| Role-playing activities
have traditionally been used in social studies classrooms, but have infrequently
been used in science and mathematics classrooms. Our use of the term
participatory simulations is intended to refer to such role-playing activities
used primarily in science and mathematics classrooms to explore how complex
dynamic systems evolve over time. For example, each class member could play the
role of a predator or prey in an ecology and engage in a class swide discussion
of the resultant global population dynamics. A wide ranging set of sample
content areas for participatory simulations include the spread of a disease, the
flow of traffic in a grid, the distribution of goods in an inventory system, the
diffusion of molecules through a membrane, or the emergence of an algebraic
function from a set of points. | | Note that in using the term "simulation" we do not imply
a necessary fidelity to "real world" phenomena. A simulation of the
propagation of a disease through a population, for example, is seen to about how
a real disease propagates in a population. The simulation is evaluated
principally in terms of how much it is like or unlike the real disease. While
this kind of simulation is important to our work, the kinds of participatory
enactments we seek to implement also include activities where the system of
interactions and the consequent emergent behavior derive their worth and
cognitive value not in comparison to something else. To paraphrase Levi-Strauss,
they may simply be "good to think" and thus stand on their own. Later
in this document we will present an example where students move around as points
in a Cartesian coordinate system. In this "Function Activity" the
students embody the abstractions of points and explore the significance of
moving according to simple local rules. The power of the activity does not come
from how well it compares to some other (more "real") system. As a
learning activity it stands on its own. The function activity is one example of
where emergent activities have the potential to concretize (Wilensky, 1991)
whole classes of mathematical and scientific abstractions in ways that are
personally meaningful and empowering to learners. This is a more allusive and
potentially metaphorical use of the term & "participatory
simulation" than may be suggested by the name alone. For the purposes of
our work, we will use this broader notion of participatory simulation activity
(PSA) and the term emergent activity (EA) interchangeably (see Figure 1).
| | | For us, a participatory
simulation or emergent activity must draw attention to systems dynamics and
systems learning. This attention to dynamic structure, evolving state, feedback,
and the like is not so much a feature of the activity itself as it is in the
focusing of one’s sense-making on the systems aspects the experience.
Drawing attention to systems dynamics and systems learning describes the quality
of our relationship to a participatory experience. Using this constraint on what
we mean by a participatory simulation — that attention must be drawn to
systems dynamics and systems thinking — we can now track a history of the
development of participatory simulations. |
