Decision Making among Jazz Musicians, Basketball Players, and Teachers
From time to time, I will re-visit earlier posts that have resonance to recent debates about classroom teaching. Teacher decision-making, particularly how frequent and improvisational during the lesson (as opposed to all the decisions made in planning the lesson) is often misunderstood by policymakers, educational pundits, and researchers whose last visit to a classroom was when they were students. I wrote this post about decision-making across professions in 2011.
I have revised and updated it because state and local policymakers who make consequential decisions about school budgets, professional development, and evaluating teachers need a deeper understanding of teaching and student learning in classrooms. Part of that deeper understanding requires a look at teacher decisions including questions they ask), their frequency, scope, and ad-libbing during a lesson. I also offer this revision for those teachers who practice expert decision-making during lessons and simply consider it part of the job not fully realizing they are kissing cousins of jazz musicians and professional basketball rebounders.
When top jazz musicians select notes from a chord to improvise a melody, stellar basketball players drive toward the basket on a pick-and-roll, and effective teachers ask questions of students, the cascade of instantaneous micro-decisions that occurs in the heads of trumpet player Wynton Marsalis, the Dallas Mavericks’ Dirk Nowitzky, and kindergarten teacher/author Vivian Paley would stun most non-musicians, non-basketball players, and non-teachers.
Consider jazz and the swift decisions a Wynton Marsalis makes as he improvisesDecision Making among Jazz Musicians, Basketball Players, and Teachers | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:
