Interdisciplinary Role Play Between Social Work and Theater Students

Teaching BSW and MSW students beginning interviewing and relationship-building skills is essential in order to prepare them for practice with clients. In social work methods courses, role plays are commonly-used instructional strategies for helping foundation-level students acquire these initial practice skills. Despite the popularity of this teaching method, the social work literature contains limited studies on the use of role play. In this study, 2 role-play methods are compared, a traditional one in which social work students act out the role of client and social worker and a nontraditional one where the only difference was that theater students role-played the client. Findings revealed that social work students perceived the nontraditional role play as providing a more realistic experience that more closely approximates actual work with clients. Many unanticipated benefits for both sets of students surfaced as a result of this research. Implications for ways to improve this pedagogical tool are discussed along with suggestions for further evaluating role-play methods.