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9 - Productive Improvisation and Collective Creativity

Lessons from the Dance Studio

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Janice E. Fournier
Edited by
R. Keith Sawyer
Janice E. Fournier
Affiliation:
University of Washington
R. Keith Sawyer
Affiliation:
Washington University, St Louis
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Summary

In an era emphasizing accountability, standards, and coverage of the curriculum on a timetable, integrating improvisational activities in the classroom can be risky. By its nature, improvisation invites surprises and can quickly head in unexpected directions. Not knowing where such activities will lead, how can teachers ensure that they will be productive – that they will in fact help accomplish an instructional goal? This is the crux of the teaching paradox. Teachers who are expected to follow a standardized curriculum may be reluctant to experiment with activities that deviate from the book, with good reason. The skills needed to teach according to a prescribed format differ markedly from the skills needed to teach by attending to what arises in learners themselves. The latter requires joining with students in a fundamentally creative process – teachers who invite input from students must then find ways to take up their ideas and use them to chart a new, flexible path toward instructional goals. In this chapter, I draw on research from dance – specifically, how choreographers and dancers compose a dance together – to illustrate how a collective creative process can indeed be effective pedagogy. The improvisational strategies choreographers employ to ensure mutual understanding of material and independent mastery in performance can also be used in the classroom to help effectively address the learning paradox.

Type
Chapter
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Structure and Improvisation in Creative Teaching , pp. 184 - 206
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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