Ever since the sociocultural approach has risen in educational sciences, research has focused on learning from the perspective of learner-centered active knowledge building in social settings instead of teaching. Consequently, the roles of teacher and learner have changed significantly. According to the sociocultural approach, a teacher in learner-centered practices is not a mere transmitter of knowledge in the classroom but is rather seen as a creator of specific quality of intermental system of learner community (Mercer, 2002) or an orchestrator of learning process, designing learning situations, and providing scripts (structures to guide group forming and learning) and scaffolding (real-time supportive guidance) to peer groups (Hämäläinen & Vähäsantanen, 2011). Nevertheless, Staarman and Mercer (2010) prefer to recognize the process of education in terms of the interactive process of ‘teaching-and-learning’ instead of separate processes. In this pedagogical process, spoken language is one of the most important cultural tools for joint meaning making between teacher and learners, as well as among peers.

However, research has revealed some shortcomings in classroom talk. Pupils rarely ask the teacher questions or challenge her or his explanations or interpretions (Staarman & Mercer 2010). In group work, discussions do not involve all group members, and most of talk is disputational, superficial and to modest extent cooperative by nature (Mercer, 2002). As far as teachers are concerned, they use too frequently closed-ended questions requiring short answers, and thereby limit learners’ contribution to the process which ought to be reciprocal and dialogical (Staarman & Mercer 2010). According to Nystrand and colleagues (2003), the nature of a teacher’s questions significantly regulates students’ contribution in the dialogue. Consequently, the way the teacher uses language constitutes situational and contextual roles.

Based on the previous, the teacher is in a key position in planning and orchestrating pedagogical activities in groups and whole-class situations. Thus, it is of interest to examine, in practice, what happens when teachers with their primary-aged learners conduct complex digital video (DV) production projects involving open-ended creative group tasks. In this kind of creative settings, the perspective of the teacher is an under-researched field (Kearney 2009).

This study, applying the sociocultural approach, aims to examine the roles of teachers orchestrating creative processing of small groups in the context of collaborative DV production projects. It is of interest to investigate the pedagogical models and scripts employed by the teachers. Additionally, the goal is to take a closer look at the strategies that the teachers use to encourage learners’ participation in the pedagogical dialogue. In general, the paper aims to discuss the nature of interaction between teachers and learners, as well as the new role of the teacher in this context. The following research questions were formulated:

1. What kind of roles do teachers employ in the context of collaborative learner-generated DV production projects?
2. How do teachers use language to regulate learners’ contribution in the dialogue during the DV projects?
3. What kind of scripts do teachers employ in the DV projects?
4. What kind of scaffolding of learning takes place in group activities?

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