Roles as Mediating Pivots Into the Figured World of a Tabletop Disaster Exercise

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 3:20 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Playful Learning: Games, Puzzles, and Play (Table 2)

Abstract

This multicase study explores the interactions amongst master’s level emergency management students during a hybrid tabletop hurricane exercise in order to explore how their assigned roles mediated their social learning. Using figured worlds and an interaction analysis approach, we show how role enactment influences the kinds of ways participants interact: strongly parroting role language, drawing on or creating information that retains the role, or layering personal disagreement while enacting the role. These role enactments then opened or foreclosed future interactions by other participants, thereby regenerating the figured world of the tabletop exercise. This work extends research on figured worlds in designed learning environments to understand the consequential influence of roles on social development with potential implications on future spaces.

Authors

• Jennifer Classen, Dalhousie University

• Claire Connolly Knox, University of Central Florida

• Steven Lerner, University of Central Florida

• Mohammad Newaz Sharif, University of Central Florida