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Professional Development

Opportunities to engage with the ideas of PZ both in-person and online throughout the year.

I have found this to be a powerful and thought-provoking course. Like our teachers who experience what happens in their classrooms once they start using these routines, there is no going back! Now that I have these ideas and deeper understanding, I won't lose them.
- 2021 Power of Making Thinking Visible Micro Practicum Participant

One of the ways we make our research accessible to educators around the world is through providing professional education. These offerings are scheduled at various times throughout the year, research-based, and grounded in the day-to-day work of teachers and administrators. In addition, they are an opportunity for educators to earn professional learning hours. We offer:

Online Courses
Workshops
Conferences

Scholarships

If you have specific questions about any of our professional development opportunities, please email us at pzlearn@gse.harvard.edu.

Learn practical strategies for making your classroom a place where student engagement, learning, and thinking thrive. The Project Zero Online (PZO) courses (in-depth or mini) feature research-based frameworks and strategies you can apply in your own context as you learn.

  • The In-Depth Courses consist of 6 two-week sessions over 13 weeks for 30 professional development hours.
  • The Mini Courses consist of 4 one-week sessions over 4 weeks for 12 professional development hours. Both have an orientation session at the beginning of the course, one week and 2 days, respectively.

PZ online courses are:

  • Hands-On Activities and assignments are designed to help you learn and practice techniques and strategies by trying them out in your own context, whether that context is in-person or online.
  • Team-Based Register as a team of colleagues from your school or organization. Or, sign up individually to be placed on a virtual team of educators. Teams are composed of 3 to 6 members and meet once per session to collaborate on assignments, share experiences and insights, and offer feedback to one another. Teams meet synchronously (either in person or online) every session for 60-90 minutes, a requirement for participating in the course.
  • Facilitated/Coached In addition to the course instructors, experienced educators provide guidance and feedback as facilitators and coaches for a Study Group of approximately 6-12 teams, supporting both individual team learning and collaborative learning across teams.
  • Designed for Busy Educators - Asynchronous and Flexible To provide flexibility, the PZ online courses do not include synchronous, real-time meetings with facilitators, coaches or instructors. While team members meet synchronously once a session, individual members decide when to work on the session-to-session course material guided by assignment due dates.

In-Depth Courses

Making Learning Visible: The Power of Documentation to Support Individual and Group Learning (MLV)

September 19, 2022 to December 18, 2022

Drawing on the collaborative research between Harvard’s Project Zero and educators in Reggio Emilia, Italy, this course offers educators the opportunity to learn how to document student learning in ways that both “makes visible” what and how students learn, and provide useful data for reflecting on and improving teaching.

Visible Thinking: Using Thinking Routines Effectively to Cultivate Dispositions and Support Learning (VT)

September 19, 2022 to December 18, 2022

Learn a variety of thinking routines and how to use them effectively in classrooms and other learning contexts to support deeper learning and thinking for students and to cultivate powerful and lasting thinking dispositions.

Mini Courses

An Introduction to Creating a Culture of Thinking

DATE(S): October 03, 2022 to October 30, 2022
COST: $295 per individual on teams of 3-5 people. $375 for individuals without a team who will be placed on virtual teams. Late registration: $325 & $405.

Within the constantly changing context of the world in which we live requires us to rethink what a quality education means. It is no longer enough to develop compliant (and often complacent) learners merely making their way through school. Today we seek to develop engaged and empowered learners ready to take their place in the world. To accomplish this we need to not only change the curriculum and our instruction, but also the culture of our schools. But how do we create culture? How do we shape and mold it so that it supports students’ development as thinkers and learners capable of deep learning? This course will demystify the creation of classroom and school culture through an examination of the process of enculturation. We will do this by looking carefully at the various “stories of learning” that schools perpetuate. We will then look at the “new story of learning'' we want to make a reality for our students and examine how the eight cultural forces can help us to enact that story. We conclude the course by examining one of the very powerful cultural force of “language” and how it acts to shape the culture of the classroom.

Introduction to Maker-Centered Learning: Developing Student Agency & Sensitivity to Design

DATE(S): October 24, 2022 to November 20, 2022
COST: $295 per individual on teams of 3-5 people. $375 for individuals without a team who will be placed on virtual teams. Late registration: $325 & $405.

What is maker-centered learning? How can educators of all grade levels and subject areas use this powerful approach to re-engage their students in the kind of deep and sustained learning that develops student agency and a sensitivity to design? This micro practicum (4-week online course) provides an introduction to a set of maker-centered learning strategies and tools developed by Agency by Design, a multi-year Project Zero research initiative.

The Power of Making Thinking Visible

DATE(S): January 16, 2023 to February 05, 2023
COST: $295 per individual on teams of 3-5 people. $375 for individuals without a team who will be placed on virtual teams. Late registration: $325 & $405.

Thinking routines have become extremely popular over the last decade and are often recognized as a hallmark of Project Zero practices.  With this popularity and wide-spread use has come the opportunity to look more closely at just what effect thinking routines have on teaching, on learning, and on schooling.  These issues could not have been properly examined when thinking routines were first being introduced almost 15 years ago. Now, however, extensive research and ongoing collaboration with schools have generated new learnings that create the opportunity to take the practices of making thinking visible to the next level.

Creating Cultures of Thinking: Investigating the Forces that Shape Culture

DATE(S): March 06, 2023 to April 02, 2023
COST: $295 per individual on teams of 3-5 people. $375 for individuals without a team who will be placed on virtual teams. Late registration: $325 & $405.

Often, when we think of effective teaching, good planning and instructional design come to mind. Yet effective teaching requires more than that; it also requires attention to the culture of the classroom in which those plans and designs are to be carried out. But how do we create culture? How do we shape and mold it so that it supports students’ development as thinkers and learners capable of deep learning? The “Cultures of Thinking” framework offers us eight forces for building culture that we can use as levers for transforming our classrooms and schools. This course offers a guided exploration into four of those forces: modeling, opportunities, interactions, and environment. Through this exploration you will look critically at your own teaching while acquiring new tools, practices, and principles that will help you enhance your classroom culture and promote the deep learning of your students. Although this course builds off of the introductory course, it is not a prerequisite. The weekly investigations and discussion with your teams will be a supportive platform from which educators at all level of experience can benefit.

Let`s Play: Teaching Strategies for Playful Learning

DATE(S): TBD 2023
COST: $295 per individual on teams of 3-5 people. $375 for individuals without a team who will be placed on virtual teams. Late registration: $325 & $405.

Play is central to how children learn: the way they make sense of their world; the way they form and explore friendships; the way they shape and test hypotheses about their intellectual, social, emotional, and physical environments. Yet incorporating play into a classroom or formal school setting isn’t a straightforward endeavor, as the nature of play and the nature of school are often at odds. The “Let’s Play” five-week mini course, based on the research and frameworks developed in the Lego Foundation-funded PZ project “Pedagogy of Play” is an introduction to some of the core principles and practices of playful learning and gives participants opportunities to design and try out at least one playful learning approach in their own contexts. The course has been revised to support educators to learn about how to facilitate playful learning online, in a classroom and in hybrid learning contexts.

Cultures of Thinking in Action

DATE(S): TBD 2023
COST: $295 per individual on teams of 3-5 people. $375 for individuals without a team who will be placed on virtual teams. Late registration: $325 & $405.

During times of change, it is important to lean into our values. Doing so helps us to remain grounded and true to our vision of what a quality education looks and feels like…even as we are buffeted by the unknown forces of change and thrust into new modes of instructional delivery.

Project Zero conferences are 1-5 day learning experiences designed for educators to engage with PZ research and concepts in a variety of formats. Through the artful curating of plenaries, workshops and reflection/study periods, participants have the opportunity to learn about new research, deepen their understanding of PZ concepts, engage in thought-provoking dialogue with other participants from around the world and reflect on how their learnings apply to their own contexts. Conferences are suitable for educators with minimal to extensive experience with PZ ideas and for those coming from any type of learning environment. Certificates of professional learning will be awarded to participants that complete all conference activities.

Project Zero Sparks 2022

July 21, 2022
Re-energize your practice through inspiring talks, interactive workshops, and thoughtful conversations with colleagues! Join Project Zero researchers and educators from around the world for an exciting day of learning. “Spark” your thinking with . . . Fresh takes on some of PZ's most popular and... Read more