“Playin” the changes’—A jazz approach to researching student-teachers’ PowerPoint presentations

Abstract

The current study aims to interpret student-teachers’ PowerPoint presentations using concepts derived from jazz improvisation. The purpose of the study is to acquire insight on how knowledge is instantiated in action in a ubiquitous educational setting. If musical lead sheets depict the draft model that provides players with a framework for improvising, Power Point slides may be studied in terms of their properties as an improvisational framework. Works for performance vary in their constitutive properties, differing in terms of how much slack is left for the performer’s interpretation. The concepts of horizontal and vertical playing are adopted to study the performance of the student teachers’ PowerPoints slides. A vertical approach involves elaborating and expanding on the constituent parts of the slides, whereas a horizontal approach involves connecting the pre-formed elements into coherent linear phrases. The outcome of the study is a model with a double matrix that supports a reflection on how curricula are transformed by being pre-formed and performed. Since the model illustrates the students agentive re-shaping of curricula, the model is aligned with the essential teaching skills conceptualised as Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). In view of PCK, improvisation should be considered a skill that is required to mediate the transformation of the pre-formed during performance. Empirical data are collected by video recording music students’ presentations of music lessons planned for their practicum placement.