Improvising Toward Discourse: Teachers and Teacher Educators Rethinking Learning

• In Event: Teacher Research as Professional Development

Abstract

This ethnographic study presents an approach to in-service teacher education which paired researchers and teachers as equal partners and side-by-side practitioners. The semester-long course deployed a model of learning as partnership between students and teachers; together we considered the implications of a new understanding of learning, one focused not on content mastery but rather on learning as the taking on of new Discourse identities, and applied improvisational principles and practices as tools to do so, all while exploring together how to implement such an approach in classrooms across grade levels and subjects. Participants reported rethinking their understanding of learning, and refocusing their teaching to privilege student voices and exploration of Discourse, and to bridge gaps between home and academic Discourses.

Authors

• Joshua Keidan, University of Toledo

• Jenny Denyer, The University of Toledo