Scripted teaching and improvisational teaching seem to be diametrically opposed. Improvisational teaching emphasizes that teaching and learning emerge in the moment and that teachers need to engage with their students and the ideas that they have. It draws attention to how the enacted curriculum grows out of what students’ learning needs are at a given time. In what is commonly referred to as scripted teaching, teachers are provided with materials that consist of explicit step-by-step directions and word-for-word scripts. There would seem to be an unbridgeable gap between improvisational teaching and scripted teaching. Yet, as Sawyer (2004a) aptly points out, teaching – even teaching that is explicitly designed to capture improvisational elements – cannot happen without some type of structure and framework. Constructing that just-right degree of structure is a delicate balancing act, which can be especially challenging for the teacher trying to establish a collaborative classroom.

In this chapter, I focus on two of the paradoxes that Sawyer identified in his introduction: the teaching paradox, or the tension between crafting the “well-managed” classroom and sliding toward the “chaotic” classroom; and the curriculum paradox, or the tension between meeting curriculum goals and responding to students’ ideas and curiosities.