Guiding principles for role-playing. 4.1Communication purpose[: The activity must involve the students in ...
A conclusion is more satisfying to a reader, but it is not necessary simply for the exercise in creating a role-play scenario. Think of a situation. Think of characters (one may be enough). Give them some characteristics. Then, write a short story about how they would act in the situation. "Role play" is acting out the parts of the characters.
Play helps children develop important mental concepts. It is through play that children learn the meaning of important concepts such as 'up' and 'down', 'hard' and 'soft'. Play also contributed to a child's knowledge of building and arranging things in sets. Children actually learn to sort, classify, and probe several issues ...
Essay: Role Playing Games. April 30, 2020. In my other life, I've been thinking about digital media, computer games, and archaeology of contemporary American culture. These musing may be why Evan Higgins's essay, "Role Playing Games" resonated with me. It also happens to be a very fine essay that appears in NDQ 87.1/2.
Role-play is one of the activities to support students' speaking ability. Through role-play activities, the students learn how to express their ideas, opinions, or feeling to others by using words or sounds of pronunciation. Larsen Freeman (2000:68) explains that role-plays are important in the communicative approach because they give ...
Play with motive is good but free play shapes a child in way more than we can imagine. Children should indulge free play as it makes them more imaginative, innovative without any pressure and improves brain function as children think, interact, meet, laugh with each other. Playing improves the power to focus.
When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in higher education, it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions.
We have learned about the roles played by the prefrontal cortex and how Phineas Gage plays an important role in modern science. One thing that the Phineas Gage case has shown us is how brain damage can cause changes in personality. After Phineas' accident, he lost all his social skills, whereas before he was respectful, trustworthy, and likeable.
Tune in live at noon ET M-F. Call 513-419-7100 or email [email protected] to have your voice heard on today's topic. Catch the replay on 91.7 WVXU and 88.5 WMUB at 8 p.m. ET M-F. Listen on-demand ...
Fares will go up by $1.25 for taxis and black car services, and by $2.50 for Uber and Lyft. Passengers will be responsible for paying the new fees, and they will be added to every ride that begins ...
Abstract. This article attempts to answer a question of great contemporary significance - what role courts should play in our democracy. Specifically, it attempts to answer the question of what standard of review courts should use in deciding constitutional cases.