The Art of Improvisation in Teaching and Learning

• In Event: Eisner in Mind: Fresh Perspectives on Inquiry and Education

Abstract

In this essay, I describe how arts based ways of thinking and doing can structure teaching and learning. Specifically, I use the art of improvisation as a new framework for the design of learning environments, especially around how teachers and learners interact with one another in a classroom space. This is not an essay about the use of improvisation in the classroom or about teaching and learning improvisation. Instead, this is an essay about how the rules of improvisation ought to guide the teaching and learning enterprise. I hope that these ideas both resonate with current teaching practice and prompt us to change our practice to incorporate more emergent, risk-taking learning ecologies.

Author

• Erica Rosenfeld Halverson, University of Wisconsin - Madison