What Makes Good Teachers Great? The Artful Balance of Structure and Improvisation

Critical Analysis

In the introduction to this edited volume, the author describes the qualities of improvisation that, when leveraged in parallel to supportive structures, indicate exceptional teaching performance.

Experienced teachers use scripts based on patterned experiences, but also improvise in response to what is happening in a classroom. They typically spend less time planning ahead of a class, because they are able to adapt in real-time to the classroom. They “do two apparently contradictory things: They use more structures, and yet they improvise more.” This balance is “the essence of the art of teaching.” Improvisation is argued to be core to effective teaching, and highlights the emergent qualities of classroom-based education. The improvisation, then, is shared between the instructor and the students; “students participate in a collective improvisation, guided by and along with the teacher.”

Historically, teaching as a performance has been used as a metaphor for classroom education; “Teachers stand at the front of the classroom, ‘on stage,’ and they perform for their ‘audience,’ the students.” A focus is on entertainment as a way of holding attention, and this approach to teaching “involves rehearsal, scripting, timing, and stage presence.” The performance may be viewed as aesthetic, yet it is “dangerously close to a view of teaching as a form of public speaking rather than a view of teaching as the scaffolding of students’ learning improvisation… Reflective practice,” the author argues, “is essentially improvisational.”

The author is clear to point out that scaffolds and structures are still fundamental to great teaching. These structures, however, have been overly-emphasized, and literature has ignored the benefits of improv. In an improvisational performance, the performers do not have a script. Instead, they are spontaneous. This does not mean that “anything goes,” because improvisational teaching balances structures and creativity. Most importantly, it treats students as participants and co-constructors of knowledge. Students should be given an opportunity for this engagement, but structural elements of education often work against more equalized learning. Creative learning, the author argues, is “more likely to occur when the rigid division between teacher and student is somewhat relaxed, creating an environment where teacher and students jointly construct the improvisational flow of the classroom.”

Research Value

The value of this work in informing my own research is that it:

• Adds additional argument for education-as-improv