(Page 2 of 21) - One Style and Size does not Fit all: How to Develop a Constitutional Convention Simulation authored by O'Loughlin, Paula. and Bos, Angela.

I. Introduction

Efforts to enhance students’ active learning are accepted as laudable goals and

important ingredients for classroom success and teaching excellence in political science today.
Like many of our colleagues, one of the ways that the authors of this paper promote active
learning among our students is through role-playing simulations, interactive exercises that
“mirror real world situations… in which students are assigned roles within a political process and
then asked to act like real political actors.”(Smith and Boyer, 1996, p. 691). However, we also
know many other political scientists, distinguished in the classroom and similarly committed to
promoting active learning, who refrain from adding simulations to their teaching toolkit. While
intrigued at the idea of role-playing exercises, these colleagues express reluctance for a variety of
reasons. Most common are versions of the following:

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“My class is too large or small.”

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“I have tried a couple, but they just did not make the students think enough.”

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“I don’t feel like I know how to create one.”

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“The students I have won’t do their part.”

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“Simulations take up too much class time.”

•

“I don’t have room in my syllabus.”

One source of the fore-mentioned reluctance on the part of colleagues stems from the

available work within political science. Most of the recent scholarship of teaching and learning
that is devoted to simulations simply presents a rich description of a specific exercise. Whatever
the subfield, this descriptive overview is generally combined with a discussion of the
pedagogical values of such role-playing exercises particularly in terms of critical thinking, civic
skills and active learning, reflections on issues of assessment or some combination thereof
(Kathlene and Choate, 1999; Kaarbo and Lantis, 1997; Newmann and Twigg, 2000; Ciliotta-
Ruberry and Levy, 2000; Koch, 1991; Endersby and Webber, 1995; Grafton and Permaloff,
1989; Switsky, 2004; Kupermann and Weisserman, 2000; Westheimer and Kahne, 2004; Fox
and Ronkowski, 1997). With the focus on describing the details of one particular successful
role-playing exercise or another, there is at best very limited reflection in print on why a
particular nuance of the simulation succeeded or failed. In short, the implicit assumption of
such work is that once a simulation is developed (even as basic a one as a deliberative poll, mock
constitutional convention, a budgeting exercise, etc) and successful in one course venue (such as
Introductory American Government at Privilege College), it should “travel” to others. If and
when a role-playing exercise does not travel well and a political scientist at Gigantic U. finds it is
unable to work for her, she comes away thinking that she just may not know how to run a
simulation (i.e., feeling that something is wrong with her as a teacher) or perhaps that
simulations only work in small classes. Such conclusions are more likely to occur among less-
experienced teachers, but they do not have a monopoly on such feelings by any means.
Whatever the faculty member’s teaching experience, the end result is the same. Many come to
distrust and give up on role-playing simulations.

However, Smith and Boyer’s work suggests a different approach to simulation

development (Smith and Boyer, 1996). Discussing how to design simulations which work,
Smith and Boyer stress the importance of identifying one’s individualized teaching goals as the
first step. This paper builds on and extends Smith and Boyer’s work. We concur with them on
two points. First, one size and style of even the most basic role-playing simulation is not right
for all who teach the same material. Who we are as faculty and how we approach teaching even
the same course content is intrinsically different from each other. If factors like varying student