Role-Play as a Pedagogical Strategy to Assist Postgraduate Psychology Students Engage with the Social Embeddedness of Trauma

Abstract

While it is now widely accepted that any understanding of PTSD needs to be contextualised within cultural parameters, there is a lack of pedagogical strategies to assist postgraduate psychology students engage with both the psychodynamic and socio-political aspects of trauma. To assist, role-play is put forward as a teaching strategy, enabling students to explore the impact of taken-for-granted attitudes, social norms and values on how traumatic stress is expressed and experienced. An illustration of a socio-politically rich role-play is used to demonstrate how, without engaging with trauma as socially embedded, comprehensive understanding, empathy, and care cannot be achieved.