This paper presents a small exploratory study of how introducing role play as a learning activity in a science education class for student teachers can provide them with a powerful instruction tool in their future teaching.  The role play is used for involving students in multiple emotionally charged perspectives together with cognitive challenges of attempting to resolve an ecological problem.  The narrative of the role play is based on a true story involving published pieces of marine research in a sustainability context. The role play offers a setting for further deliberation of central issues of sustainability, helping the student teachers contemplate the place of sustainability in science education. Though emotional and ethical aspects are part of socio-scientific issues, many student teachers are insecure of how to deal with them in learning science. Fortus etal. (2022) highlights why the affective domain is important to develop scientific literacy. Toonders, etal. (2016) declares that drama is a relatively unexplored tool in academic science education, and addresses how the use of drama may allow science students to deepen their understanding of science innovations and the ethical dimensions of them.

One of many challenges for environmental and sustainability education is to engage students in realistic transdisciplinary issues where they can use and develop their agency and emotional reactions for dealing with sustainability dilemmas. With this proposal, the discussion is raised of how role play and other drama activities can contribute to student teachers’ involvement in sustainability. By first engaging in a personal role play the participants gain empathic and embodied understandings of different perspectives of the issue in mind. In the following reflective discussion, the level of discourse may be lifted from the individual to the collective and eventually to a global level through a lens of empathy and embodiment.

This study’s research question is:

How do student science teachers experience role play as a learning activity for reflecting on values in sustainability and preparing students for future citizenship?

There are trends in education for sustainability, sustainable citizenship and scientific literacy that points towards transformative learning (Unesco, 2018; Biesta, 2006; Van Poeck & Vandenabeele, 2013; Granados-Sanchez, 2023; Valladares, 2021), and that the perspective shifts from acquiring competences to the democratic nature of educational spaces and practices (Van Poeck & Vandenabeele, 2013). By using sustainable citizenship as a theoretical frame the role play is studied as an educational space for exploring an ecological problem in a complex environment where the participants in role “respond to each other’s divergent and mutually exclusive concerns, a space in which things are made public” (Van Poeck & Vandenabeele, 2013, p.6). In the post-role play reflecting dialogue the discussion offers links to matters of global sustainability and citizenship which refers to “a sense of belonging to the global community and a common sense of humanity” and “collective responsibility at the global level” (UNESCO, 2017 p.2).

This study leans on a framework of drama for sustainability issues (Author, 2017, 2023), based on Leinweaver’s (2015) sustainable storytelling. The Bleeding Water role play is characterized as a Little drama that is conducted on a personal level involving a story connected to individuals and how they explore their lives and make their choices based on values and facts (Author, 2001). The dramatic action is personal, exploring personal expressions (Neelands, 2000). Middle dramas, may explore conflicts on an interpersonal and sociocultural level. They have focus of explaining power relationships, organization of society and how culture shapes our collective senses. Big, symbolic dramas help people make sense of the mystery of life and the wonder of being. (Author, 2023). All three levels connect to sustainable citizenship.

This is a small qualitative study based on observations of teaching activities followed by group interviews. The participants are student teachers in science education from three different teacher education courses at the same institution. The role play has five roles, therefor five students from each course were recruited in order to include students with different educational experiences. The courses are; the bachelor level of the Master’s programme in teacher education; the full-time Teacher Education Programme for students with a master’s degree in Natural Sciences, and the part-time Teacher Education Programme. Det data material consists of video observations and audio-taped interviews (semi-structured). The empirical data is analysed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2006). The role play is conducted with the use of personal role cards. A small group of five students played out a situation of a family dinner where the nearby river turns out to be invaded by poisonous algae that indecently colors the water red. The plot is inspired by the novel “And the Waters turned to Blood” by Rodney Barker (1998), which is based on a true story. The context affects the family members in different ways. One gets sick after bathing, one has his trade as a pig farmer threatened, one is studying the algae in her master’s degree, the local tourist guide is afraid of the lack of visitors and a fisherman fears for the fish. After the role play, the students reflected on what happened in the play and why, trying to analyse the situation in the local context, and eventually the discussion was guided into a more global perspective. The following group interview focused on the student teachers’ own experience with the role play and their reflections on the role play as a tool of instruction for exploring sustainability issues.

The analyses of student teachers’ role play dialogues, reflections and future expectations will be discussed in a local and global sustainable citizenship perspective. The analyses are still preliminary, but other similar studies of secondary students may provide valuable ideas of expected outcomes. Using the same role play with secondary science students, Kristoffersen (2021) revealed that the complexity in the situation initiates high order argumentation using both scientific facts and ethical considerations, critical thinking and socio scientific reasoning. Other studies have explored how role play can provide inclusive contexts for socio-environmental controversial issues, where students’ different voices enrich the learning activity, and students deal with decision-making and conflict. Role play offers situations where students practice negotiating values and making decisions at personal, interpersonal and global levels (Author, 2001, 2003; Colucci-Gray, 2007). Drama and role play enable teachers to bring real-life situations into the classroom and generate incidences where students can rehearse bringing together factual knowledge, values and norms in order to explore how to change existing practices (Boal, 1985; Jackson & Vine, 2013). Simultaneously, in the encounter, they jointly reflect on and perhaps build new transdisciplinary knowledge about sustainability issues. Being students-in-role forces them to also consider personal values and ethical concerns (Author, 2023). The participating student teachers experienced a transition from holding traditional discussions about environmental science issues to practicing the act of living through an environmental issue by behaving and talking in context, and further touching upon thoughts of collective responsibility at the global level. Hopefully they will use and develop role play as a creative and powerful tool in their own teaching.

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