Role-playing simulation as a communication tool in community dialogue: Karkonosze Mountains case study

This article describes a process of role-playing simulation (RPS) as it was used during an educational exercise in community dialogue in the Karkonosze Mountains region of southwest Poland. Over the past decade Karkonosze National Park, a regional tourist magnet, has provided an excellent example of environmental conflict emerging from the tensions between nature protection and economic development. The project we describe herein, a course called “Dynamics of Sustainable Development,†was designed to give students the direct experience of challenges in solving difficult social-ecological problems with many linked conflicts and tensions. We focused on RPS to emphasize factors crucial to compromise. Because teaching students about conflict solving was our main objective, the second indirect but expected experience was to stimulate discussions among real stakeholders. Although RPS itself was not performed in the presence of the real stakeholders, their participation was ensured by inviting them for a final public debate where they got a chance to express their opinions about what they heard from the students. RPS offered the course participants not only a closer look at the conflict in the Karkonosze related to sustainable development, but also an insight into the general psychological background and evolution of conflicts.