'Mistakes are inevitable, but not irreparable': One educator on using simulation and role play in the classroom

For Dr. Angelique Jenney, PhD, experiential learning is the key to training students in social work on how to approach uncomfortable conversations and be okay with their own discomfort. 

Jenney, an associate professor in the Faculty of Social Work, is a proponent of role play and simulation-based learning — using client scenarios to replicate the conditions a student would experience in a clinical-based setting but in a safe, supportive classroom.

"No one wants to go out into the world and feel like they know nothing," Jenney says. "So, how can we start earlier to provide some of these real-life feeling experiences to students in a safe way so that they can experiment, try on new things, ask for help, reflect in the moment and also, fundamentally, get a sense of how complicated the work really is?

"In that moment when it feels real, they get to have the anxiety, they get to have the experience or the feeling like they need to know the answer, but they're not alone in that moment."

The Experiential Learning Initiatives Teaching Award, which has been given out since 2014, recognizes educators who integrate meaningful experiential learning opportunities into their courses, with students at the centre. 

Jenney says she hopes experiential learning allows students to walk away knowing that mistakes are inevitable, but not irreparable — something that is particularly important in social work settings. Her teaching philosophy includes a pedagogy of discomfort. There is emotion involved in learning and it's not always comfortable.

“That’s what makes learning so exciting, inspiring, complicated and life-altering, life-changing, right? That’s what learning is. We are constantly growing, and what I often say is most growth starts with discomfort. There’s very little growth that comes from 100-per-cent just knowing it all.”

Jenney's teaching areas are in trauma and violence — tough topic areas that have a lot of emotion tied to them. Instead of focusing on lectures that tell students what they might see or dropping students into scenarios with trauma survivors, she gives her students real-life opportunities to prepare for challenging conversations with clients through simulation and role play. In the safe space of the classroom, her students learn how to react to social-justice scenarios in the clinic from a place that is trauma-informed and thoughtful.

It's this kind of learning that's truly transformational for the students.

"There's knowing and doing, and they're not the same thing,"  Jenney says.