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Using Role Playing in the AP U.S. Government and Politics Classroom
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by Stephanie Larson
Dickinson College
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
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| | Making the Abstract Concrete
The free-response questions on the AP U.S. Government and Politics Exam tend to bridge more than one subject and require analytical thinking. To successfully answer these questions, AP U.S. Government and Politics students need to understand how all of the parts of the political system fit together and how concrete examples illustrate processes and concepts. This is far more important for answering the free-response questions than remembering a lot of facts about American government. Because the ability of textbooks to help students make these connections is limited, students need additional assignments that help them see linkages and develop critical skills. Role playing can help them do this.
Good textbooks use three main approaches to helping students see the linkages between political institutions, actors, and issues. One is to introduce an overarching theme and then explicitly refer back to it in every chapter. For example, a useful theme is the causes and consequences of authority fragmentation for interpreting the enduring and competing values of liberty, equality, and self-government.1 Another is how political structures, rules, and systems impact decisions and overcome challenges to collective action.2 The limitation of this approach is that the readers (and sometimes the authors) can lose sight of these "big pictures" or become so wedded to them that they cannot think through questions relating to other themes.
Textbooks also remind students of the relevance of what they have already learned to what they are currently learning. These messages can relate to big ideas like decentralization of power, government "by consent of the governed," or nationalization trends. Or they can be about specific concepts or institutions -- for example, an author may discuss the Office of Management and Budget in more than one chapter with explicit references such as "see chapter 7" or "chapter 11 will discuss this further." The problem with this technique is that students rarely follow these directions to "refer back," and they tend to view these references as simple redundancies, failing to understand the larger point being made by looking at a concept, process, or organization in multiple sections of the book.
A third approach is describing a contemporary political issue as an illustration of how elements of American politics come together. For example, a textbook might use domestic wiretapping to show connections between congressional power, presidential power, constitutional issues, competing values, public opinion, civil liberties, and the courts. A limitation of this approach is that the students who are already familiar with current events can get hung up advocating their position on the controversy and miss the lesson behind its use in the text. Students who are unfamiliar with the issues and the political actors can fail to learn systemic lessons as well because they focus on trying to understand the issue and what they "have to know" about it.
A Hands-On Approach
All three of these textbook approaches are superior to teaching topics in isolation. Lectures and discussions can help reinforce these efforts and sidestep some of their pitfalls. However, hands-on assignments that require students to practice making linkages rather than understand those made by others are valuable additions to a course.
Role playing is an active learning approach designed to engage students. Yet most role-playing exercises focus on one branch of government (typically Congress) and give students an in-depth view of a specific job rather than a more macro view of government. They also tend to take a lot of time (both in class and for the teacher to organize). Another limitation is that they typically offer students unequal roles, allowing less-involved students to stay that way while others fight for key roles (such as Speaker of the House). Instead, asking students to role-play average people throughout the course provides a more manageable and equalitarian experience, requiring all students to make analytical connections and develop authority on different subjects.
The goal of this role-playing assignment is to get students to see how politics affect real people's problems and the variety of ways government can be an obstacle or a solution to their problems. Students learn about an issue relevant to that person, the government's current response to it, alternatives to this response, the government jurisdiction for the problem, and who (inside and outside of government) supports the various sides (and why). Including a "what this person should do to facilitate a change" section to the assignment compels students to simulate advocacy that requires an integrated view of politics. It is best to move students toward this goal in stages.
Begin by randomly assigning each student a different person to role-play. These people should have different jobs, locations, ethnic/racial makeup, ages, sex, and life experiences.3 Then require students to "get to know" their roles and the problems unique to each. Students can use the Internet, current periodicals, and books to do this.4 Tell students early on that by the end of the class they will produce a paper on a political problem that would be of concern to their individual roles and how each person could try to get government to respond to the problem. You might want to help students build this paper by providing smaller assignments during lessons on interest groups, parties, Congress, and bureaucracy.5
Classroom Dynamics
You can also use the role playing to facilitate class discussions and in-class exercises throughout the course. This helps students stay connected to the assignment and practice applying concepts to examples. For example, during the public opinion section, you can have students look at demographic breakdowns of survey or voting behavior data and use the information to predict how "their people" are likely to have answered or voted. Even though this may not find a place in their papers, it will help students understand cross-cutting cleavages, party coalitions, and the upper-class bias in participation. It will also make them more comfortable working with data.
 The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
PollingReport.com
Students can use a variety of Web sites to address the assignment. During the Congress section, send them to Project Vote Smart. Here they can find information on bills, committees, subcommittees, and legislators who are important for the issues they are researching. During the bureaucracy section, have them follow links to the various departments and agencies on the White House site that deal with their issues. Use the page that searches the Federal Register to explore rulemaking relevant to the issue. Ask students to locate Supreme Court cases that are relevant to their roles on a site with a Supreme Court decision search engine.
Project Vote Smart
The White House
Regulations.gov
Oyez (U.S. Supreme Court Media)
Designing clear Web assignments and having students discuss their findings with you and/or each other can make these (fairly straightforward) Web sites more manageable.
Having students role-play average people helps teach them about American government, the diversity of the populous, and the challenges of representation. The fundamental debate between elitists and pluralists about the role of the public in our democracy is revisited throughout the course in a concrete way by having students assume the roles, explore, and share the experiences of a variety of people. It leads them to look at things they had not seen before and to do so through empathetic and analytical eyes.
For more information on how I've used the assignment, see my article: "We the People: Diversifying Role Playing in Undergraduate American Politics Courses" in PS: Political Science and Politics 37, no. 2, April 2004.
Notes
1. Thomas E. Patterson, The American Democracy, 7th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005).
2. Samuel Kernell and Gary C. Jacobson, The Logic of American Politics, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2003).
3. In the past I have used: an enlisted black servicewoman; a middle-class Cuban American woman in Miami; a Native American woman living on a Western reservation; a recovering cocaine addict who is on parole; a person who owns a small family farm in Iowa; a grape picker in California's wine country; an emergency medical technician in Knoxville, Tennessee; a Maine fisherman of moderate income; a physically handicapped office clerk; a homosexual graduate student in Minnesota; an elementary school teacher in El Paso, Texas; a Middle Eastern cab driver in Los Angeles, California; a Japanese American single father of a child with autism; a coal miner in West Virginia; a blind telephone operator in East St. Louis; and a Hispanic female prison guard.
4. Make sure they are on a useful track by providing feedback on a short paper, presentation, or class discussion.
5. Be sure to provide specific questions, such as: What congressional committee or subcommittee considers legislation on this issue? Has legislation already been introduced that your person wants supported, opposed, or amended? Which members would you consider your allies on this committee? Why?
Stephanie Larson received her Ph.D. in political science from Florida State University in 1987. She began teaching Introduction to American Government in 1985 as a graduate student at Florida State University. She went on to teach at George Washington University and Dickinson College, where she is currently an associate professor. She has published extensively in the area of media and politics and public opinion. She first read AP Exams in 1995 and has led workshops in the Middle States Region. She is also the AP United States Government and Politics content adviser for AP Central.
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