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Teachers struggle constantly with these kinds of questions as they emerge in the day-to-day life of the classroom. Certainly ideas and information from researchers, theorists, and policy-makers are critical resources for the improvement of classroom practice, but educators also need access to peers and colleagues who share a deep interest in better understanding teaching and learning. Over the past ten years, Steve Seidel and colleagues at Project Zero have been working with educators to explore the connections between alternative forms of assessment, innovative curricula, and improvements in student learning. Beginning in October 1996, Seidel convened ROUNDS at Project Zero: opportunities for educators to regularly gather together to share their work and discuss professional issues. From the start, Project Zero designed these meetings to provide a setting for sharing, discussing, and reflecting on the practice of teaching in which the participants are the experts. ROUNDS grows out of a deep concern for improving the professional lives of teachers and education administrators. The meetings are designed around three basic premises:
Drawing on the model of medical grand rounds, ROUNDS gatherings are three-hour morning meetings on the first Saturday of each month from October to May. Grand rounds in a hospital are one of the cornerstones of career-long, professional development for doctors. Case studies, focused presentations on research or new practices, and distributed expertise as participants discuss especially challenging problems are all part of that tradition. Project Zero has evolved a format for these sessions that draws on both the structures and the spirit of the medical model, while clearly adapting to the purposes of considering teaching and learning. At each session, a participating teacher presents a project he or she has done with students in her classroom, featuring some of the work that students produced, and other artifacts of their work. The short presentation segues into discussions of issues about project-based learning relevant to the work presented. This discussion is followed by a "Collaborative Assessment Conference (CAC)." Developed almost ten years ago, the CAC is a conversation protocol that has been used extensively to closely examine student work. It has been researched, documented, adapted, and used in schools and by school-reform groups across the country.
Selected readingsSeidel, S. (1998). Learning from looking. In N. Lyons (Ed.), With portfolio in hand: Validating the new teacher professionalism, New York: Teachers College Press. Seidel, S. (1998). Wondering to be done. In D. Allen (Ed.), Assessing student learning: From grading to understanding, New York: Teachers College Press. Seidel, S., & Walters, J. (1994). The "things" children make in school: Disposable or indispensable? Harvard Graduate School of Education Alumni Bulletin, 39(1), 18-20. Hatch, T., & Seidel, S. (1997). Putting Student Work on the Table. Phi Kappa Phi Journal, 77(1), 18-21. |
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