Project Zero Online Courses

Project Zero Online Courses In collaboration with Project Zero, the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) is offering online professional education courses that are research-based and grounded in day-to-day teaching and leadership practice—you can apply what you learn, as you learn.

In these 13-week, coach-facilitated, asynchronous online courses, you will work with peers facing similar challenges and take away real-world solutions, inspiration, and the support of an engaged community. Each course promotes active, team-based learning that supports collaboration and sharing in schools and districts. Each has its own focus area but they also work well together.

Offered February – May and September – December Team Tuition: $525 per person | Learn more: gse.harvard.edu/ppe/pz

COURSES

OVERVIEW

Creating Cultures of Thinking: Learning to Leverage the Eight Forces that Shape the Culture of Groups, Classrooms, and Schools

More important than learning any particular curriculum is creating a culture of thinking in classrooms and schools where thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted. This course explores how schools and classrooms can become learning contexts where students build on each other’s ideas, thinking is given time, and the focus is on what students learn as well as the work they complete. Course developed

by Project Zero’s Ron Ritchhart

• Teachers • Teacher Leaders • School Leaders • Pre-K to Adult Learning

Making Learning Visible: The Power of Group Learning and Documentation in Classrooms and Communities

As we become more group-oriented in workplaces and schools, our knowledge of ourselves as individual learners and as members of a community becomes more important. Developed in collaboration with educators from Reggio Emilia, Italy, Making Learning Visible (MLV) is a framework for creating and sustaining powerful communities of learning in the classroom and the staffroom. This course introduces educators to documentation of learning as a tool for enhancing learning and teaching from preschool through secondary school. Course developed by Project Zero’s Mara Krechevsky

• Teachers • Teacher Leaders • School Leaders • District Leaders • Pre-K to Adult Learning

Multiple Intelligences: Expanding our Perspectives to Support All Learners

Harvard Professor Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences has helped educators all over the world understand learners’ diverse passions, proclivities and interests. This course supports participants in applying the theory to more effectively build all students’ understanding of important knowledge and skills valued in and beyond school. Course developed by PZ researchers in collaboration with Howard Gardner

• Teachers • Teacher Leaders • School Leaders • District Leaders • Other Out-of-School Educators • Pre-K to Adult Learning

Teaching for Understanding: Educating for the Unknown

As educators, we seek to prepare our students for the future, but none of us can predict what future awaits them. So how do we shape learning experiences that prepare students to apply their knowledge and skills in new situations? This course introduces the Teaching for Understanding (TfU) framework as a tool for shaping curriculum and classroom experiences to help students develop this kind of robust and transferable understanding. Course developed by Project Zero’s Tina Blythe

• Teachers • Teacher Leaders • School Leaders • Other Out-of-School Educators • Pre-K to Adult Learning

Thinking and Learning in the Maker-Centered Classroom

The recent buzz about STEM, the Maker Movement, and DIY (do-it-yourself) practices have given rise to a renewed focus on maker-centered teaching and learning.

This course offers a framework that fosters young people’s sensitivity to the designed dimension of their environment, giving them the opportunity to explore the complexities of design and to understand themselves as designers of their worlds.

Course developed by Project Zero’s Jennifer Ryan & Edward Clapp

• Teachers • Teacher Leaders • School Leaders • Out-of-School Educators and Museum Educators • Pre-K to Adult Learning

Visible Thinking: Building Understanding through Critical and Creative Thinking

Visible Thinking is an approach to teaching that develops students’ thinking dispositions, such as the inclination to be curious, open-minded, or analytical, while also deepening their understanding of the topics they study. This course introduces educators to a set of thinking routines—easy-to-apply teaching strategies that can be used to help students explore, synthesize, organize or dig more deeply into ideas.

Course developed by Project Zero’s Shari Tishman & Jessica Ross

• Teachers • Teacher Leaders • Schools Leaders • Museum Educators • Educators working in informal learning environments • Pre-K to Adult Learning

This course is only offered during the February term.

All programs require teams of 3–6 people

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

EXPERIENCE MATTERS. MEET THE TEAM. FACULTY CHAIR: Daniel Wilson is the director of Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, HGSE. He is a principal investigator at Project Zero, a lecturer at HGSE, faculty for the Doctorate for Educational Leadership Program at HGSE, and the educational chair at Harvard’s Learning Environments for Tomorrow Institute, a collaboration with HGSE and Harvard Graduate School of Design. His teaching and writing explore the inherent socio-psychological tensions —dilemmas of knowing, trusting, leading, and belonging — in adult collaborative learning across a variety of contexts. Specifically, he focuses on how groups navigate these tensions through language, routines, roles, and artifacts.

PROJECT ZERO RESEARCHERS: ww Tina Blythe Teaching for Understanding

ww Jessica Ross Visible Thinking

ww Edward Clapp Thinking and Learning in the Maker-Centered Classroom

ww Jennifer Ryan

ww Mara Krechevsky Making Learning Visible

ww Shari Tishman

ww Ron Ritchhart Creating Cultures of Thinking

Visible Thinking

Thinking and Learning in the Maker-Centered Classroom

THE POWER OF TEAMS: Team participation is required for Project Zero Online Programs. Teams communicate as a single “voice” during the program. Team members complete readings and some in-classroom assignments individually, and gather as a team to reflect on and synthesize their common experiences in online group posts.Teams also work on a single, teambased project that is submitted at the end of the course. Teamwork is required for a number of reasons: • Research and experience show that team participation enhances engagement in and practical application of program content in schools.

• The team structure enables team members to support each other using a common educational language and framework, while enacting shared strategies in a local context during and after the program.

• Current best practices in school improvement rely heavily on teacher collaboration and learning for district, school, practitioner, and student development.

For additional information, contact our admissions team at ppe@gse.harvard.edu or 1-800-545-1849.