I argue that personal style in improvisational dance is, amongst other factors, a matter of the dancers' attunement to sets of affordances. We can use the language and theory of affordances and enactive embodied cognition as a teaching tool to improve our students' improvisational practice. Often when a student's improvisational skill has…

Constructed broadly according to the principles of musical fugue, this piece of creative writing is presented as a performance autoethnography, enacted through a multi-voiced ethnodrama between a fictionalized version of the author and two imaginary doctoral students. In successive episodes, it discusses the difference between autoethnography and…

This essay represents my attempt to develop an expanded voice-as-researcher. My intent is to create a space for an improvisatory and playful process of self-discovery through writing aimed at extracting deeply-held, even concealed, possibilities rarely invoked in my practices as researcher. To facilitate this process of self-discovery, I use a…

Somatic memoirs from the author's participation at dance intensives with acclaimed dancer-choreographer Moustapha Bangoura in the West African Republic of Guinea reveal how solo dance experiences can test acoustic literacy, promote music interaction, and foster an aptitude for movement invention. These skills are fundamental to West African dance…

This paper aims to show how Emerson provides a reworking of Kantian understandings of moral education in young children's "Bildung." The article begins and ends by thinking of Emersonian self-cultivation as a form of improvisatory or wild "Bildung." It explores the role of "Bildung" and self-cultivation in preschools…

This paper engages with the medically established view that individuals with autism are not capable of play or being imaginative. This paper resists this idea by reflecting on psychobiographical research conducted on the life of Temple Grandin. By re-witnessing creative experiences in her life, dialogue surrounding the imaginative capacities of…

Extra credit assignments are often viewed with disdain by educators as opportunities to earn points for students that lack the study skills to do well on exams and quizzes. However, these assignments can serve as a platform for students to apply the course material to their own lives, optimizing their strengths and creativity, and encouraging them…

Models of creative problem solving are predicated upon mental states to explain everything from the outcome of problem-solving experiments to the emergence of artistic creativity. We present two converging perspectives that describe a profoundly different ontological description of creativity. Our analysis proceeds from a distinction between…

In March 2013, Art Education editor Robert Sweeny (2013) published an editorial titled "Ten Ways of MAKING" focused on capturing the mounting zeitgeist of the concept of making. The maker movement encourages informal teaching and learning of practical technical skills related to electronics, metal- and woodworking, and traditional arts…

Italian makerspace is based on the principles of the Reggio Emilia approach founded by Loris Malaguzzi, in which the environment plays a critical role in children's development. Malaguzzi believed that the makerspace is the third teacher (joining family and classroom teachers), and children express themselves through a "hundred…

The essay develops a case study about a young boy playing with a toy train to address neoliberalism's problematic discourse that depicts learning as instrumental, as something that can be caused by teaching. This paper's perspective is enactive, taking the view that central to understanding learning is not the mind or brain working in isolation…

Purpose: Organizational ambidexterity brings together the paradoxical tensions between exploration and exploitation. Embracing such paradoxical tensions depends on both separating the poles to appreciate their distinct elements and integrating them to appreciate their synergies. This paper explores integrative ambidexterity that focuses on the…

Drawing from six-months of action research with spectacle theatre-makers in Chicago, this study explores multimodal, expeditionary practice of teaching artists who apprenticed girls through Redmoon Theatre's Dramagirls program. Concepts of new literacy design and aesthetic experience illustrate teaching in socio-semiotic and material worldcraft,…

Wonder-full education recognises experiences of wonder as lying at the heart of learning and education. If we accept the premise that wonder is important for/in education, what should characterise wonder-full education? This paper clarifies what it is like to wonder, how the aims of wonder-full education are best described, and it discusses three…

This paper explores the use of performance in a college-level course that teaches education majors how to use drama, dance, and music in their instruction. Students engage in drama activities such as improvisation and playbuilding in an effort to experience firsthand the benefits of such practices for their future classrooms. The essay shares some…