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Improvisational Teaching as Being With: Cultivating a Relational Presence Toward Justice‐Oriented Literacies
Author(s) -
Zapata Angie,
Van Horn Selena,
Moss Daryl,
Fugit Misha
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of adolescent and adult literacy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.73
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1936-2706
pISSN - 1081-3004
DOI - 10.1002/jaal.968
Subject(s) - improvisation , literacy , scholarship , pedagogy , sociology , feeling , economic justice , solidarity , resistance (ecology) , critical literacy , injustice , teaching method , reading (process) , psychology , social psychology , political science , politics , visual arts , art , ecology , law , biology
The authors (two classroom teacher researchers and two university researchers) explore the potential of improvisational teaching for justice‐oriented literacy instruction with adolescent youths. In the aftermath of racial unrest and student activism at the University of Missouri and when faced with the emerging confusions among students in response to global humanitarian crises, the two teachers encountered tensions and emerging justice‐oriented literacies through a relational presence in the classroom. Guided by the scholarship on improvisational planning and teaching, the authors explore how teachers’ being with the major resources in the room produce generative literacy sites of critical discussion, reading, writing, and making as acts of creative resistance and solidarity. Throughout the article, the authors juxtapose the two teaches’ feelings and voices to amplify their differences and their affectual responses to encountered tensions to evoke new conditions of possibilities for justice‐oriented literacy education.