Classroom Orchestration

In the Learning Sciences community, the multi-tasking role of the teacher has received more attention recently, especially with the use of technology-enhanced collaborative learning in classrooms. In the classroom, teachers have to orchestrate both the interactions that happen within an activity, the micro-script, and the overall sequence of activities that can occur at the whole class, group, and individual levels, the macro-script. Orchestration, in the widest definition, entails the design of the learning activity, the adaption and planning of the activity for a specific class, and the real-time management of that activity across multiple planes and under multiple constraints. These constraints include both internal constraints of student learning and external constraints of the classroom, such as class length. In classroom orchestration, the importance of these external constraints to designing and supporting productive learning is emphasized. Additionally, multi-planes are important for classroom orchestration because much of the difficulty of orchestration comes into play when transitioning between planes, which creates the need for coordination between students. Although switching social planes raises orchestration issues, they can lead to enriched scenarios with learning activities inspired by multiple learning theories that are not mutually exclusive in practice. Furthermore, the use of multiple social planes can allow for pedagogical designs where one activity is used to foster richness in the next activity.