Killing Victoria: improvisational and emergent teaching and learning

ABSTRACT

This manuscript uses narrative practices of autoethnography to consider the potential of improvisational, emergent pedagogy. The author explores this concept by examining the participation of a student in a yearlong, ethnographic teaching project. A group of mostly white high school students voluntarily engaged in practices of Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) in concert with playbuilding to investigate whiteness. The author positions this pedagogical project in relation to second-wave critical whiteness studies and improvisation. Critical whiteness studies are a theoretical move towards more complicated framings of whiteness. Improvisation creates a particular way to consider the story of the author’s teacher-researcher work with one of his students during this implementation of second-wave whiteness pedagogy. Finally, the author shares general implications about improvisational teaching and learning, especially in terms of whiteness pedagogy.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical whiteness studies
• youth participatory action research
• improvisation
• arts based research
• critical ethnography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All student names are disguised with pseudonyms.

2. The school’s name is disguised.

3. PAHS is a school in a first-ring suburb of a major metropolitan area in the Midwest. It catered to 9th–12th students and had an enrolment of nearly 2500 students during this study. PAHS was a predominately a white school at the time of this project with roughly 65% of students identifying as white.

4. As per her request, Natalie’s name is not disguised. Natalie was also white.

5. The full text of the play can be found here: http://bit.ly/1EypY0e.

6. (See Tanner 2015, 2016; Beach, Johnston, and Thein 2015 for more description of The Whiteness Project).