The intercultural dialogue - role play
Who
Erasmus Hogeschool Brussel
Why
In order to establish a constructive dialogue, the intercultural competencies can be developed to achieve a deeper understanding of diverse perspectives; to increase participation and the freedom and ability to make choices and eventually to achieve a cultural awareness.
What
Each person has an internal set of values that influences how he or she communicates with others. The intercultural dialogue method teaches us the importance of understanding one’s own set of values and how to be open to other sets of values. This method can show teachers and students which attitude(s) to adopt to enable open, meaningful and constructive communication.
The role-play is an excellent way to raise the young persons or professionals’ students’ own cultural awareness and of the other one. It may even help participants to experience confrontations for a few minutes.
The content of the role-play depends of the context you work in. You can choose cases where differents opinions are in conflict with each other of for sensitive topics to play.
Target group: young persons, teachers, social workers, professionals.
How
Selection: our students at the university college of Brussels who are following the teaching program or external schools/organisations who are asking a workshop intercultural dialogue
Preparation
A brief introduction to the intercultural communication and the non-violent communication, analyzing our own set of values, different frameworks, making our own identity circles
Training:
idem
The method of role-play
You work with role -cards, where different roles are written.
The rules are briefly explained (there is no right or wrong, you may react as you feel or think it is best). It is not the intention to judge the situation as correct or wrong. The idea is to think about our reactions and how they are formed (frameworks)
Step 1. The young persons/professionals spontaneously play one of the cases (in groups of 6pp) => 1 young person, 1 professional (social worker/teacher), 4 observators who are allowed to take up the role as a young person (5min)
(additional: this can be registered or filmed)
Step 2: short discussion about the role-play
Step 3: An explanation is given about the basic principles of non-violent communication (with a brief manual) and players are asked to reflect on their reactions.
Step 4: The role is played again taking into account the self-reflections and the learned non-violent communication principles
Supervision:
Supervised monthly in groups by the facilitator
Managed by the facilitator, a ‘Dialogue Coach’.
When
This method can be used during workshops with young persons/professionals.
Effect
Positive feedback after several workshops.
Assessment
Effectiveness:
High degree / regularly
Gender sensitivity:
High degree / regularly
Culture sensitivity:
High degree / regularly
Doable (practical):
High degree / regularly
Participatory:
High degree / regularly
Replicable and adaptable:
High degree / regularly
Assessment/evaluated:
High degree / regularly
Type of good practice
Methods, Training tool (Train the trainer of online trains course)
Themes
Democratic dialogue
Duration
One day or less
Type of activity
Group activity