Structure and Improvisation in Creative Teaching

Draws on studies of creative, improvised performance to identify practical advice for teachers who wish to become more creative professionals.

R. Keith Sawyer (Edited by)

9780521746328, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 June 2011

318 pages, 10 b/w illus. 9 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.43 kg

'This book should be recommended to teachers who are willing to develop creative teaching practices and to take a constructivist teaching approach within their classrooms. It should also be recommended as a useful teachers' training handbook since it provides a key to successful creative teaching approaches that make the fixed structures of expertise productive within the everyday improvisation of classroom practices.' Tim Higgins, London Review of Education

With an increasing emphasis on creativity and innovation in the twenty-first century, teachers need to be creative professionals just as students must learn to be creative. And yet, schools are institutions with many important structures and guidelines that teachers must follow. Effective creative teaching strikes a delicate balance between structure and improvisation. The authors draw on studies of jazz, theater improvisation and dance improvisation to demonstrate that the most creative performers work within similar structures and guidelines. By looking to these creative genres, the book provides practical advice for teachers who wish to become more creative professionals.

Foreword David Berliner
1. What makes good teachers great? The artful balance of structure and improvisation R. Keith Sawyer
Part I. The Teacher Paradox: 2. Professional improvisation and teacher education: opening the conversation Stacy DeZutter
3. Creativity, pedagogic partnerships, and the improvisatory space of teaching Pamela Burnard
4. Improvising within the system: creating new teacher performances in inner city schools Carrie Lobman
5. Teaching for creativity with disciplined improvisation Ronald A. Beghetto and James C. Kaufman
Part II. The Learning Paradox: 6. Taking advantage of structure to improvise in instruction: examples from elementary school classrooms Frederick Erickson
7. Breaking through the communicative cocoon: improvisation in secondary school foreign language classrooms Jürgen Kurtz
8. Improvising with adult English language learners Anthony Perone
9. Productive improvisation and collective creativity: lessons from the dance studio Janice E. Fournier
Part III. The Curriculum Paradox: 10. How 'scripted' materials might support improvisational teaching: insights from the implementation of a reading comprehension curriculum Annette Sassi
11. Disciplined improvisation to extend young children's scientific thinking A. Susan Jurow and Laura Creighton
12. Improvisational understanding in the mathematics classroom Lyndon C. Martin and Jo Towers
13. Conclusion: presence and the art of improvisational teaching Lisa Barker and Hilda Borko.

Subject Areas: Curriculum planning & development [JNKC], Educational psychology [JNC]