Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-5nwft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-18T23:57:57.133Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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
Get access

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arnheim, R. (1974). Art and visual perception: A psychology of the creative eye. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bereiter, C. (2002). Education and mind in the knowledge age. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Blom, L. A. & Chaplin, L. T. (1982). The intimate act of choreography. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruner, J. (1960). The process of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Chaplin, L. T. (1976). Teaching dance improvisation creatively. Journal of Physical Education and Recreation, April.Google Scholar
Cobb, P., Confrey, J., diSessa, A., Lehrer, R., & Schauble, L. (2003). Design experiments in educational research. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 9–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornelius, L. & Herrenkohl, L. (2004). Power in the classroom: How the classroom environment shapes relationships with each other and with concepts. Cognition and Instruction, 22(4), 467–498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craft, A. (2002). Creativity and early years education: A lifewide foundation. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Cremin, T., Burnard, P., & Craft, A. (2006). Pedagogy and possibility thinking in the early years. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 1, 108–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience & education. New York: Collier Books.Google Scholar
Edwards, C., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. (Eds.) (1998). The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia approach – advanced reflections (2nd ed.). Greenwich, CT: Ablex Publishing.
Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Engle, R. A. & Conant, F. R. (2002). Guiding principles for fostering productive disciplinary engagement: Explaining an emergent argument in a community of learners classroom. Cognition and Instruction, 20, 399–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flower, L. & Hayes, J. R. (1994). A cognitive process theory of writing. In Ruddell, R. B., Ruddell, M. R., & Singer, H. (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (4th ed.). Newark, DE: International Reading Association, 928–950.Google Scholar
Fournier, J. E. (2003). Composing in dance: Thinking with minds and bodies. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Washington, Seattle.Google Scholar
Goodwin, C. (1993). The blackness of black: Color categories as situated practice. Discourse tools and reasoning: Situated cognition and technologically supported environments. November. Lucca, Italy.Google Scholar
Heath, S. B. (1999). Imaginative actuality: Learning in the arts during nonschool hours. In Fiske, E. B. (Ed.), Champions of change: The impact of the arts on learning. Washington, DC: The Arts Education Partnership, 19–34.Google Scholar
Holt, T. (1990). Thinking historically: Narrative, imagination, and understanding. New York: College Entrance Examination Board.Google Scholar
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
John-Steiner, V. (1985). Notebooks of the mind: Explorations of thinking. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Keller, C. H. & Keller, J. D. (1996). Thinking and acting with iron. In Chaiklin, S. and Lave, J. (Eds.), Understanding practice: Perspectives on activity and context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 125–143.Google Scholar
Krajcik, J. S., & Blumenfeld, P. (2006). Project based learning. In Sawyer, R. K. (Ed.), Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 317–333). New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lampert, M. (1990). When the problem is not the question and the solution is not the answer: Mathematical knowing and teaching. American Educational Research Journal, 27(1), 29–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice: Mind, mathematics, and culture in everyday life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paley, V. G. (1986). On listening to what the children say. Harvard Educational Review, 56(2), 122–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perkins, D. N. (1993). Person-plus: A distributed view of thinking and learning. In Salomon, G. (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and cognitive implications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Salomon, G. (1993). No distribution without individuals’ cognition: A dynamic interactional view. In Salomon, G. (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational implications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 111–138.Google Scholar
Sawyer, R. K. (2004). Creative teaching: Collaborative discussion as disciplined improvisation. Educational Researcher, 33(2), 12–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scardamalia, M. & Bereiter, C. (2006). Knowledge building. In Sawyer, R. K. (Ed.), Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 97–115). New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Scribner, S. (1997). Mind in action: A functional approach to thinking. In Tobach, E., Falmagne, R. J., Parlee, M. B., Martin, L. M., & Kapelman, A. S. (Eds.), Mind and social practice: Selected writings of Sylvia Scribner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schön, D. A. (1990). The design process. In Howard, V. A. (Ed.), Varieties of thinking. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Shahn, B. (1957). The shape of content. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Swados, E. (1988). Listening out loud: Becoming a composer. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Watson, G. & Konicek, R. (1990). Teaching for conceptual change: Confronting children’s experience. Phi Delta Kappan, 71(9), 680–685Google Scholar
Wiggins, G. (1989). A true test: Toward more authentic and equitable assessment. The Phi Delta Kappan, 70(9), 703–713.Google Scholar
Wolf, D., Bixby, J., Glenn, J., and Gardner, H. (1991). To use their minds well: Investigating new forms of student assessment. Review of Research in Education, 17, 31–74.Google Scholar
Zhang, J., Scardamalia, M., Reeve, R., & Messina, R. (2009). Designs for collective cognitive responsibility in knowledge-building communities. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 18(1), 7–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×