Background: A significant body of scholarship has highlighted the importance of improvisation in teaching, particularly the interactional and responsive creativity that is required for teachers to co-construct meaning with students. However, recent efforts inside and outside university-based teacher education have pushed against novice teacher…

This qualitative study draws on Design-Based Research and explores the impact of a Maker Day on teachers' conceptualizations of design thinking. At the Maker Day, participants experienced design thinking as a problem finding approach prior to making prototypes. Intersection of design thinking and making supports constructionist learning; it can be…

This study investigated the effects of different types of creativity interventions on different facets of creative potential, also including more school-related creativity demands. In a sample of 77 fourth-graders in the age between 9 and 12 years, we administered a verbal and a figural creativity training, realized in two school lessons over two…

Functional fixedness is related to excessive focusing on a specific functional property of an object. We assumed that the naming of other objects which possess the same functional property to a lesser extent than a given object can reduce the excessive focusing on this functional property for this object. It can help to loosen functional fixedness…

This systematic literature review aims to identify and critically examine the prevailing general trends of music education research that addresses issues of improvisation from 1985 to 2015. The study examined the main features of studies with impact that focus on musical improvisation and have been published in peer-reviewed music education…

The purpose of this study was to explore how an intergenerational group of music students (ages 16-71) mentored each other in an online jazz improvisation course. This study is framed in Dewey's notion of students sharing their knowledge and experiences with the teacher as facilitator and the following research questions guided this investigation:…

Traditional music education has prioritised external over internal performance aims, leading some learners to prioritise external motivations. I facilitated a workshop series for participants who experienced music performance anxiety when improvising, to examine if free improvisation coupled with expressive art response could cultivate…

This article is a creative collaboration, a dialogue between a professor and a doctoral student who dismantle power dynamics in the academy, demonstrating the "liberatory voice" (hooks, 1989, p. 29) through (a collective chorus of Black Womens' contemplative criticality (Canon, 2021; Holmes, 2017; Williams, 2022) and ART, or activism,…

A collaboration between youth in a refugee camp in Malawi, U.S. college students, and a professor of folklore has produced a website and forthcoming book manuscript. The project augments opportunities for the artists, all of whom are refugees or asylum seekers, to share their work, bring visibility to the talent in the camp, raise awareness about…

Collective free music improvisation (CFMI) develops musicians' relationships, identity, and communication skills and engages musicians from different cultures by tapping into their diversities in the music-making process. It also develops an open attitude toward working with children's creative potential--by paving the way for open, egalitarian…

This study investigates how recently resettled refugee youth took up STEM-rich making experiences at an after-school community club in relation to negotiating their resettlement process. Using critical participatory ethnography grounded in sustained engagement with and in community, authors 1 and 2 worked with refugee youth through sustained…

Researchers worldwide have identified affective benefits of improvisational drama techniques (IDTs) on foreign language (FL) learners. Yet the characteristics of professional development programmes (PDPs) that could lead to long-term integration of drama among FL teachers appear largely undiscovered. Through expert interviews, a needs analysis…

Teachers and the teaching profession are facing a crisis and a potential renaissance. Efforts to improve teacher wellness are scarce and most of the work being done falls to other overworked professionals in human resources departments or administrators. The goal of this research is to improve teacher wellness and feeling of creative confidence.…

Creativity is widely accepted to be a valuable skill to hone, but it is often difficult to define and even more difficult to measure. Artistic endeavors and creativity have historically had a close relationship with the sciences. However, recent trends have largely removed creativity from scientific inquiry and education. This shift has led to a…

In the past a typical performance situation consisted of a proscenium stage, performers on the stage and audience seated somewhere in the front. In today's technological age, audiences are prone to watching performance on their smart devices. This live-disconnect between the audience and performer/performance has affected the industry on multiple…