Attending? Have questions? Please email pzlearn@gse.harvard.edu
PLENARY SESSIONS:
Ron Ritchhart "Cultures of Thinking in Action: 10 Guiding Principles"
Transforming schools and classrooms into cultures of thinking is more than merely instituting a set of practices. As useful as practices such as thinking routines, documentation, and effective questioning can be, culture runs deeper. Culture is built on our values and beliefs and embedded in the messages we send directly and indirectly. Thus, deep and lasting transformation must begin by embracing a set of beliefs about teaching, learning, and schooling. This plenary will explore the 10 key principles identified by the Cultures of Thinking Project as drivers of action in the classroom. These principles provide the touchstones we need as we create places where thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted.
David Perkins & Flossie Chua "From Vision to Action: Enabling Complex School Change"
Challenges for schools can crop up at any time, often provoking responses that may cause turbulence in the school’s culture, practices, and direction. How can leaders and leadership teams best decide on truly fruitful changes, and how can they make the changes compelling and sustainable? This plenary introduces participants to an active research collaboration between ISV and Harvard Project Zero that is studying the opportunities and challenges of complex school change. The plenary shares key ideas that support schools as they design and reach for more reliable ways to achieve complex change in practical settings.
Shari Tishman & Carrie James "Arts as Civic Commons: Amplifying the Power of Art to Spark Civic Inquiry"
In a time of tumultuous change both locally and globally, works of art can be a powerful tool for provoking inquiry into the forces that shape civic life. These forces include the values, social conventions, power dynamics, institutions, and systems that shape how we live together—and how we aspire to live together—at every level of community life, from the local to the global. In this plenary, participants will learn about Project Zero’s Arts as Civic Commons project, generously funded by the Independent Schools Victoria, and explore how arts engagement can be a springboard for civic inquiry.
CONCURRENT WORKSHOPS:
Flossie Chua & Aynur Simsirel "Educating for a Complex World"
How can we deepen and broaden learning for the lives today's learners are likely to lead? What kinds of teacher and school development approaches can support such deepening and broadening? In our era, the demands of a rapidly changing world on education urge us to reach beyond the traditional agendas of achievement, information and expertise. In some school settings, innovations thrive when learning is reimagined using big understandings and big ideas. This workshop explores how teachers and schools can define their own visionary directions, drawing on a flexible framework about “learning that matters” and ways of fostering and leading it, developed collaboratively between Project Zero and Independent Schools Victoria. Participants will (1) learn about the key features to use in a school to help center its educational approach on big ideas and (2) discuss examples of the ways Australian educators and schools have done this work and used a focus on big understandings and big questions to create powerful levers for teacher and school development.
Ron Ritchhart "Exploring the 4 Key Practices for Making Thinking Visible"
Drawing from the research presented in the new book by Ron Ritchhart and Mark Church, The Power of Making Thinking Visible, this workshop will explore the four practices teachers can use to make students' thinking more visible. We will examine how these practices relate to and build off each other to ensure that thinking routines are not just activities but are actually powerful tools for promoting thinking and learning. Participants will have the opportunity to take a deep dive into one of these practices to explore it further and discuss with colleagues ways in which they might advance that practice in their classrooms and at their schools.
Shari Tishman "Sparking Civic Inquiry through Looking at and Making Art: A Practical Introduction to the Arts as Civic Commons Project"
The Arts as Civic Commons (ArtC) project offers strategies and resources to help learners explore civic life through looking at and making art. ArtC materials can be used in person or online, and are suitable for use in school, museums, galleries, or anywhere else people of any age gather to explore art and civic issues together. In this workshop, participants will learn about the core ideas behind ArtC, practice several new thinking routines to introduce and engage students with the ArtC ideas, and practice using the ideas in a series of activities and reflections that bring the ideas to life.
Edward Clapp "An Introduction to Maker-Centered Learning"
In the early 2000s, a burst of energy out of the San Francisco Bay Area launched what has come to be known as the Maker Movement. In the years that followed, educators, innovators, and a host of makers have come together to figure out how to harness the power of making to support teaching and learning in a variety of settings. But what is making and how does it apply in the classroom? And how do the practices and processes associated with making support learning in the content areas and across the grade levels? In response to these questions, a host of research initiatives has been launched at Project Zero under the banner of Agency by Design—a multi-year research study founded to study the promises, practices, and pedagogies of maker-centered learning. Workshop participants will explore the Agency by Design framework, practice using some of its tools and resources, and develop ways to incorporate the ideas into their practice.
Liz Dawes Duraisingh "Supporting Young People to Learn about Themselves and Others in an Interconnected World"
As educators, how can we honor and tap into young people’s developmental need to explore who they are and how they fit into an increasingly complex and interconnected world? This workshop draws from Project Zero’s long standing Out of Eden Learn project, which convenes young people from around the globe to participate in meaningful online intercultural ‘learning journeys’ together. Workshop participants will try out activities that invite young people to develop more nuanced understandings of their own and others’ identities, cultures, and histories. Participants will also look closely at student work and consider a framework that can be applied to their in-person and online learning contexts.
Carrie James "Behind Their Screens: Supporting Students’ Digital Well-being and Citizenship"
So many facets of young people's lives happen ‘behind the screen.' How can educators support them as they navigate both positive opportunities and challenging dilemmas? How can we build dispositions they need for mindful digital engagement with peers and the broader world? This workshop will explore authentic, engaging digital dilemmas and new thinking routines to engage students in deep thinking and powerful discussions about timely digital issues. These research-based resources are featured in newly updated lessons in Common Sense Education’s (free) Digital Citizenship Curriculum. The learning activities build students’ agency to get more control over their digital habits, nurture skills for empathetic digital communication, navigate relationship ups and downs, and invite critical thinking about how important civic issues are playing out on social media. Note: This workshop will focus on dilemmas and activities geared toward learners in middle and secondary school, grades 6 through 12.
Veronica Boix Mansilla "Preparing Learners for a World of Complexity, Diversity, and Mobility with New Socio-Emotional Thinking Routines"
What dispositions might be worth nurturing to empower young people to live fulfilling lives and construct more inclusive and equitable societies? What concrete practical tools might help us move in the right direction? Workshop participants will explore and practice using several new resources from Project Zero’s Re-Imagining Migration project: the Dispositions Framework, Socio-Emotional-Civic thinking routines, and the Smithsonian Learning Lab’s interactive platform for digital learning. In addition, participants will consider how they might use the tools and ideas in their practice.
Jen Ryan & Mara Krechevsky "Playful Learning, Playful Teaching: Supporting a Pedagogy of Play from Preschool through Middle School"
Play is at the heart of childhood. Through play, children learn how to collaborate, how to negotiate rules and relationships, and how to imagine, create, and dream. They learn to solve problems, think flexibly and critically, and communicate effectively. In this workshop, join Project Zero researchers from the Pedagogy of Play initiative in an exploration of why we need a pedagogy of play in school. Participants will explore some of the core playful learning practices, hear about classroom examples of playful pedagogy in action, and consider strategies for bringing more play into their teaching and learning contexts.