- Who We Are
- Topics
- By Subject Area
- dummy
- By Level
- Projects
- Projects Column 1
- Agency by Design
- Aligned Programs for the 21st Century
- Artful Thinking
- Arts as Civic Commons
- Causal Learning Projects
- Center for Digital Thriving
- Citizen-Learners: A 21st Century Curriculum and Professional Development Framework
- Creando Comunidades de Indagación (Creating Communities of Inquiry)
- Creating Communities of Innovation
- Cultivating Creative & Civic Capacities
- Cultures of Thinking
- EcoLEARN Projects
- Educating with Digital Dilemmas
- Envisioning Innovation in Education
- Global Children
- Growing Up to Shape Our Place in the World
- Projects Column 2
- Higher Education in the 21st Century
- HipHopEX
- Humanities and the Liberal Arts Assessment (HULA)
- Idea Into Action
- Implementation of The Good Project Lesson Plans
- Inspiring Agents of Change
- Interdisciplinary & Global Studies
- Investigating Impacts of Educational Experiences
- JusticexDesign
- Leadership Education and Playful Pedagogy (LEaPP)
- Leading Learning that Matters
- Learning Innovations Laboratory
- Learning Outside-In
- Making Ethics Central to the College Experience
- Making Learning Visible
- Multiple Intelligences
- Navigating Workplace Changes
- Next Level Lab
- Projects Column 3
- Out of Eden Learn
- Pedagogy of Play
- Reimagining Digital Well-being
- Re-imagining Migration
- ROUNDS
- Signature Pedagogies in Global Education
- Talking With Artists Who Teach
- Teaching for Understanding
- The Good Project
- The Studio Thinking Project
- The World in DC
- Transformative Repair
- Visible Thinking
- Witness Tree: Ambassador for Life in a Changing Environment
- View All Projects
- Projects Column 1
- Resources
- Professional Development


Inspiring Agents of Change
Schools that invite, expand, and sustain the creative mindsets of our youngest inventors
Children come to school ready and eager to learn. Schools could be centers where children identify problems and develop novel responses. Yet, all too often, formal educational experiences, beginning with children’s earliest experiences in schools, stifle children’s natural inclinations to innovate. On the Inspiring Agents of Change project, Opal School, the Portland Children’s Museum Center for Learning, and Project Zero carried out a practice-based study of the learning conditions likely to support inventiveness in early childhood and primary school. The main goals of the project were to: 1) map a framework that invites, sustains, and extends inventive dispositions in schools; and 2) develop related practices, strategies, and examples that illustrate how inspiring inventiveness can be embedded across learning experiences in schools. As a result of this work, we have developed a set of principles, practices, and tools that supports inventive thinking in children ages 3-11 which can be found at “A Framework for Inspiring Inventiveness” on the Opal School website. Individual tools are also available on the resources page of this site. Educators are encouraged to share their experiences using these “Inspiring Inventiveness” resources on social media at #pzopalinventiveness.
Project Info
FUNDERS:
Lemelson Foundation, Portland Children's Museum
START DATE:
2018