Creative Teaching: Collaborative Discussion as Disciplined Improvisation

TLDR

Teaching has long been framed as a creative performance, yet contemporary reform has linked it to scripted instruction that suppresses teacher creativity, contrasting with constructivist, inquiry‑based, and dialogic methods that prioritize collaboration. The study proposes reframing teaching as improvisational performance to better capture its collaborative and emergent nature. Viewing teaching as improvisation reveals its collaborative, emergent character, clarifies how curriculum materials connect to classroom practice, and underscores teaching as a creative art.

Abstract

Teaching has often been thought of as a creative performance. Although comparisons with performance were originally intended to emphasize teacher creativity, they have become associated instead with contemporary reform efforts toward scripted instruction that deny the creativity of teachers. Scripted instruction is opposed to constructivist, inquiry-based, and dialogic teaching methods that emphasize classroom collaboration. To provide insight into these methods, the “teaching as performance” metaphor must be modified: Teaching is improvisational performance. Conceiving of teaching as improvisation highlights the collaborative and emergent nature of effective classroom practice, helps us to understand how curriculum materials relate to classroom practice, and shows why teaching is a creative art.