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Project Zero
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Daniel Wilson is the director of Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), where he is also a principal investigator, a lecturer on education at HGSE, and the educational chair at Harvard’s Learning Environments for Tomorrow — a collaboration with HGSE and Harvard Graduate School of Design. His teaching and writing explores 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.
This interest can be seen in three areas of his current work:
Since joining Project Zero as a researcher in 1993, Wilson, has also participated on projects such as: "Teaching for Understanding" (1993-1996), "Understanding for Organizations" (1996-1999), "Teaching for Understanding in Universities" (1996-1999), "Wide World Project" (1999-2002), "Project-based Learning in After Schools Project" (2000-2002), and the "Storywork Project" with the International Storytelling Institute (2002-2004).
During the pandemic some schools developed out-of-school learning experiences that offered interesting opportunities to connect with nature, know their neighborhoods, and make their learning visible to others in their community. These experiences, coupled with research on the impact nature and neighborhoods have on well-being, point educators to consider a provocative pathway forward: restoring and developing students well-being may be best done by engaging learners in out-of-school pedagogical places. While some schools were forced to try such forms during the pandemic, what can educators learn from schools that have deep experiences in designing student learning in non-school places? How do these places and experiences develop students well-being? Learning Outside-In is a project with educators at SEK Education Group in Spain, which includes a network of ten K-12 international schools and the Universidad Camilo José Cela (UCJC). The project aims to conduct literature reviews on the design qualities of outdoor "learning pathways" and their relationship to student outcomes of well-being. The project will produce tools and examples for educators around the world to use as they design outdoor learning experiences and document the impacts they have on student well-being.