Sustaining Canadian Studies in the U.K.: Role Play as an Engaging Pedagogical Tool to Teach Canada Abroad

Abstract

While scholars have been successfully offering courses in Canadian Studies abroad for more than three decades, the recent cancellation of the Government of Canada’s funding program, Understanding Canada, puts such foreign-based teaching programs in a state of flux. Given that there is now little financial support for institutions, courses and conferences, instructors must ensure that courses in Canadian Studies are engaging and accessible in order for the discipline to stay relevant within this new fiscal reality. One solution could be to use innovative teaching techniques to demonstrate the value of Canadian Studies as an academic discipline. My experience at the Centre of Canadian Studies (the Centre), University of Edinburgh provides a case study for the use of this approach. In a first-year undergraduate course at the Centre, offered in 2009-10, I used role play to teach the arguments for and against the establishment of Canada wherein each student took on the guise of a specific delegate at the 1864 Charlottetown Conference and argued the case in an open debate. This exercise simultaneously allowed me to deliver the necessary content while also providing students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the core arguments and characters. As a result, barriers to learning were reduced as content became more accessible and the interdisciplinary nature of Canadian Studies became more evident because each student approached the exercise from their own subject specialism.