Canonical form progressions

Rather akin to a kata in karate, or a teaching-piece in classical music, a well-designed course of canonical forms for skilled activity will begin as a way to isolate the training of specific components; and at intervals, pose the challenge of integrating the components mastered so far. What serves in the first pass as a structured introduction to many moving pieces, evolves in further passes into a way to engage with familiar components, discover their complexities and interrelationships, and refine their execution; in addition, to develop taste around the skill, as one continually observes oneself within the controlled context of the form.

Consider it akin to a course of experiments, or a course of software development tests - predictable by design, but escalating in complexity nonetheless.

An argument can be made here for the design of a canonical form, especially for creative or imporvisational skills, being in part a poetic endeavour: by which I mean, subject to a poetics, a set of injunctions that derive from or constitute an aesthetics. The best reason to locate pedagogical theories in the realm of art is because the endeavour at its heart is one of communication - the transmission, baldly syllogistic or otherwise, of something to an audience that does not yet comprehend.