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The need for a deeper exploration and conceptual understanding: The critical role of creativity and collaboration in real-world learning

5/20/2014

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Sawyer, R. K. (2011). The need for a deeper exploration and conceptual understanding: The critical role of creativity and collaboration in real-world learning. Learning Landscapes, 5(1), 27-35.
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Response to "Emergence in sociology"

5/20/2014

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Sawyer, R. K. (2012). Response to "Emergence in Sociology". Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 42(2), 270-275.
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The collaborative nature of innovation

5/19/2014

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Sawyer, R. K. (2009). The collaborative nature of innovation. Journal of Law and Policy, 30, 293-324 
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The challenges of creative teaching and learning

5/18/2014

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Sawyer, R. K. (2014). The challenges of creative teaching and learning. Teachers College Record
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Reconstructing mathematics pedagogy from a constructivist perspective

5/16/2014

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Simon, M. A. (1995). Reconstructing mathematics pedagogy from a constructivist perspective. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 26(2), 114-146.
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Structure and improvisation in creative teaching

5/14/2014

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Sawyer, R. K. (2012). Structure and improvisation in creative teaching. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Structures: such as algorithms, routines, procedures, scripts, checklists, and protocols for conducting instruction
Foreword by David C. Berliner (p.xiv-xvi) 
  • The power of routines, scripts, and all kinds of established procedures to guide action in environments that are stable and predictable is not be questioned. But as events become less certain, and the outcomes desired less standardized, adherence to those same routines can be ineffectual, if not dangerous.  
  • Too much of classroom life has become too routinized: 1) due partly to powerful accountability policies that demand that certain student outcomes be achieved; 2) another reason for this increase in demand for uniformity and routines in schools arises from the increasing dominance of business models models applied to education. (works in business settings but not in teaching)


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Community development as improvisational performance: A new framework for understanding and reshaping practice

5/7/2014

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Farmer, E. (2005). Community development as improvisational performance: A new framework for understanding and reshaping practice. Community Development: Journal of the Community Development Society, 36(2), 1-14.
[Abstract] Improvisational performance is a useful tool to help practitioners and participants reshape our understanding of community development practice. This reshaping can have a dramatic effect on community building. The performance framework supports community members and community developers to create new "stages" (or environments) on which to perform new un-scripted plays that build on positive improvisational processes. These processes open up the possibility of new relationships even among former antagonists. In this approach, the community is seen as an "improvisational performance ensemble" that is always growing, always changing, and always engaged in discovering new ways to perform relationships without a commitment to a pre-conceived outcome or product. Similarly, community development professionals can take on a role more akin to theatre directors who help to set the stage so that community members can work together to be open, to welcome the unexpected, and discover new ways to build and create together. In this case study, the author describes the community development process that took place in a large housing project in Brooklyn, New York. This improvisational performance approach helped to re-ignite the creation capacity of the community to end the widespread violence that was destroying it.
[Notes]
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how reshaping community development practice as improvisational performance can dramatically improve even the most challenging of community development situations.
Jnanabrata Bhattacharyya (2004) defined community development as "solidarity"  and "agency" in which solidarity is defined broadly as human connectedness, and agency is defined as the capacity of human beings to act and change their environment. (This paper: how to advance the continuous creation of solidarity and agency.)
This paper tells the story of how the framework of improvisational performance created the environment in which extraordinary conversations developed among unlikely allies, a truce was negotiated, and conflict declined. These accomplishments did not happen because of any one person, but they were the result of creating a context in which all participants would improvise a new performance without knowing what the outcome would be. The value of improvisational performance is that professionals, community members, and activists can create an environment to work together to be open, to welcome the unexpected, and to lead without a commitment to a particular pre-conceived product or outcome.
Vygotsky showed that children learn by being supported to perform ahead of themselves (1987, p.213). In like manner, when adults learn something new, they have to go a little beyond themselves to learn it. More precisely adults have to create environments with others--what Vygotsky called "zones of proximal development" (ZPDs)--that make such performing and development possible. These ZPDs are the environments in which people experience the social nature of their existence and the power of collective creative activity (1987, pp. 208-209). Performance is a toll that helps us create these developmental environments.
It is useful to envision the work of community building in a similar way to that of improvisational ensemble building. Every activity in the ensemble (community) has an impact on the overall development of the ensemble (community), and everyone involved has responsibility for strengthening the ensemble (community performance). Community building is a collective, creative process--of people relating, conversing, performing, and bringing new social units into existence and at the same time, sharing a collective commitment to their sustainability; a sustainability that demands a commitment to continuous growth.
The problematic we are dealing with in contemporary culture is that we tend to see experience and respond to people as products (identities, labels, and members of a category) rather than ongoing process. We see ourselves and others as "who we are" (products) and not as simultaneously "who we are" and "who we are becoming". Yet, each of us is, at every moment, both being and becoming (Lois Holzman, 2004, p.2)
When community develops, they do so by "becoming" or going beyond themselves.
A performance is an instance of a politics of action, a circulation of power. A performance is a de-centering of agency and person through movement, disruption, action that incessantly contests, breaks, and remakes. Personal narrative and personhood are constituted in the moments of performance. Every performance becomes a way of questioning the status quo, and even as performance reproduces the status quo, it does so in novel ways, in ways special to the performer (Denzin, 2001, p.20)
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Creativity: An interdisciplinary perspective

5/1/2014

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Gardner, H. (1988). Creativity: An interdisciplinary perspective. Creativity Research Journal, 1(1), 8-26.
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Creativity

5/1/2014

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Hennessey, B. A., & Amabile, T. (2010). Creativity. Annual Review of Psychology, 61, 569-598.
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