Killing Victoria: improvisational and emergent teaching and learning

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.