title: Jazz practice as a pedagogical approach in the high school English classroom
Creators: name: Hirsch, Daniel
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: pedagogy
subject: improvisation
subject: learning
subject: reflective practice

description: Teaching is an inherently improvisational process through which the teacher adapts their plans and structures, responding in real time to the unpredictability of their students and to what emerges throughout a lesson. The rise of performativity – measurement of teacher productivity or output – within Australian high school education, with its underlying positivist and instrumentalist philosophies, presents challenges both to the teacher and teaching as an improvisational act. These challenges, combined with certain interpretations of constructivist learning theory and a current focus on student-centred pedagogy, have resulted in increasing pressures on teachers to meet specific standards and repeatable outcomes and an education system averse to pedagogical risk-taking and mistakes. This in turn has resulted in the marginalisation of the teacher in the classroom, with the act of teaching becoming procedural and outcomes-driven rather than a collaborative, improvisational, and dialogic experience. Furthermore, the place of improvisation within teaching, not merely as a tool in the repertoire of teachers but as the fundamental element of teaching, is still not well understood, recognised, or maintained in teacher education. Therefore, there is a dearth of accounts of teacher experiences in the literature, in which practitioners reflect upon and share their practices and the realisations of pedagogical theories within their classrooms. This thesis focuses on my experiences as a high school teacher in my year-nine English classroom across a term of my teaching, as I reflect upon and consider how my jazz training informs my pedagogy. Practitioner research and reflective methods have been used to consider the relationship between my jazz training and high school teaching. I reflect upon how my ongoing practice and experience as a jazz drummer informs my role as a high school English teacher. This study responds to calls to recognise the place of the teacher and the act of teaching as critical within education, and to understand teaching as an improvisational practice. There are three key outcomes of the research. The first is an understanding of my teaching practice as being fundamentally improvisational, nurtured by my jazz musicianship. Second is an explanation of how improvisation manifests in my practice as being socially situated and dialogic. I focus on key elements of my pedagogy, arguing for (1) the role of silence and listening within teaching practice as a way for the teacher to reflect on their practice and listen to their students to adapt their lessons in real time; (2) the nurturing of a teacher’s originality or ‘own voice’ as a way for teachers to shape their individuality within a homogenising system; and (3) the importance of making space in a social constructivist classroom to promote student freedom while cultivating relationships and dialogic learning. Third, I reflect on how the teacher-student relationship may be balanced by dialogue and collaboration through which both teacher and student learn. This offers a way to balance the either-or nature of education and promote a dialogic and co-created classroom. This thesis contributes to a growing body of educational research into creative pedagogy and teaching as improvisation. While this has direct benefit particularly to the pre-service education of teachers, these findings would also support in-service teachers in recognising and further implementing improvisation within their practices, as well as school leaders and educational policy makers’ understandings of improvisation, dialogic education, and teaching.