The Effect of Role Playing Training on Willingness to Communicate and Academic Performance of High School Students in a Sociology Course

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of role playing on willingness to communicate and the academic performance of senior high school students. To this end, a quasi-experimental method with a pretest-posttest control group design was used. The research population consisted of high school students of the city of Yazd, among which 49 students attending the same school were selected as the sample. Finally, 17 and 19 participants formed the control and the experimental groups, respectively.The control group was taught using the traditional lecture-based teaching method, but the method employed for teaching the experimental group was role playing. To compare the academic performance, both groups of the students were given tests comprising pre-tests (at the beginning of the course) and post-tests. Additionally, to evaluate the students' willingness to communicate, McCroskey's Willingness-to-Communicate scale and a researcher-made test, measuring academic performance, were used as research instruments. In order to compare the academic performance and the willingness to communicate between the two groups, an independent t-test was used.The results show that role playing compared to traditional teaching is significantly more effective in the academic performance of the students. However, willingness to communicate in the role playing group, as compared to the lecture-based group, was not observed to be remarkably higher. Therefore, it can be concluded that in order to improve the learning quality, instead of using traditional teaching methods, sociology teachers can benefit from the implementation of role playing in their classes.