EDITED By R. Kerra SAWYER Nae sR in Creative al reteStructure and Improvisation in Creative Teaching . Edited by R. Keith Sawyer Washington University in St. Louis CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS‘CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS ‘Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, So Palo, Delhi, Toya, Mexico Cty Cambridge Univesity Press '532 Avent of the Ameriss, New York, $¥ 10015-2475, 18a sevecambridge.org Information on this tie: wre cambridgeorg/9780s3174638 © Cambridge University Press 201 ‘This publication isin copyright Subject to statutory except and tothe provisions of elevant collective licensing agree no reproduc! 1 part may take place without the writen permission of Cambridge University Pres 4 published 2018 in the United States of America A catalog record for his publication ie a lable from the Brits Library. “Library of Congress Cataloging ix Publication date Structure and improvisation in creative teaching! [edited by R. Keith Sawyer, Pm, Includes bibliographical references and indes 1s 978-0-52-76351-9(harback) ~ ISBN 978-0531-74633-8 (paperback) 1. Student centered learning, 2. Active leering. 3, Creative teaching. ‘4 Motivation in education. 1. Sawyer, R. Keith (Robert Keith) sny content on such We CONTENTS List of Table and Figures Notes on Contributors Foreword by David C. Berliner 1. What Makes Good Teachers Great? The Artful Balance of Structure and Improvisation R Keith Sawyer PART 1 THE TEACHER PARADOX 2. Professional Improvisation and Teacher Education: ‘Opening the Conversation Stacy DeZutter +. 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 2. THE LEARNING PARADOX 6. Taking Advantage of Structure to Improvise in Instruction: Examples from Elementary School Classrooms Frederick Erickson ” st 94Contents Breaking through the Communicative Cocoon: Improvisation in Secondary School Foreign Language Classrooms Jiargen Kurtz Improvising with Adult English Language Learners Anthony Perone . Productive Improvisation and Collective Creativity: Lessons from the Dance Studio Janice E. Fournier PART 3 THE CURRICULUM PARADOX >. How “Scripted” Materials Might Support Improvisational ‘Teaching: Insights from the Implementation of a Reading Comprehension Curriculum Annette Sassi . Disciplined Improvisation to Extend Young Childrens Scientific Thinking A, Susan Jurow and Laura Creighton McFadden ._ Improvisational Understanding in the Mathematics Classroom Lyndon C. Martin and Jo Towers - Conclusion: Presence and the Art of Improvisational Teaching Lisa Barker and Hilda Borko Index: 209 236 279 299, TABLE AND FIGURES TABLE General-methods textbooks used in content analysis, FIGURES ‘Amber's molecules diagram Elis clay model - solid Elis clay model - liquid Eis clay model ~ gas .1 The annotated parallelogram ‘The “cake? showing the sector ‘The “cake? showing the sector and segment ‘The circle with the drawn square ‘The labeled triangle “The annotated triangle page 38NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS LISA BARKER isa doctoral candidate in teacher education at Stanford University. ‘A former K-12 English and drama teacher, she is an instructor in the Stanford "Teacher Education Program and the Center to Support Excellence in Teaching. Her research centers on the ways in which improvisational theater training can engage teachers in thinking actively about notions of presence, classroom dis- ‘course, and relationship-building with young people and colleagues. RONALD A. BEGHETTO is an Associate Professor of Education Studies at the University of Oregon. His research focuses on supporting creativity in class- rooms and teacher development. He has published more than so articles and ‘book chapters on these topics. His latest book (with James C. Kaufman) is [Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom. DAVID C. BERLINER is Regents’ Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University. His interests ae inthe study of teaching and educational policy. He isthe author ‘or co-author of more than two hundred books, chapters, and journal articles; a former president of the American Educational Research Association; and a ‘member of the National Academy of Education HILDA BORKo is a Professor of Education at Stanford University. Her research explores the process of learning to teach, with an emphasis on changes in nov- ice and experienced teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about teaching and learn- ing, and their classroom practices, as they participate in teacher education and professional development programs. She is also designing and studying a program to prepare math educational leaders. PAMELA BURNARD is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, UK, 1er Degree courses in Educational Research and Arts, Her books include Musics Creativities, Reflective where she manages Culture, and Edux Notes on Contributors Practices in Arts Education, Creative Learning 3 Digital Technology. She is co-convenor of the and Music Education with Education Research STACY DEZUTTER is an Assistant Professor of Education at Millsaps College. theory to examine two sepa- , of teacher cognition and nated creative processes of groups: She holds a PhD in the Learning Sciences from Washington University in St. Louis. rate, but related, areas of interest: the social form: the dis FREDERICK ERICKSON is the George F. Kneller Professor of Anthropology of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is also appointed as Professor of Applied Linguistics. He is a pioneer in the video- based study of face-to-face interaction, with special attention to the musicality of speech and of listening behavior, and he also writes on q research, methods. His most recent bool sd Talk and Social Theory: Ecologies of Speaking and Listening in Everyday Life. JANICE E, FOURNIER is a Research Scientist for UW Information Technology at the University of Washington, She also teaches in the UW College of Education and isan education consultant to arts organizations. Her research interests include the arts and learning, arts literacy, and educational technology. A. SUSAN JUROW isan Assistant Professor of Educational Psychological Studies the University of Colorado, Boulder: She studies the interrelations between iden- interaction, and culture in and across learning environments, Her research thas been published in journals including Journal ofthe Learning Sciences; Mind, (Culture, and Activity, and Journal of Teacher Education. JAMES C. KAUFMAN is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the California, State University at San Bernardino, where he directs the Learning Research Ins tor and The ‘Cambridge Handbook of Creativity, He is active in APAs Division 10 as pr dent-elect and co-editor of thei and the Arts JORGEN KURTZ. is Professor of English and Teaching English as a Foreign Language at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany. He previously the University of Dortmund and at Karlsruhe University of Education, His cur- rent research focuses on the role of improvisation in enhancing oral proficiency in EFL classrooms, on EPL textbook analysis and use, and on culture-sensi foreign language education in all Notes on Contributors xi CARRIE LOBMAN is an Associate Professor in the Rutgers Graduate School cof Education. Her research interests include teacher education and the relationship between play, performance, learning, and development. She is a co-author of Unscripted Learning: Using Improv Activities Across the K-8 Curriculum, LYNDON ¢. MARTIN is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at York University. His research interests are in mathematical thinking and learning with a particular emphasis on understanding and how this can be ‘characterized and described. He is also concerned with mathematical under- standing in the workplace and in how adults working in construction trades ‘understand and use mathematical concepts in formal and informal ways. LAURA CREIGHTON MCFADDEN received her PhD in science education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has taught junior high school science and was an Assistant Professor of Science Education at Rhode Island College. Laura is currently pursuing a career in fiction writing and is working on her first young-adult novel. ANTHONY PERONE is a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at ‘Chicago. His research focuses on the life-span presence, development, and ben- efits of imaginative play activity and the role of improvisational theater activities in formal and informal earning environments and in teacher education. an independent education researcher and evaluator based ‘works as a consultant at ‘TERC in in Cambridge, ‘co-author Learning. ANNETTE SASS! in the greater Boston area. She curren Cambridge, MA, and has worked at Edu MA, and Education Development Center in Newton, of The Effective Principal: Instructional Leadership for ik. KEITH SAWYER studies creativity, collaboration, and learning, He has pub- lished more than eighty scholarly articles and is author or editor of ten books, “The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation, and Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration. jo Towers is a Professor in the Faculty of Education University of Calgary. Her research interests center on the phenomenon of mathem: ‘cal understanding, Bringing to bear conceptions of learning drawn from the domains of ecology, complexity theory, and improvisational theory, she studies students’ growing understandings of mathematics, the role of the teacher in ‘occasioning such understandings, and the implications for teacher education structures and pedagogies.132 Erickson (2008). Musicality in tak and listening: A key element in classroom discourse as an environment for learning. In S. Malloch and C. Trevarthen (Eds), Comamanicative musicality: Exploring the basis of human companionship (pp. 449-463). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ion of society: Outline ofthe theory of structuration. Building a better teacher. New York Times (March 2). 2). Contextualization and understanding In A. Duranti and ‘ambridge: Cambridge University Press. nL. (2005). Improvisational science discourse: Teaching John- CCsikszentmihalyi and ty and development (pp. 12-60). New York: tive discussion as disciplined improvisation. (2008). ing. In RK, Sawyer (Ed), Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. -16). New York: Cambridge Scheglof, EA. (1986). The routine as achievement, Human Studi Silverstein, M. (2003). Indexical or the dialectics of s ‘Journal of Child Psychology ana Psychiatry, 17 89-100. Breaking through the Communicative Cocoon: Improvisation in Secondary School Foreign Language Classrooms JORGEN KURTZ, ‘Language is not just a tool for communication. It is also a resource for creative thought, a framework for understanding the world, a key to new ‘knowledge and human history, and a source of pleasure and inspiration. (Kern 2008: 367) In this chapter, I provide specific examples of how I have used guided improvisation in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms in Germany. Very few attempts have been made to examine the potential of improvisation for learning and teaching foreign languages in schools. I dem- ‘onstrate that improvisation provides a unique way to balance the teaching paradox: Improvisation is not only related to directionality, competence, performance, and design, but to spontan ition, and chance as well, ‘Thus, it contrasts with the traditional view of teaching as transmission of knowledge and skills, that is, of delivering a prescribed curriculum, attend- ing to a particular methodology, following a specific procedure, actuating pre-arranged ways. This traditional view avoids the teaching paradox altogether, but at the cost of removing all stu- dent creativity. Moreover, because improvisation encompasses attunement to a situational context, involving “an opaque stock of past experience” (Ciborra 1999: 79) as well as sp us decision making and problem solving, openness and unpredictability it also contrasts with current educa- tional trends that place tremendous emphasis on standardization, predict- able improvement, outcome-orientation, and testing. In R. K, Saver (Bd) (2 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni ‘Structure and improvisation in creative teaching (pp. 38-161). ty Press.134 Kurtz ‘As Sawyer explains in the Introduction to this volume, i ‘whether in jazz, theater, or the classroom - is never completely free; it always, occurs in the presence of structures, rules, and frameworks. Itis exactly this, mix of structural and operational dependence and independence, of plan- ning and emergence, conformity and novelty, intention and attention, that ‘makes improvisation of fundamental importance to enhancing foreign lan- guage instruction in actual everyday practice. As Ciborra (2002: 50) argues, “the power of bricolage, impr are highly situated, they exp! hand, while often pre-planned ways of operating appear to be derooted, and less effective, because they do not ft the contingencies of the moment” Examining how improvisation can be incorporated into foreign language instruction is therefore of great interest, especially because of its potential to provide a new way to address the teaching and learning paradox, to move beyond a style of foreign language instruction which is rather artificial and ‘monotonous in many schools around the globe at present, especially at the secondary level of foreign language education. My examples of improvised learner discourse were gathered as part of an ongoing research project aiming at illuminating the potential of impro- room for learners in German EFL. classrooms to participate actively in par- tially self-determined and self-regulated target language exchanges as they unfold, using language more freely, improvising whenever necessary and appropriate (see Legutke 1993, Kurtz 2001). Based on this observation, in 1996-1997, I carried out a pilot study in Dortmund, Germanys sixth largest city, in three secondary schools: a secondary school for grades 5~13 (with comprehensive intake), a middle school (grades 5-10), and a selective junior and senior high school lead- ing to university entrance. The objective was to explore how begin intermediate, and upper-intermediate learners reacted to and coped with communicative activities and tasks specifically designed to induce spon- taneous, largely unprepared interaction in the target language (for a com- pact overview of the key theoretical tenets of communicative language » For detailed des ative review, oom practice is included in Siebold 2004a. I would like to thank Claire Krams van Liet, Keith Sawyer, and Virginia Teichmann for their helpful comments on ealier ‘drebie of this chapter, tions ofthe project, sce Kurtz 2001, 006a, 2006, 2008; for an eval Breaking through the Communicative Cocoon 235 teaching, see Richards, 2005). The central discovery ev pilot study was that increasing the improvisational demands on learners by confronting them with progressively less predictable communicative set- tings contributes to the gradual transformation and expansion of learners’ participatory repertoires in the target language and culture (the pilot study is documented in Kurtz, 19972, 19976, 1998). ting this study, I was a secondary school EFL teacher in in Dortmund, Germany, over a period of eight years. In 1997-1999, I was granted a research fellowshi Dortmund, which allowed me to focus ful Because I did not have any further support in terms of human and financial resources, decided to carry out the main study in the same three schools in Dortmund, including a total of 546 beginning, intermediate, and upper-intermediate learners aged eleven to seventeen, and six male and female teachers aged twenty-six to fifty-four (1998-1999). While observing classrooms, analyzing video sequences of improvised learner discourse with university students in their teaching practice, it became increasingly clear that active engage- ‘ment in goal-directed communicative activity, situated and meaningful language use, playfulness, creativity, and improvisation play an important role in improving learners’ willingness to speak, and that they (largely pos- itively) affect learners’ readiness to engage in more autonomous and more extended interaction (for a detailed description of the holistic and iterative design of the study, as well as the multi-perspective search meth- odology employed, see Kurtz, 2001, 61-103, 2006), ‘The data gathered in the course of this main study showed that when provided with meaningful communicative activities and @ more open and flexible infrastructure for target language interaction and collabora- tive language learning in a relaxed classroom atmosphere, learners spoke more freely, and they were inclined to take more communicative risks. Furthermore, they articulated themselves differently than in tr 1 classroom exchanges, which are relatively scripted and largely dominated by the teacher (see Kurtz, 2001: 197-239). Over the past years, follow-up research on improvised speaking (see Siebold, 20042, 2004b, 2006; Liu, 2006; Rossa, 2007; Beecroft, 2008) has provided further evidence that when given the opportunity to express themselves more freely in class, many EFL learners become what Swann and Maybin (2007: 491) have recently referred to as “1 meaning” who “recreate, refashion, and recontextuali ‘tural resources in the act of communication” (on the role of creativity in136 Kurtz everyday conversation, see Sawyer, 2001; Carter; 2004). There is a body of research suggesting that this is of critical importance for more profound learning to take place (in combination with many other factors, of course, ide view of the EFL classroom, summing up what is ized as traditional classroom interaction in the international this chapter moves on to present two exemplary impro- visational activities designed to prompt extemporaneous learner-learner interaction in the target language. Commented transcripts are added to illustrate important effects and side effects. This is followed by a brief dis- cussion of how the and the underlying theoretical approach are related to the current theoretical discussion on foreign and second language learning and teaching, At the end of the chapter, an outside view of the EFL classroom is adopted, raising some important questions concerning foreign language instruction ing improvisation) under the current regime of competence-, standards-, and outcome-orientation. ‘TRADITIONAL LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION IN EFL CLASSROOMS: TEACHER-DRIVEN DISCOURSE ‘Teachers orchestrate classroom interaction in many different ways around the globe. Consequently, it is difficult to generalize about the current status and the nature of classroom discourse at the secondary school level. There is nevertheless a converging body of evidence indicating that in many foreign or second language classrooms worldwide, learners are exposed to a surprisingly similar environment of instruction, which is sugges- tive of a “communicative cocoon” spun by teachers to foster and scaffold cculture-sensitive target language learningiin systematic ways. Thediscursive design of the cocoon is relatively simple and inflexible. It is typically based ‘on brief sequences of exchanges between the teacher and individual learn- rs, In the research literature, this omnipresent, cocoon-like architecture of classroom interaction has long been identified and referred to as IRF dis- course, because it consists of three highly conventionalized and routinized communicative units: teacher learner response (R), and tance, Sinclair & Coulthard, According to McCarthy and Slade (2007), IRF discourse is the most, frequently occurring format of interaction in today’s foreign language class- rooms. “Along with teacher monologues and activities of various kinds,” is the “stock-in-trade in language teaching, especially where large groups Breaking through the Communicative Cocoon 337 of learners are involved, and especially when curricular pressures militate against more imaginative communication in the classroom” (McCarthy & Slade, 2007: 863). Lin (2008: 67-80) comes to a very similar conclusion when she writes that IRF dialogue is the foreign language t tool to drive a lesson forward, usually in combination with the text- book and related teaching materials. The DESI-study (Deutsch Englisch Schiilerleistungen International), a Germany-wide empirical assessment study of ninth-graders’ achievements in German and in English (see Beck & Klieme, 2003; Klieme & Beck, 2007; Klieme et al., 2008), adds further ‘weight to these observations, indicating that classroom discourse in German secondary school EFL classrooms is usually composed of and largely con- fined to teacher-dominated exchanges of the three-part IRF type. ‘The Problem with Traditional Instruction Looking at classroom interaction in insttutionalized settings more than ten years ago, Mercer (1995: 4) states that “some of the most creative thinking takes place when people are talking together” However, as he continues, in ourse” by using “direct/cued elicitations, confirmations, rejections, elaborations, reformu- lations, literal recaps, reconstructive recap: ‘consequence, learners often simply fill the discursive slots provided, so that “the course of the event is determined more by the teacher's understand- ing of the topic than by the gaps in students’ understanding of it” (1995: 6). Furthermore, “while the ‘right’ answers of some pupils are informative for the rest of the class, in routines like this the number of pupils who can contribute is only a tiny proportion of the whole” (1995: 6). Over the last two decades, further research on classroom interaction has accumulated indicating (a) that IRF discourse is symptomatic of an asym- ‘metrical classroom culture that is still “fixated on grammatical form’ to a large extent (see Thornbury, 2002: 98); (b) that IRF-based instruction tends to pertain to the norms of written language and sentence grammar, rather than the specific communicative “syntax of action” (Drew & Heritage, 1992: 15) and “grammar of speech’ (Brazil, 1995) outside the classrooms and (¢) that opportunities for learners to exercise communicative initia- tive and control are severely restricted by the IRF format of ion (see van Liet, 2001: 90-96). IRF discourse is thus the epitome of pre-planned instruction ~ of recurrent, highly routinized and ritualized, in many parts