Cultivating New Discursive Practice in Science: Improvisation as Professional Vision

• In Event: Roundtable Session 111
  In Roundtable Session: Helping Students and Teachers to Find Their Voice

Abstract

This study employs a socio-cultural perspective to the study of scientists’ experiences with new discursive practices—those practices of improvisational theater. Authors investigated ways in which improvisational training can offer professional scientists a new repertoire of practice for mediating social interaction. We argue that through the training, participants may build new ways of making meaning, navigating the discursive practices inherent in the professional “doing” of science. Results indicate scientists who participate in improvisational theater can become cognizant and critical of common professional practice, can find commonality between improvisational principles of collaborative creation and their own professional practice, and learn to encode phenomena (e.g., interactive engagement with colleagues) with new meaning.

Authors

• Sarah Taylor Hug, Colorado Evaluation & Research Consulting

• Raquell Holmes, University of Connecticut