Re: orchestration

Keith R Sawyer (sawyer who-is-at cats.ucsc.edu)
Thu, 8 Feb 1996 10:23:39 -0800 (PST)

Orchestration is also an interesting topic for me, as follows. I study
children's unstructured interactions, using the metaphor of
improvisation. I'm thinking of jazz performance and improv theater. My
main research project was a study of children's peer play, with no adult
present: this is fairly improvisational.

What I haven't yet thought about is how these processes of improvisation
could be guided/affected by a teacher, to increase their effectiveness.
The teacher can't remove all improvisational processes from the
classroom, but rather, needs to be able to channel them towards
educational goals.

It would help me to have a performance metaphor for this. Neither jazz
nor improv theater has anyone playing the "director/orchestrator" role
during the performance. Any ideas?

Keith Sawyer
Dept. of Psychology
UC Santa Cruz