A founding member of Project Zero, PZ co-director for almost 30 years, and a professor emeritus of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, David advances projects and serves on the Project Zero Executive Committee. He has authored more than a dozen books. Longtime friend and colleague Shari Tishman and he produce Thinkability, a podcast on thinking, now in its fifth year.
PZ Work
Over the years, David has led and participated in numerous projects, focusing on areas such as thinking skills and dispositions, learning for understanding, thinking routines, ways of engaging art with more depth, models of teaching and learning, what’s worth teaching and learning, and organizational learning and change. With colleagues, he has developed many interventions as well as conducting basic research. He has authored more than a dozen books. He enjoys travel, and much of his work has involved settings outside the US.
Fun Facts
His doctoral research was at MIT in mathematics with a focus on artificial intelligence...very different from today’s AI. That early work stimulated an interest in cognitive science, which, along with his lifelong involvement in the arts, brought him to Project Zero as it began, while he was still completing his degree...and in three or four years led to a complete change in his areas of focus. Who knows where life will lead us!
Where to Find David
David mostly works at home, coming to the Project Zero offices once or twice a week for in-person meetings. He is best contacted through his Harvard email at david_perkins@harvard.edu.
David's Projects and Publications
Explore David's projects and work
Dive into David's PZ publications
David's PZ Publications
- Assessing Student Learning: From Grading to Understanding
- Exploring Complexity
- Future Wise: Educating Our Children for a Changing World
- Global Thinking
- Intelligence in the Wild: A Dispositional View of Intellectual Traits
- King Arthur's Round Table: How Collaborative Conversations Create Smart Organizations
- Knowledge as Design
- Leading Learning That Matters
- Learning at Work: Research Lessons on Leading Learning in the Workplace
- Learning that Matters
- Learning that Matters: An Expanding Universe
- Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform Education
- Making Thinking Visible
- Making Thinking Visible - Teaching Students to Think
- PZ Connect - Visible Thinking Resources
- Pathways to Understanding: Developing Students' Memory and Note-Taking Skills
- Portable Knowledge
- Putting Understanding Up Front
- Schools Need to Pay More Attention to & Intelligence in the Wild"
- Six Key Principles of the Cultures of Thinking Project
- Smart Schools: Better Thinking and Learning for Every Child
- Surfing on Quicksand: Navigating a World of Information, Opinion & Spin
- The Eureka Effect: The Art and Logic of Breakthrough Thinking
- The Intelligent Eye: Learning to Think by Looking at Art
- The Project Zero Classroom: Views on Understanding
- The Thinking Classroom: Learning and Teaching in a Culture of Thinking
- Thinkability
- Thinking Connections: Learning to Think and Thinking to Learn
- When Change Has Legs
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