In his initial message, Keith claimed that improvisation cannot be fully
avoided in classrooms, and that the task is to channel it productively. I
agree with this claim, but it has not become clear why it is true. Why
couldn't we avoid improvisation? Because actual human activites (eg,
classroom conversations) cannot be either produced or adequately
explained solely with reference to context-independent rules. The
communicative or interactional function of an utterance emerges in
context, and cannot be adequately captured with reference to rules.
(There are of course formulaic exceptions, but we should beware of
generalizing from these to a universal theory of meaning).
Most theorists and many practitioners have bemoaned this indeterminacy,
yearning instead for a more context-independent calculus that can either
predict or regulate the meanings that emerge in human activities. Lois
and Jay, however -- drawing on Bakhtin -- claim that indeterminacy is in
fact itself educational. Instead of trying to produce context-independent
formulae for regulating or explaining classroom conversation and other
activities, we should be encouraging context-specific improvisation. I
find this an appealing reversal of perspective.
Acknowledging indeterminacy, however, does present us with practical and
conceptual problems. Practically, how can we teach effectively if we
cannot plan and regulate the meanings that students take from our classes?
I try to help my student teachers overcome their fear of "letting go," but
I well understand (and still sometimes experience myself) the fear of
losing control over classroom conversation. Conceptually, if we cannot
rely on decontextualized rules (as, say, in speech act theory) to explain
how certain utterances come to have certain meanings or functions, what
sort of explanation can we offer? As I and others have argued elsewhere,
we need an account of how interactional structure emerges in particular
contexts -- an account that does justice to the rules and structures that
undoubtedly help organize our activities, but that does not allow such
regularities to overwhelm the centrality of improvisation and contingency.
Stanton Wortham