Fostering Culturally and Developmentally Responsive Teaching Through Improvisational Practice

The power of improvisational teaching

“…Responsive practice is not intuitive, particularly in a tradition of teaching that has taken a hands-off view of teaching in play (Graue et al, 2014). In an earlier paper we examined how three teachers took up the ideas presented in our professional development courses and found that:…”

“…These narrower scripts of improvisation made the idea of reciprocal funds of knowledge, a practice in which home and school mutually contributed expertise that could be used to support learning, difficult to conceptualize in the professional development and in some participants' practice. (Graue et al, 2014) We saw how different types of knowledge and approaches to teaching created affordances and constraints to the responsive practices we asked the teachers to consider. We build on the analysis from the previous paper to explore the notion of improvisation more deeply, examining how it relates to teacher/child relationships and child agency.…”

“…Based on constructivist and ecological developmental theory, quality is centered on teacherechild interactions, with teachers intentionally building on children's knowledge in moment-to-moment exchanges (Mashburn et al, 2008;Pianta, Belsky, Houts, Morrison, & Network, 2007;Pianta, Belsky, Vandergrift, Houts, & Morrison, 2008). Key to this kind of interaction-based approach is a teacher who brings deep developmental and content knowledge, as well as familiarity with students' home resources to her practice (Graue et al, 2014). This last element of knowledge is especially important when working with children who are culturally different from their teachers (Tobin, 2010).…”

Improvisational Teaching as Being With: Cultivating a Relational Presence Toward Justice‐Oriented Literacies

“…The scholarship on improvisation and teaching (Boldt, Lewis, & Leander, 2015;Graue, Whyte, & Delaney, 2014;Shem-Tov, 2011;Tanner, 2017) provides a generative lens to experience the ways that Daryl, Misha, and their students encountered justice-oriented movements in their language arts classrooms. What many educators experience in schools today is a system of planning and teaching that expects an exclusive fidelity to a curricular pace and sequence and mandated objectives.…”

Using Mathematical and Computational Thinking in Early Grades Science Classrooms: The Need for High‐Quality Professional Development

“…In addition to being a key practice in the Next Generation Science Standards, integrating mathematics into science allows students to practice real life applications of the math skills they are learning. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) suggest that young children be engaged in learning that builds on the ways that math is used by children in their daily lives (Graue, Wyte, & Delaney, ; NAEYC, ; National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, ). Incorporating math into this type of learning can help young students see the connections between their everyday lives and science and mathematical concepts, while helping them to construct a foundation of knowledge for future learning (Lind, ).…”