ABSTRACT
In any classroom the tasks being progressed have a defining effect on the nature of classroom life and learning. They can impact on engagement or drift, challenge or boredom, and feelings of competence or failure. Teachers’ everyday thinking reflects the core role of tasks when they ask, ‘What shall I get them to do this lesson?’. Similarly, research into classroom management helps us see the task of the teacher as managing the engagement of pupils in productive activities for the allocated time, and that teachers actually manage activities rather than students. One implication of this is well put in Walter Doyle’s conclusion: ‘if an activity system is not established and running in a classroom, no amount of discipline will create order’.1
