The Power of Improvisational Practice

• In Event: Roundtable Session 20
  In Roundtable Session: Promising Practices for Professional Development in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

In this paper we explore an effort to rethink curricular decision-making with a group of public preK teachers working in a context of curriculum escalation and commitment to play-based pedagogy. Through a professional development (PD) program designed to support developmentally and culturally responsive early mathematics, we examine how teachers took up the idea of engaging in mathematics with 4 year olds in a way that married content knowledge and home practices. We look at themes that came up in our analysis of how teachers negotiated our vision of responsive teaching, using the notion of improvisation as a metaphor to understand how they took up this new role.

Authors

• Mary Elizabeth (Beth) Graue, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Kristin Lyn Whyte, University of Wisconsin - Madison