Discussion: Creating a new world - teachers’ work in innovative educational environments

In this essay I discuss two chapters in this volume, each of which describes research into teachers’ teaching in innovative learning environments, that of makerspaces (Freiman V. Issues of teaching in a new technology-rich environment: investigating the case of New Brunswick (Canada) school makerspaces. In: Kolikant YB-D, Martinovic D, Milner-Bolotin M (eds) STEM teachers and teaching in the digital era. Springer, Cham, pp 273-292, 2019.) and that of computer-supported collaborative learning (Prusak N, Swidan O, Shcwartz B. The influence of teacher’s orchestration through the SAGLET system on students’ conceptual learning-the case of a geometry lesson. In: Kolikant YB-D, Martinovic D, Milner-Bolotin M (eds) STEM teachers and teaching in the digital era. Springer, Cham, pp 293-311, 2019). Both learning environments are student-centered and technology-rich, thereby providing us an opportunity to shed light on teachers’ new roles in such innovative environments, in particular to portray what productive guidance means operatively, the knowledge and skills necessary for teachers to maximize students’ learning in these environments, e.g., resilience, orchestration, and felling comfortable despite fragile knowledge. Both environments, while highlight the potential of technology to transform learning and teaching, also highlight the complexity of the milieus that the teachers work within.