The "yes, and..." principle: Improvisation as a method of educational work

Abstract

This paper presents an improvisation workshop entitled "Yes, and..." intended for promoting this skill and teaching improvisation techniques to educational workers. After a brief introduction intended to explain what improvisation is and what kind of improvisation this paper refers to, we move on to explain the importance of improvisation for education, as well as the importance of teaching improvisation techniques to educational workers. To illustrate the role that improvisation has or may have in the educational process, we highlight the "yes, and..." principle, which is thought to be essentially describing the main features of improvisation, primarily acceptance (of an offer) and building upon it. On these rationales, we derived a thesis regarding the existence of a link among such characteristics, on the one hand, as well as activation and creativity, on the other, as important components that work together in the development of a motivational and developmental educational environment. In the end, we provided an example of teaching improvisation through workshop engagement using a detailed description of a workshop along with instructions for particular exercises and explaining their significance, in the precise way it was conducted with adult participants.