Pushing for Ontological Shifts in Teacher Learning: A Framework for Critical Improvisation

• In Event: Accepting the Responsibility to Examine and Innovate With Frameworks Used in Education Research

Abstract

This paper presents a conceptual framework for critical improvisation; a perspective that holds great potential for supporting re-humanizing pedagogy and can serve as a crucial companion to established just teaching practices. Specifically, the support of critically conscious values of Black racialized youth as the knowledge producers that they are and always have been.
This critical improvisation framework brings together insights and methods from improvisational theater (e.g. Halpern, Close, & Johnson, 1994; Johnstone, 2012; Spolin, 1983), Black performance theory (e.g. DeFrantz & Gonzalez, 2014; Johnson, 2006), and critical Black scholarship in education (e.g. Ladson-Billings, 2000; Martin & Gholson, 2012). Existing literature and educational research inform the framework and are used to discuss how the framework expands on current research dedicated to teacher learning and re-humanization in school contexts. The framework embraces the historical risks associated with shifting from the practice of status quo toward radical ontological shifts in teacher learning.
Broadly, critical improvisation is defined as the continuous process of unapologetically challenging dehumanizing norms through strong and caring relationships. Critical improvisation can: (1) support teachers’ more complex understandings of self in relation to lived histories as they are reproduced systemically in the present day; and, (2) facilitate reimagining the self as intentionally working toward being a force of re-humanization in everyday teaching through the praxis of consistent attention to improvisational interaction and critical reflection.

Engaging in critical improvisation is grounded in two fundamental assumptions:
1. People are constantly improvising by moving in and out of different cultural scripts in unique configurations of their own design.
2. Historical memory influences the ways people perform cultural scripts and the scripts they pull from in unexpected situations.
Engaging in critical improvisation is guided by the following three principles:
1. People committed to critical improvisation pursue re-humanizing pedagogy and allow this action to influence their historical memory, cultural scripts, and critically engaged improvisation.
2. People committed to critical improvisation are unapologetically committed to challenging dehumanizing norms, and actively look to resist dehumanizing cultural scripts in their daily-improvised interactions.
3. People committed to critical improvisation are committed to continuously improving themselves through challenging, learning, and reflecting on the ways they interact; they allow history to inform their present and envisioned future.

Improvisation affords for making connections, building trust, justifying the unexpected, and reaching deeper levels of response (Halpern, Close, & Johnson, 1994; Spolin, 1983). Improvisation offers the possibility for engagement with richly augmented interactions that disrupt and extend (Moten, 2003) normalized discourse, and movement toward disassembling dominant narratives (Rusert, 2012). The extension of improvisation into more critical approaches toward teaching and teacher education has the potential to foster movement toward a stronger conceptualization and practice of re-humanizing teaching.
Although there is established educational research about improvisation with concern for both student and teacher learning in and outside of specific disciplinary contexts, existing scholarship discusses improvisation as either irresponsible or as a facilitated practice. This paper presents a critical framework for improvisation that embraces the principles behind the practices in pursuit of more ontological commitments in teacher learning.

Author

• Ashley Danielle Scroggins, University of Colorado - Boulder