Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   R. Keith Sawyer (Washington University, St Louis)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press (Virtual Publishing)
ISBN:  

9780511997105

ISBN 10:   0511997108
Publication Date:   05 June 2012
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Undefined
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock  
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Table of Contents

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.

Reviews

'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

If we want our students to learn higher-level skills, including creativity and critical thinking, structures and scripts cannot get us there. That is why this book should be widely read and discussed! These chapters help teachers negotiate the necessary tensions of teaching in an age that must pay more attention to creativity. --David C. Berliner, Arizona State University This exciting collection presents eloquently the reflexive relation between advance preparation and improvisation in the act of teaching. Teachers must be thoroughly prepared, to be sure. Sawyer's collection shows us they must also be able to respond artfully to the unexpected demands of teacher-student interactions. --Hugh Mehan, University of California, San Diego ...This text examines what it is that teachers actually do in classrooms and in preparation for being in classrooms, and gives a nuanced view of what goes on in the minds of excellent teachers... Sawyer's purpose for Structure and Improvisation in Creative Teaching is ambitious... The contributions in the book offer illustrations of teaching and improvisation at work and further develop the idea of using improvisation for initial teacher preparation and professional development. --Dr. Kathleen Brown, College of Education, University of Missouri St. Louis, PsycCRITIQUES

Author Information

Dr R. Keith Sawyer is internationally known as an expert in the learning sciences and in the psychology of creativity. He is editor or author of more than seventy scholarly articles and ten books, including The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (2006), Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation (2006) and Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration (2007).

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