To assign or not to assign? Role Taking in Higher Education.

The paper discusses a collaborative didactic experience involving knowledge negotiation and building in a higher education context, focusing on Role Taking, a scaffolding tool for effective collaborative learning. The study offers a contribution to educational method in line with the main research on the topic: the assignment of roles, especially if defined by the teacher, is fundamental for supporting processes of collaborative knowledge building and socialisation amongst group members, helping students to take on duties and responsibilities, optimising and supporting the cognitive and social processing of knowledge, encouraging people to question themselves and behave in ways which often contrast with their everyday lives, activating different forms of reasoning and interaction, and favouring the acquisition of individual and social agency, a fundamental ingredient for the participation and growth of each member of the group. DOI: 10.30557/QW000026