Adult & Lifelong Learning

Art Works at Work: The Impact of Workplace Art

This paper explores the impact that employees and board members of an organization believe the art in their workplace has on their experience at work and identifies the exhibition’s features salient to their experience of the art. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 affiliates of an Australian organization with an institutional art collection. The interview data were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis by two researchers, with a final inter-rater reliability of 0.96. The results showed that respondents believe there are five main ways they are impacted by the art in their workplace: the art promotes social interactions, elicits emotional responses, facilitates personal connection-making, generally enhances the workplace environment and fosters learning. Participants indicated the salient features of the collection are its changing nature, creativity, diversity, quality and connection to the organization’s mission. The findings suggest that there may be a number of positive impacts on employees and other affiliates when art is present in the workplace, including interpersonal learning and mission-related content learning. The findings suggest that art connected to the organization’s mission, rotating exhibitions and diverse collections are valued by workplace viewers. The study highlights the importance of the aesthetic environment in the workplace and is one of the first to examine artworks in the work setting.

Mind, Work, and Life: A Festschrift on the Occasion of Howard Gardner’s 70th Birthday

Howard Gardner, noted psychologist and educator, turned 70 in 2013. To mark this occasion, 116 of Gardner’s colleagues and friends contributed both personal and scholarly essays to this two-volume set, creating a unique publication providing an overview of his life’s work. 2014.

Visible Learners: Promoting Reggio-Inspired Approaches in All Schools

Inspired by the innovative educational philosophy that originated in Reggio Emilia, a small city in Italy, Visible Learners offers research-based practices for fostering learning in groups through documentation. In this approach, first developed during a long-term collaboration between researchers at Harvard's Project Zero and Reggio educators, learning becomes a visible activity that develops students' intellectual capacities as well as their individual and group identities as learners. Visible classrooms can be identified by five key principles—that learning is purposeful, social, representational, empowering, and emotional. The authors define each principle using illustrative learning portraits, quotes from students and teachers, pictures, reflections, and examples of student work. Additionally, the authors offer teachers and administrators practical ways to enhance learning by increasing collaboration and critical thinking across grade levels and subject matter. Also included is a section containing dozens of tools for making learners and learning visible, incorporating guidelines for the classroom and the staffroom as well as ideas for engaging students' families. Visible Learners shows how observing and documenting learning can change the nature of that learning, and asks teachers to look beyond surface to understand who their students are, what they come to know, and how they come to know it.  ISBN: 978-1118345696

The Amazing Circus Act

An animation of a visual essay from the book Visible Learners by Mara Krechevsky, Ben Mardell, Melissa Rivard, and Daniel Wilson.

Supporting Learning in Groups in the Classroom (Ch. 11)

Tools included in this section of Visible Learners: 

- Getting started with Making Learning Visible

- Looking at Learning in Groups: Classroom Discussion Guidelines

- Considerations for FOrming Small Groups

- Entry-Point Charts: Engaging All Members of the Group

- Structures for Giving and Receiving Feedback