Project Zero Classroom
Tuition: $3,150
The 2017 cohort for Project Zero Classroom is currently on a waitlist. For consideration if space becomes available, we encourage you to submit an application at your earliest convenience.
What You Will Learn
Research-based frameworks, practices, and tools that promote outcomes such as understanding, critical thinking, ongoing assessment, creativity, and professional development in school and other learning environments.
Program Overview
How can educators create experiences that engage learners and support the development of the skills that matter most in today's complex, global, and interconnected world? How can the contemporary classroom become a catalyst for learners to become the citizens and leaders of tomorrow?
For fifty years, Project Zero has pioneered research that has examined facets of human potential — such as the nature of intelligence, creativity, learning, ethics, and thinking — and how educators, schools and other learning environments support its development. The Project Zero Classroom (PZC) features research-based frameworks that enable you to understand these facets, reflect on pedagogical practice, and adapt tools to fit your classroom context. In order to support your learning at the institute, the PZC will engage you in a variety of formats designed to model practices that promote intellectual curiosity as well as interdisciplinary and collaborative inquiry. Plenaries, workshop, and study groups are facilitated by researchers and educators steeped in Project Zero practices. These learning experiences will both help you both to deepen your understanding of PZ frameworks and ideas and to develop plans for applying what you’ve learned to your own context.
The program explores fundamental educational questions, such as: In today's complex and interconnected world...
- What does it mean to understand? How does it develop?
- What are the roles of reflection and assessment in learning?
- How can we nurture critical thinking and creativity?
- How can we design for a variety of learners and contexts?
- How can we continue our learning with others after the PZC?
Early childhood, elementary, middle, and secondary school educators and administrators, teacher educators, after-school educators and museum educators. Participants are strongly encouraged to attend in teams so that they can reflect together during and after the program. Individual participants are also welcome.
Learning in this program takes place through provocative and interactive plenaries, experiential workshops, and collaborative inquiry done in small “study groups.” Therefore, fluency in English is essential for participation.
Fluent knowledge of spoken and written English is essential for successful participation in Project Zero.
The Harvard Graduate School of Education requires all students whose native language is not English, or whose bachelor’s degree is not from a college or university where English is the language of instruction, to have scores of at least 100 TOEFL IBT (250 TOEFL CBT). Since the Project Zero experience requires an English proficiency level equivalent to the graduate level, we expect all participants to meet this standard.
Participants deemed to have insufficient English fluency to successfully participate in the program may not be awarded a certificate of completion or clock hour letter. We also reserve the right to limit your participation to language appropriate activities. Refunds will not be available in these cases.
Daniel Wilson is the director of Project Zero and a lecturer of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). His research and teaching focuses on the nature learning in groups, examining how groups navigate collaborative tensions through language, routines, roles, and artifacts. Wilson is an active principal investigator at Project Zero, the faculty chair of Learning Environments for Tomorrow (a joint institute at HGSE and the Harvard Graduate School of Design), and has served on the faculty for the Doctorate for Educational Leadership at HGSE.
The PZC is an application-based program and may not be able to accommodate all applicants. Early application is encouraged. Each year PZC aims to gather a diverse community of educators representing a range of contexts. Criteria that will be considered when forming this community will include:
- Fit between the applicant’s learning goals and the program
- School type, geographic location, characteristics of students and the community it serves)
- Prior experience with Project Zero ideas
- Whether the applicant is part of a team (applicants applying in teams are preferred)
The initial application deadline is February 28, 2017 and early acceptance decisions will be emailed in mid-March. Additional applications are encouraged after this deadline and acceptance will be contingent upon space available.
The comprehensive tuition includes all instructional materials and refreshments. Participants receive a certificate of participation and a letter confirming clock hours of instruction.
Payment or a purchase order must be received within thirty days of program acceptance and prior to the program start. Participants are responsible for their own travel expenses. While a purchase order confirms a reservation, an outstanding balance is maintained until payment is rendered.
Please click here for more information on hotel accommodations for on-campus programs.
Please click here for more information on our on-campus and online refund and withdrawal policies. If you have any additional questions or concerns about your ability to participate, please contact our admissions team at ppe@gse.harvard.edu or 1-800-545-1849.
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.
