PZ MEL Speakers

VERONICA BOIX-MANSILLA

Veronica Boix-Mansilla is a Principal Investigator at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Director of Research at Re-imagining Migration, and Senior Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution.

Her research addresses the nurturing and development of culturally rooted global competence between ages 3-18 in China, Japan, Vietnam, Argentina, and the United States. Her most recent initiative Re-imagining Migration seeks to advance the education and well-being of immigrant-origin youth, decrease bias and hatred against young people of diverse origins, and help rising generations develop the critical understanding and empathy necessary to build and sustain welcoming and inclusive communities.

Boix-Mansilla has co-led the OECD global competence for inclusive and sustainable societies framework. She is the author of the upcoming Teaching for Global Competence with Quality, Principles, and Practices, OECD 2021, Educating for Global Competence through US and China Lenses, with Devon Wilson (2021), and Global Competence: Preparing our Youth for Our Contemporary World (Second Edition), with Tony Jackson (2021).

TINA BLYTHE

Tina Blythe is a researcher and Director of Learning and Outreach at Harvard Project Zero. She is Lecturer on Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and consults internationally on issues of curriculum, assessment, and professional development. Central to her research and teaching is how to foster learning, thinking, and understanding, for both students and educators, in face-to-face as well as online contexts. Collaborative inquiry and the collaborative assessment of student and teacher work are key focuses of her work. Tina is the author and co-author of a number of articles and books, including Protocols in the Classroom: Tools to Help Think, Write, Read, and Collaborate (in press); Facilitating for Learning: A Guide for Teacher Groups of All Kinds (2015); Looking Together at Student Work, 3rd Ed. (2015); The Facilitator’s Book of Questions (2004); Teaching as Inquiry (2004); and The Teaching for Understanding Guide (1998).

FLOSSIE CHUA

Flossie Chua is a Principal Investigator at Project Zero. Her work focuses on understanding how people think about and experience complex ideas and challenges in different contexts, and how we can nurture good thinking and practices that develop not just better thinkers but also learners engaged by a range of topics, relating them to both individual and social needs and aspirations. Her current projects explore patterns of thinking and intellectual behavior that might incline us to operate productively in relationship to our communities and the world; ways that artistic practice can create supportive conditions for individuals and communities to find personal and broader purpose in times of unprecedented uncertainty and challenge; tools and practices for bringing good ideas into action in the contexts of school leadership and student learning; and shared leadership structures in schools that support emerging practices of progressive pedagogies in schools. Flossie holds an Ed.D from Harvard University and is also an Instructor in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

EDWARD P. CLAPP

Edward P. Clapp is a Principal Investigator at Project Zero interested in exploring creativity and innovation, design and maker-centered learning, contemporary approaches to arts teaching and learning, and diversity, equity, and inclusion in education. Edward and his colleagues explore these issues with their teacher partners through a variety of different collaborative inquiries around the world. In addition to his work as a researcher, Edward is also a Lecturer on Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Edward’s most recent books include Participatory Creativity: Introducing Access and Equity to the Creative Classroom (Routledge, 2016) and Maker-Centered Learning: Empowering Young People to Shape their Worlds (with Jessica Ross, Jennifer Oxman Ryan, and Shari Tishman, Jossey-Bass, 2016). @edwardpclapp

LIZ DAWES DURAISINGH

Liz Dawes Duraisingh is a Principal Investigator at Project Zero where she co-directs Out of Eden Learn, an online program and research project designed to promote thoughtful intercultural inquiry and exchange among young people from around the world. As part of this project, she leads research strands related to young people’s understanding of culture(s), migration, and public and private remembrances of the past and history. She also directs Creando Comunidades de Indagación/Creating Communities of Inquiry, a collaboration with the Innova Schools of Peru as they seek to promote a culture of inquiry-driven teaching and learning across their rapidly expanding network of schools. This project builds on the Creating Communities of Innovation project, a partnership with a culturally diverse network of schools in the United Arab Emirates that resulted in a new book and framework for promoting inquiry-driven innovation in schools. Liz also serves on the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, teaching qualitative research methods. She was formerly a high school history teacher, working in England and Australia.

CARRIE JAMES

Carrie James is a sociologist by training and a Principal Investigator at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her work explores young people’s digital, moral, and civic lives. Over the past decade, Carrie has led research and educational initiatives focused on digital ethical issues, participatory politics in a connected age, cross-cultural online learning experiences, and arts-based civic learning. With Shari Tishman, Carrie co-directed the Arts as Civic Commons project in collaboration with Independent Schools Victoria. At present, she leads the Digital Dilemmas and Reimagining Digital Well-Being projects focused on adolescent digital citizenship and well-being in networked life. She is also a co-director of Out of Eden Learn, an online learning community that brings youth from diverse backgrounds together to exchange stories and make connections. Carrie’s publications include the forthcoming book with Emily Weinstein, Behind Their Screens: What Teens are Facing (and Adults are Missing) (forthcoming, MIT Press) and Disconnected: Youth, New Media, and the Ethics Gap (MIT Press, 2014). She has an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Sociology from NYU. She is a parent to two technology-loving children, ages 12 and 16.

MARA KRECHEVSKY

Mara Krechevsky is a senior researcher at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is currently a researcher on the Pedagogy of Play Project, a collaboration with the Lego Foundation, to develop a pedagogy for supporting learning through play from preschool to middle school. Mara also codirects the Cultivating Civic and Creative Capacities project, a collaboration with the Columbus, Ohio, Museum of Art. Mara has been conducting educational research for over 30 years, including directing Making Learning Visible, an investigation into documenting and assessing individual and group learning from preschool to high school, based on collaborative research with educators from Reggio Emilia, Italy. She has worked with hundreds of teachers and administrators in the U.S. and abroad on creating powerful learning environments for children and adults. Mara has authored or co-authored numerous books, articles, and book chapters. Her most recent co-authored book, with Ben Mardell, Melissa Rivard, and Daniel Wilson is Visible Learners: Promoting Reggio-Inspired Approaches in All Schools (Jossey-Bass, 2013).

DAVID PERKINS

David Perkins is the Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr., Professor of Teaching and Learning, Emeritus, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is a founding member of Project Zero, an R&D institute operating for over half a century at that institution. He co-directed Project Zero for many years. He maintains long-term programs of research and development on thinking skills, creativity, learning with understanding, and organizational learning; and collaborated on educational initiatives in several parts of the world. He has spoken and published widely on the themes of thinking, understanding, and learning. He is the author of many articles and several well-known books, including Future Wise, Making Learning Whole, Smart Schools, Outsmarting IQ, The Eureka Effect, and King Arthur’s Round Table.

RON RITCHHART

For over 25 years, Ron Ritchhart served as a Senior Research Associate and Principal Investigator at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where his research focused on understanding how to develop, nurture, and sustain thoughtful learning environments for both students and teachers. Ron’s interest in creating cultures of thinking has led him to conduct research in such areas as intellectual character, mindfulness, thinking dispositions, teaching for understanding, creativity in teaching, how teachers’ beliefs and values shape their practice, and the development of communities of practice. Ron believes that teaching is a complex art and science that must be understood in context. Consequently, a strong theme of learning from best practice runs throughout all of Ron’s research and writing.

After leaving Harvard in 2021, Ron has continued his classroom and school-based research and writing to further the ideas of visible thinking and the creation of schools as cultures of thinking. Ron’s ability to seamlessly merge theory, research, practice, and application together in a highly accessible and engaging manner has made him a best-selling author of numerous books including Intellectual Character, Making Thinking Visible, Creating Cultures of Thinking, and his latest, The Power of Making Thinking Visible.

JENNIFER OXMAN RYAN

Jennifer Oxman Ryan is a researcher and senior project manager at Project Zero (PZ), a research organization at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). Her current work on the Pedagogy of Play initiative explores how to cultivate school cultures that value and support learning through play. She has been with Project Zero since 2006, having researched and published previously on maker-centered teaching and learning, trust, young people's digital lives, and arts education. Jennifer has co-designed and instructed two PZ-HGSE online courses, one exploring learning through play and the other exploring teaching and learning in the maker-centered classroom. She is co-author, along with Project Zero colleagues, of Maker-Centered Learning: Empowering Young People to Shape their Worlds (Wiley 2016). Prior to working at PZ, Jennifer was a museum educator, professional development leader, and director of education for school/community partnerships. She lives with a family of makers and players, ages 12 through 47.

SHARI TISHMAN

Shari Tishman is a Lecturer at Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Senior Research Associate at Harvard Project Zero, where she formerly served as Director. Her research focuses on the teaching of thinking, the role of close observation in learning, and learning in and through the arts. She recently co-directed Arts as Civic Commons, a project that explores the power of art to spark civic inquiry and dialogue. She also co-directs Out of Eden Learn, a digital cultural exchange program in which students from diverse settings around the globe explore their local environments and then come together online to exchange perspectives and learn about each other and the world. Past notable projects include Agency by Design, which explores the promises, practices, and pedagogies of maker-centered learning; Visible Thinking, a dispositional approach to teaching thinking that foregrounds the use of thinking routines, and Artful Thinking, a related approach that emphasizes the development of thinking dispositions through looking at art. The author of numerous books and articles, Shari Tishman’s most recent book is Slow Looking: The Art and Practice of Learning Through Observation.