What You Will Learn

Create classrooms, instructional materials and out-of-school learning environments that promote deep learning and understanding.

Program Overview

Whether teaching or leading curriculum design efforts, it is essential for educators to be responsive to complex social developments and create learning experiences that are engaging and exciting for children. How do you best prepare young people for a future that is hard to imagine? How do you teach for the kind of deep understanding that allows them to solve complex problems and do work that is ethical, excellent and engaging? How do you encourage students to fall in love with learning?

The Project Zero Classroom details various frameworks that enable you to look at teaching analytically, develop new approaches to planning and make informed decisions about instruction. You will learn to recognize and develop students' multiple intellectual strengths; encourage students to think critically and creatively; and assess student work in ways that deepen learning. In a Project Zero classroom, teachers are also learners who model intellectual curiosity and rigor, interdisciplinary and collaborative inquiry, and sensitivity to the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of learning.

Program Objectives

The institute addresses fundamental educational questions, such as:

• How can we best inspire and nurture creative thinking and problem solving in our students and ourselves?
• What is understanding, and how does it develop?
• What are the roles of reflection and assessment in student and teacher learning?
• How can participants continue to share and pursue their understanding of Project Zero's ideas with others after the institute?

Who Should Attend

• PreK–12 educators and administrators, preschool teachers, teacher educators and museum educators
• Participants are strongly encouraged to attend in teams so that they can reflect on ideas together during and after the institute. Individual participants are also welcome

Fluency in English is mandatory.

Faculty Chair

Howard Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education and Senior Co-Director of Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. For the last 13 years in collaboration with psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, William Damon, and other researchers at Project Zero, Gardner has been engaged in a study of Good Work; work that is at once excellent in quality and also responsive to the needs of broader society. The project is now working with young people in secondary schools and colleges in an effort to nurture good work. Gardner's most recent books are: Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons and Five Minds for the Future. With several colleagues, he recently published Responsibility at Work.

David Perkins, Professor of Education and Senior Co-Director of Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His newest book is King Arthur's Round Table: How Collaborative Conversations Create Smart Organizations. He is also the author of The Eureka Effect, Smart Schools, Outsmarting IQ, Knowledge as Design and several other books and many articles. He has helped develop instructional programs and approaches for teaching understanding and thinking, including initiatives in Sweden, South Africa, Israel, and Latin America. He is a former Guggenheim Fellow.

Steve Seidel, is the Patricia Bauman and John Landrum Bryant Lecturer in Arts in Education and Director of the Arts in Education Program at HGSE. He has worked in the areas of arts and education since 1971. With more than 15 years teaching in high schools, he joined Project Zero in 1986, working since then on projects in arts education, alternative assessment, project-based curriculum and school reform. He was lead principal investigator on The Qualities of Quality: Understanding Excellence in Arts Education. Seidel currently leads the Talking with Artists Who Teach study and is an International Research Fellow at the Tate Museums in London.

Enrollment Instructions

Project Zero Classroom is an application program. Admission decisions are emailed two weeks after the application deadline. The program is designed for an audience representing a range of school types and educational settings. The selection process considers applicants’ school type. To maximize the learning experience, the program aims to bring together as diverse a group as possible.

Fees

The comprehensive program fee includes tuition, all instructional materials and a social event. Participants receive a certificate of completion and a letter confirming clock hours of instruction.

Payment or a purchase order must be received within thirty days of registration and prior to the program start. Participants are responsible for their own travel expenses.

Cancellation Policy

Cancellations must be submitted via fax or email. Full refunds will be given up to 30 days prior to the start of the program. Due to program demand and pre-institute preparations, cancellations received 29–14 days prior to the start of the program are subject to a fee of 10% of the program tuition. Cancellations received within 13 days prior to the start of the program and no-shows are subject to the full program tuition. Please note: cancellation fees are based upon the date the written request is received.

The Harvard Graduate School of Education reserves the right to change faculty or cancel programs at its discretion. In the unlikely event of program changes, the school is not responsible for non-refundable travel arrangements or other planning expenses incurred.

Participant Substitution

Some PPE institutes allow substitutions and others do not. In all cases, substitutions require advance approval by PPE. We ask that changes to group participant lists take place at least two weeks prior to the start date of the program. If individual or team replacements are made within 14 days of the program start date, PPE may not be able to incorporate these changes into some or all of the program materials. We will make our best effort to incorporate requested changes where possible.