Ron Ritchhart

Ron Ritchhart is a Senior Research Associate at Harvard Project Zero where his work focuses on such issues as teaching for understanding, the development of intellectual character, creative teaching, making students' thinking visible, and most recently the development of school and classroom culture. Ron's research and writings, particularly his theory of intellectual character and framework for understanding group culture through the “Cultural Forces,” have informed the work of schools, school systems, and museums throughout the world. His current research focuses on how classrooms change as teachers strive to make thinking valued, visible, and actively promoted in their classrooms. He is also currently exploring what it means to lead a culture of thinking.

 Ron’s research has mainly taken two forms: case studies and design research. Ron uses case studies of teachers to understand the complexity of teaching and how ideas, methods, instruction, and curriculum play out within the context of real classrooms. This research in context provides a window into best practices and has allowed for the identification and exemplification of key principles of teaching. Using design research methods, Ron focuses on the process of learning by designing tools, such as thinking routines, that learners can use. The effectiveness of such tools is judged by learners themselves through their application. Ron’s most recent book, Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools, will be published by Jossey-Bass in early 2015. The book explores each of the eight cultural forces through a series of cases studies of expert teachers from around the globe. The book is designed as a guide, complete with action steps for schools and teachers to take to move forward in understanding and leveraging each cultural force. The book Making Thinking Visible (Jossey-Bass 2011), written with Mark Church and Karin Morrison, takes readers inside a diverse range of learning environments to show how thinking can be made visible at any level and across all subject areas through the use of effective questioning, listening, documentation, and facilitative structures called thinking routines. In Intellectual Character (Jossey-Bass 2001), Ron makes the case for the development of thinking dispositions as a chief goal of schools and documents how this plays out in the classrooms of expert teachers. Ron is also the lead author of the Creative Classroom Series published by Disney Learning Partnership.