Adult & Lifelong Learning

Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence...

From the back cover:

How can classrooms become places of intellectual stimulation where learning is viewed not in test scores but in the development of individuals who can think, plan, create, question, and engage independently as learners? Making Thinking Visible offers educators research-based solutions for creating just such cultures of thinking. This innovative book unravels the mysteries of thinking and its connection to understanding and engagement. It then takes readers inside diverse learning environments to show how thinking can be made visible at any grade level and across all subject areas through the use of effective questioning, listening, documentation, and facilitative structures called "Thinking routines". These routines, designed by researchers at Project Zero at Harvard, scaffold and support one's thinking. By applying these processes, thinking becomes visible as learners' ideas are expressed, discussed, and reflected upon. Making Thinking Visible includes a DVD of instructive video clips featuring Visible Thinking strategies being applied in a variety of classrooms. ISBN: 978-0470915516

Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Hailed by educators throughout the world, Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences has been applied in hundreds of classrooms and school districts since Frames of Mind was first published in 1983. Gardner challenges the widely held notion that intelligence is a single general capacity possessed by every individual to a greater or lesser extent. Amassing a wealth of evidence, Gardner posits the existence of a number of intelligences that ultimately yield a unique cognitive profile for each person. This tenth anniversary edition, published in conjunction with a reader on multiple intelligences, features a new introduction that explores the theory's development over the last decade. ISBN-13: 978-0465024339

Accountability in Three Realms: Making Learning Visible Inside and Outside the Classroom

Abstract: This article describes the changing culture of a public school as members of its community explore new ways of being accountable to progressive ideals in an age of skills-based learning and standardized testing. Using documentation makes adult and student learning visible in and outside the classroom, supporting three forms of accountability: (a) accountability to self (looking at what one intended to teach in relation to what actually happened); (b) accountability to each other (contributing to collective learning as well as one's own); and (c) accountability to the larger community (evaluating the relationship between the school's mission and classroom practice). Documentation leads to more intentional and reflective teaching, provides evidence of student learning not represented by standardized tests, and supports the development of a school's identity. The authors conclude that documentation, although not a replacement for standardized tests, is a versatile tool that blurs the line between formative and summative assessment.

Digital Literacy and Citizenship Curriculum

Common Sense Media's Digital Literacy and Citizenship Curriculum was originally developed in collaboration with Project Zero's Good Play Project. Informed by the Good Play research findings, this curriculum emphasizes the ways in which youth can leverage the positive affordances of digital media while protecting themselves and making socially responsible, ethical decisions. The curriculum covers issues from online privacy to building positive community online to copyright and creation.

Zooms: Promoting Schoolwide Inquiry and Improving Practice

Abstract: A group of teachers and the program director describe a powerful collaborative and interactive teacher research process they developed at their school. The process engages teachers in generating new insights about teaching and learning. This article provides a road map for creating Zooms—documentation panels that are snapshots of classroom life—as unique, concrete models of teacher research. The authors illustrate how constructing Zooms helps teachers focus on children’s learning when so much is going on in a lively classroom. Ben and his colleagues show how they created a professional learning community—a culture of inquiry in their early childhood school that also enhanced staff collegiality. The teachers evolved from individual, reflective practitioners to collaborative, schoolwide teacher researchers. A real strength of the project is its emphasis on the teachers as knowledge creators. The Zooms process builds collaboration in concrete and structured ways and makes schoolwide inquiry key in teachers’ professional development. —Barbara Henderson