TEACHING ACTIVITY

Role-play about sustainable transport (in Dhaka)

Students research and then adopt different roles to learn about issues around urban mobility in Dhaka. This activity can be adapted to focus on economic, environmental or social issues.

Activity Outline

I have not yet tried this activity in my own class. It was co-designed with Paul Gilbert and presented during a workshop at Indiana University, July 2021.

1. Explain activity context

This activity is based in real-world situations, in this case ongoing developments to make Dhaka's transport infrastructure more environmentally sustainable that are funded by the Japanese Development Agency. A fictionalized stakeholder workshop is being organized by donor agencies to get feedback on the proposed development and to manage the concerns of affected groups.

2. Students select and research roles

Students select the roles they want to assume from a pre-set list. They then research their roles and formulate their positions vis-à-vis the proposed development as a short opening statement and arguments to defend their position in an informed and realistic way.

3. Role play

Students enact the meeting, guided by the educator-facilitator who ensures that the role-play approximates power relations in international development.

4. Discussion

The debrief draws out learnings from the activity, about transport issues and development dynamics in Dhaka, but also about students’ own experiences with the role play.

Download Full Guide

Download Dhaka Workshop Roles

Workshop Participation Comments

“This simulation made me think about how some jobs make someone compromise their values. We must be aware that it is just a simulation, but it could become a prior experience that students one day might face [working in international development].”

“With enough time for a bit of background research on the issue, this would make an excellent exercise! Tailoring roles to students could be useful so we can be careful about their own experiences, and maybe traumas. However, randomized roles can be a way to play a role that is unfamiliar and therefore insightful for the student.”

“To me, one of the biggest learning outcomes here was how frustrating it is to be ‘the problem’ that is being fixed. What came through was the inertia of development practice and with it, the extreme power imbalances associated with public infrastructure projects that may well be ‘good’ but need work to be done equitably.”

“By having students perform the exercise, they learn first hand about the limitations of things that they might ostensibly assume to be democratic and fair - like a public hearing. It allows them to see that lived experience layers onto generations of colonial and neo-colonial, and domestic forms of oppression.”

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