Assessment, Evaluation & Documentation

Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools

"Let's build dynamic learning communities that engage students, promote deep understanding, and sustain a lifetime of inquiry. Once again we are in the throes of curriculum reforms designed to transform education. However, these efforts generally neglect the vital role classroom and school culture play in promoting learning. Any curriculum, good or bad, will sink or float on the culture of the classroom in which it is enacted. Culture matters not only to realize curricular goals, but also as a shaper of students' development as powerful thinkers and learners. Creating Cultures of Thinking, written by leading Harvard University researcher Ron Ritchhart, builds the case for "enculturation" as the key to deep learning and the development of the habits of mind and dispositions needed in a changing world. He demystifies the process of creating dynamic learning communities by first identifying and then walking us through the eight forces we must marshal to build strong group culture. Case studies, practical guidelines, self-assessments, and inquiry projects enable teachers and administrators—as well as anyone interested in fostering group learning—to understand and shape powerful learning communities."

Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality

The Declaration of Independence matters because it helps us see that we cannot haev freedom without equality. It is out of an egalitarian commitment that a people grows -- a people that is capable of protecting us all collectively, and each of us individually, from domination. If the Delcration can stake a claim to freedom, it is only because it is so clear-eyed about the fact that people's strengths resides in its equality.

The Declaration also conveys another lesson of paramount importance. It is this: language is one of the most potent resources each of us has for achieving our own political empowerment. The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence grasped the power of words. This reveals itself in the laborious processes by which they brought the Declaration, and their revolution, into being. It shows itself forcefully, of course, in the text's own eloquence.

Read more in Our Declaration: A Reading of The Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality. 

Understanding Map

A visual depiction of the ways in which students make meaning and understand concepts. 

Engaging City Hall: Children as Citizens

An article by Krechevsky, Mardell, & Romans putting forth a view of young children as citizens.

Boston Early Civics Curriculum

Blog describing curriculum developed by Mardell and others in the Boston Public School kindergartens that recognizes children are citizens. And, examples from BPS K2: Kindergartners' ideas for making Boston a fairer and more interesting place for children.