I’ve titled my blog Orchestration of Talk. So, I thought it’ll be great to write my very first post about it.

When I was at the Institute of Education, UCL, I had the best times of my life doing the Doctor in Education (International) programme! Engaged in intellectually stimulating discussions with academic staff and fellow course mates from all over the world, who are educators, researchers, IHL administrators, truly invigorated me! Having been in Singapore all my life, I relished the open, safe spaces for conversations on absolutely anything under the sun! As I began to conceptualise my area of research, I got drawn into the discussions on “orchestration”, “talk”, and “effective teaching”. So, I started presenting my thoughts on them in graduate student seminars, so much so that I was known among course mates to be “the one with the Orchestration of Talk (topic)”.

So, here is a little something I put together some time ago on it.

In music literature, where the term is most commonly used, Kreitner (2009) describes orchestration as the art of combining the sounds of a complex of instruments (an orchestra or other ensemble) to form a satisfactory blend and balance. The term ‘orchestration’ is often used to denote the craft of writing idiomatically for these instruments. In practice, a single ‘director’ directs all the musicians. Synchronized by following the direction of one person, an orchestration is in place when a central system takes charge and dictates what the rest are to do.

While, in classroom interaction research, Kounin identified a capacity in skilled teachers that he called ‘withitness’ (Kounin, 1970). This referred in part to the behavioral smoothness with which the teacher conducted classroom events. Kounin thought that the teacher’s sense of timing was an important component of withitness. Teacher educators sometimes speak of this as ‘orchestration’ Brophy & Alleman (1991). The use of that musical analogy may point indirectly to the rhythmicity of teacher-student interaction, since as Erickson (1996) argues, it is rhythmicity that allows the interdigitation of the actions of the various participants into a coherent collective performance, like in a musical orchestra.

However, Erickson (1996) finds the analogy above misleading, since orchestration – the assignment of differing notes to different instruments in the orchestra by a composer or arranger – is a decision process that occurs before the performance of the music. It may be that what is meant by ‘orchestration’ as a characterization of the teacher’s leadership of collective classroom activity is more like what a conductor does in leading the orchestra in performance. Unlike ordinary conversation, which is a more improvisational kind of performance, an orchestral performance consists of predetermined notes that are to be played by the various performers.

According to Holomon (2012), a conductor shapes music to its moment: to the venue, the players, the listeners, the circumstances of the day (p. 73). When conductors simply ‘conduct’, in an organizational manner, the music produced as an outcome is not a very interesting one. However, when the conductor is able to ‘broker meetings of the mind in the service of art, the music becomes invigorated’ (Holomon, 2012, p. 73). This is arguably similar to that of a teacher in a classroom. When a teacher simply facilitates student learning with the collective use of teaching materials, activities, instructions and students’ participation, learning outcomes may be limited. On the contrary, if teachers orchestrate the use of instructional approaches in designing activities or tasks, taking into account students’ learning needs, and employ varied modes of semiotic resources (e.g. speech and gesture), learning is potentially maximized, and understanding is potentially deepened.

Faulkner (1989, p. 290) too argued that, “the orchestra is composed of performers who communicate with one another, and thereby affect each other’s tacit and explicit understandings about music and music-making under various conductors”. Hence, this study argues for a similar concept of orchestration where teachers attune the use of speech and gesture as varied modes of semiotic resources in developing student understanding in a reading classroom. Moreover, this study’s focus on the use of scaffolding strategies in achieving the principles of contingency, fading and transfer of responsibility, seem aptly related to the concept of “affect” as argued by researchers on music conductors and orchestras (Faulkner, 1989). This is so since teachers, like music conductors, offer learning support that is adapted to the current level of the student’s performance. In addition, teachers engage in rich interactions that allow students to co-construct meaning such that they too affect each other’s understanding.

I believe that meaning-making or pedagogic semiosis in the classroom is also a result of the interplay of a repertoire of semiotic resources, not just language alone, expressed through a range of modalities. Thus, the orchestration of these multimodal resources in the classroom can be described as an instantiation of my pedagogical strategy. Particularly, in language and communication skills instruction, where such orchestration of multisemiotic teaching and learning experiences would contribute significantly to my utilisation of scaffolding strategies to enhance students’ ability to make meaning and gain deep understanding from their social construction of communicative acts and interaction with multimodal texts.

Furthermore, my adoption of pedagogical approaches has been based on the pursuit of achieving effective teaching, which according to Hattie (2009):

“involves an experienced teacher who knows a range of learning strategies to provide the student when they seem not to understand, to provide direction and re-direction in terms of the content being understood and thus maximize the power of feedback, and having the skill to ‘get out of the way’ when learning is progressing towards the success criteria.” (p. 23)

I believe that if I am one of the fundamental ingredients in student learning and achievement, the support I provide should be timely and occur in a fashion that creates a classroom culture of safety and success, so that learning becomes an interactive partnership between my students and I.

References

Brophy, J., & Alleman, J. (1992). Planning and managing learning activities: Basic principles. In J. Brophy (Ed.), Advances in research on teaching: Planning and managing learning tasks and activities (Vol. 3, pp. 1-45). Green- wich, CT: JAI.
Ericsson, K. A. (1996). The acquisition of expert performance: An introduction to some of the issues. In K. A. Ericsson (Ed.), The road to excellence: The acquisition of expert performance in the arts and sciences, sports, and games (pp. 1-50). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Faulkner, H. (1989). The music library of the BBC: Its maturity and future. Fontes Artis Musicae, 36(4), 280-285.
Hattie, J. A. C. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London, UK: Routledge.
Holoman, D. K. (2012). The orchestra: A very short introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kounin, J. (1970). Discipline and group management in classrooms. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Kreitner, K. (2009). The Rosary Cantoral: Ritual and Social Design in a Chantbook from Early Renaissance Toledo. In Lorenzo Candelaria, Performance Practice Review, 14(1), Article 9.