Listening to the Post-script: Intersections Between Improvisation and Indeterminacy in Music and Education

Abstract

This article begins by exploring how current educational research describes the role of improvisation in education. Drawing on Biesta’s (2017) discussion of the purpose of the educational task, it then argues for a broader consideration of the role of improvisation in education and its potential to positively disrupt traditional linear timescapes. While discussions of improvisation in education often reference jazz music, this study explores a broader range of indeterminate musical forms to gain different insights. Specifically, it translates Stern’s (1988) Table of Transformational and Musical Hierarchies into a framework for education to support educators in considering the role of improvisation in their design and teaching practice. The adapted conceptual model incorporates the dimensions of complex learning environments described by the Activity-Centred Analysis and Design (ACAD) framework as discussed by Goodyear and Carvalho (2014), and in the process, surfaces the temporal aspects of the ACAD framework for closer examination. The model highlights several factors that take on a more significant role in highly indeterminate educational forms such as silence, absence, openings, and rupture. It also provides an opportunity to reflect on ways in which technology contributes to enabling or constraining improvisational processes in postdigital education. The study contributes to research on the intersection between sound and education, and to making the sonic dimension of education one of more ‘intentional concern’ as described by Ford and Sasaki (2021).