Practitioner Spotlight
It’s Complicated: Roleplaying Development Scenarios with the Kin and Country Framework
The context
We used the Kin and Country Framework as part of a role play assessment for first year university students.
The course – GEOG1030: Global Poverty and Development introduces students from a diverse range of degree programs to some of the predominant theories and processes of development shaping the 20th and 21st centuries.
In the course, as students begin to engage with the immense complexity of development issues and scenarios, one of the longstanding assessments in the course has asked students to role play the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of a hypothetical development scenario from the perspectives of a range of stakeholders. In this assessment, different groups of students would represent and advocate for different stakeholders during the in-class role play, in order to highlight the challenges of reaching consensus and meeting the needs, goals and aspirations of all affected by development projects. However, while focused on ‘walking in someone else’s shoes’, the strength of this assessment was also its weakness: it’s tricky (and can often be highly inappropriate and damaging) to appropriately represent and ‘speak for’ someone else.
Enter the Kin and Country Framework! Having been generously introduced to the framework by Lauren Tynan (and by other colleagues teaching our third-year development course) this framework offered a beautiful way to shift from trying to ‘represent’ others, to working together and integrating different perspectives, insights and ways of knowing, being and doing in navigating complexity.
Instead of being assigned individual stakeholders to represent during the role play scenario, students were put into groups and asked to approach the scenario from a particular perspective in the framework (ie. Eagle, Ant, Grandmother, Granddaughter).
During the role play itself, each group was invited to share their initial thoughts on the scenario from their unique perspective (in this case, a hydropower development), before asking other groups questions about their own perspectives, and sharing their own insights in response.
In this context, students were not assessed on their capacity to argue and defend their own perspectives, but on their capacity to learn from and collaborate with others in response to the development scenario.
In the course more broadly, students begin to learn about the ways in which predominantly Western, modernist and neo-liberal approaches to economy and ‘progress’ have compounded disadvantage and marginalisation for many. Using the Kin and Country Framework also provides an opportunity to shift away from some of these harmful modalities and frameworks, and to offer students an opportunity to do (not just listen to or read about) an example of myriad Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing together.
‘I don’t know’ is an answer (and you can change your mind).
This speaks for itself in many ways, but in this assessment, using the Kin and Country Framework gave space for students to shift their perspectives as they came into relationships with others, and to be confident and open in uncertainty (rather than feeling the need to have a clear position and to argue this confidently). Rather than being expected to act as an ‘expert’, students were able to be open about uncertainty in an assessment context, and to learn from and receive help or other insights from their peers. This was a huge standout for me, and I’d love to see this be part of much more of my assessment design and facilitation across the board. A number of students reflected that they thought very differently about the scenario after the role play was completed, and they had the opportunity to discuss this with others who had very different perspectives. Other students also shared that the role play experience helped them to understand their own initially assigned perspective differently (especially when brought into relation with others).
Key Learnings
Curiosity, not competition: In using the Kin and Country Framework to listen, learn and carefully engage with a complex scenario, many students quickly found ‘success’ was not achieved through competing with one another (Eg where the Eagles might prove that their perspective is better than others), but by working together and being curious about each other’s insights and perspectives. This was counterintuitive for many students, who’s experiences of assessment has often trained them to compete, rather than to meaningfully collaborate.
Being together differently, process rather than outcome: A number of students also observed that using the Kin and Country Framework guided them to be together differently. It wasn’t just what students observed and shared that was important, but it was also how they experienced being together and forming learnings and relationships in the classroom that was unique. More than one student went out of their way to support one another in speaking to the group, sharing insights and contributing to the bigger picture they were shaping, and others openly expressed gratitude to their peers for helping them to learn something new. For many students, this highlighted the importance not just of securing ‘good outcomes’ within the context of the scenario, but just as importantly, the ways in which knowing, relating and learning is practiced in the first place.