Week 5: Trade-off Role-Play
Whakaaro Tūāhua — Experience Scarcity Through Roles · Decide What Matters Most
Ngā Whāinga Akoranga · Learning Intentions
- Experience trade-off decisions from inside a specific role — feeling the pressure of scarcity, not just observing it
- Understand that different stakeholders face different trade-offs and have different priorities — there is no single "right" choice
- Practise persuasive argument: defend your role's position with evidence and reasoning
- Recognise that resource allocation decisions are never just economic — they involve power, relationships, and values
Paearu Angitu · Success Criteria
- I can argue from my role's perspective — not my personal view, but what this person would prioritise and why
- I can identify the trade-off my role faces — what they gain, what they give up, what they risk
- I can explain why another role would disagree with my choice — understanding the conflict, not dismissing it
- My debrief reflection moves beyond the role to connect the scenario to real-world scarcity and trade-offs
Hononga Marautanga · Curriculum Alignment
Level 3–4: examine how different groups experience scarcity and resource allocation differently; understand that economic decisions reflect values and power relationships, not just rational choice; develop perspective-taking as an analytical tool for understanding complex issues.
Role-play builds the capacity to inhabit another perspective — to understand why someone with different interests and constraints makes different decisions. This is not empathy as a feeling but empathy as an analytical skill. Understanding the farmer's perspective is necessary for understanding food systems.
Te Āhuatanga · The Scenario
Crisis at Roto-a-Tamahine — After the Flood
A severe flood has hit a small rural community in Aotearoa. The community has limited emergency resources: $8,000, enough materials for one project, and 20 volunteer hours. There are three urgent needs — but resources only allow for ONE to be addressed this week. The community must decide. Your group will role-play the stakeholders and make the decision together.
The three choices:
☐ Option 1 — Clean water: Repair the water treatment plant. 450 people have no safe drinking water. Cost: $8,000 + all 20 volunteer hours.
☐ Option 2 — Food supply: Clear the road to the supermarket and restore kai supplies. 200 families have less than 3 days of food. Cost: $6,000 + 15 volunteer hours.
☐ Option 3 — Shelter: Repair the community marae roof — the only building large enough to house the 80 displaced families. Cost: $7,500 + 18 volunteer hours.
Ngā Tūāhua · Your Roles
Each person takes one role. Read your role carefully. Prepare arguments for your position. Remember: argue from your role's perspective, not your personal view.
Role A — Dr Ngaio Parata, Community Doctor
You run the local medical centre. Three elderly residents are already showing symptoms of waterborne illness from drinking flood water. You know from training that unsafe water kills faster than hunger — E. coli can be fatal within days in vulnerable populations. Your position: water treatment must come first. Without safe water, every other solution is undermined.
Role B — Rangi Tūhoe, Supermarket Manager
You manage the only food supply in the valley. You have 200 families who have been living on emergency rations for two days. Three families have young children under 2. You know that hunger creates conflict — people become desperate when their children are hungry. Your position: restore food access. Hunger is immediate and visible. You can boil water, but you cannot manufacture food.
Role C — Hina Waititi, Kaumātua (Elder)
You are a respected elder whose hapū owns the land and the marae. Eighty families are sleeping in cars and garages. It is getting cold at night. The marae has always been the place of gathering and recovery in crisis — but the roof damage means it cannot be used. Your position: restore the marae. It is not just shelter — it is the community's ability to function together, to hold hui, to plan, to care for each other. A community that cannot gather cannot heal.
Role D — Councillor Piripi Hohepa, Regional Council
You control the funds. You must make the final decision after hearing all arguments, but you are also accountable to a wider region — this community is one of three affected. If you allocate all $8,000 here, another community gets nothing. You are thinking about precedent: what you decide here will be used as the rule for the next crisis. Your position: you haven't decided yet. You want to hear the arguments before you commit.
Whakarite Tūāhua · Role Preparation
Before the role-play, prepare your arguments. Complete this section as your character.
My role: _____________________________ My position (which option I support): Option _____
My strongest argument for this choice:
The trade-off my role is asking others to accept (what they lose if we choose my option):
The counterargument I expect from another role, and how I'll respond:
Whakatau me Arotake · Decision and Debrief
The group's final decision was: Option _____
The main reason the group chose this option:
The most compelling argument made during the discussion (by any role):
Debrief Questions — Answer as yourself, not as your role:
Aronga Mātauranga Māori
In te ao Māori, the practice of hui (formal gathering for deliberation) is the traditional mechanism for making collective decisions under scarcity. No single person decides — the community deliberates, with protocols (tikanga) that ensure all voices are heard, especially those of kaumātua and those most affected. The role of the Councillor in this scenario (the person who must decide but must also consider equity across communities) reflects a real tension in modern governance: decisions that affect everyone should involve everyone, but urgency often forces small groups to decide quickly.
The Waikato-Tainui response to flooding — including their own flood management systems, marae-based community response centres, and protocols for whānau support — is a real example of how kaitiakitanga and collective decision-making work in practice. When communities have strong social infrastructure (a marae, a hui process, clear tikanga for crisis), they recover faster. This is not coincidence — it is the result of long-term investment in social capital, which is itself a form of resource that can only exist collectively.
Ngā Rauemi Tautoko · Support Materials
Resources already provided:
- These role cards — use them for the role-play, then complete the debrief as yourself
- Quick Reference Card (unit-10-quick-reference-card.html) — trade-off and scarcity definitions
- Choice Reflection (unit-10-week5-choice-reflection.html) — extend your debrief thinking with the scarcity scenarios
- Waikato Case Study (unit-10-week6-waikato-case-study.html) — a real example of the trade-offs in this scenario
Aronga Rerekē · Differentiated Pathways
Tīmata · Entry Level
Prepare one argument for your role (strongest point). During the discussion, make at least one contribution. Complete the first debrief question (what you felt). You don't need all three debrief questions — one thoughtful answer matters more than three rushed ones.
Paerewa · On Level
Prepare all three role preparation sections. Contribute at least twice during the role-play. Complete all three debrief questions after. Connect the scenario to the unit in debrief question 3.
Tūāpae · Extension
Complete all sections. Then write a paragraph as the Councillor: "What would a kaitiakitanga-based decision-making process look like for this crisis? How would it be different from the role-play, and what would it require from the community?" This asks you to think about institutional design, not just individual choices — which is where economic analysis meets social justice.
📋 Teacher Planning Snapshot
Ngā Whāinga Ako — Learning Intentions
Students will engage with this resource to investigate the intersection of kai (food), culture, and climate — exploring how mātauranga Māori approaches to food production, preservation, and distribution offer powerful responses to contemporary food security and climate challenges in Aotearoa New Zealand and globally.
Ngā Paearu Angitū — Success Criteria
- ✅ Students can explain how traditional Māori kai practices (maramataka, kūmara cultivation, rāhui) embody ecological knowledge and food security principles.
- ✅ Students can connect kai culture and climate scarcity to contemporary community action and food sovereignty movements.
Differentiation & Inclusion
Scaffold support: Provide graphic organisers that map traditional kai practices to modern food security concepts at the entry level. Offer extension tasks asking students to research a specific iwi's traditional food system and evaluate its contemporary relevance, or to investigate a local food sovereignty initiative.
ELL / ESOL: Pre-teach domain vocabulary (food sovereignty, food security, kaitiakitanga, rāhui, maramataka) using visual diagrams and real-world examples. Draw connections to students' own cultural food traditions — these are valid entry points into the unit's themes. Allow oral or visual presentation of learning as alternatives to written tasks.
Inclusion: Kai is a universal human experience — all students have a relationship with food, seasonality, and sharing. Neurodiverse learners benefit from concrete, hands-on engagement with these concepts (e.g., examining a kūmara, mapping seasonal foods). Acknowledge diverse economic circumstances sensitively when discussing food security. Choice in how students demonstrate understanding (written, visual, oral) supports inclusive assessment.
Mātauranga Māori lens: The maramataka — the Māori lunar calendar — is one of Aotearoa's most sophisticated environmental data systems, encoding centuries of ecological observation about planting, harvesting, fishing, and weather patterns. Kūmara cultivation in pre-colonial Aotearoa was a feat of agricultural knowledge adapted to a new climate. Rāhui (temporary resource restrictions) is indigenous resource management — conservation before conservation. Kaitiakitanga frames the relationship between people and kai not as extraction but as reciprocal guardianship. These are not historical curiosities — they are living solutions to contemporary problems.
Prior knowledge: Students benefit from foundational understanding of climate change and food systems. No specialist mātauranga Māori knowledge required for entry-level engagement — the unit builds this knowledge progressively.
Curriculum alignment
- Place and Environment — Social Studies: Understand how people's management of resources reflects their values and their view of sustainability — and how mātauranga Māori frameworks provide models for sustainable resource management.
- Ecology — Living World: Understand how human activities and natural factors affect the distribution and abundance of organisms; evaluate the impact of changes on ecosystem health and food systems.