Collaboration & Group Learning

Places to Play in Providence: A Guide to the City by our Youngest Citizens

The guide that resulted from a collaboration between the Making Learning Visible team at PZ and a school-readiness initiative, Ready to Learn Providence (R2LP). The publication was created by preschool children and teachers from eight inner city programs and programs and features children's illustrations and descriptions of their favorite places to play in the Rhode Island capital.

Learning is a Team Sport: Kindergartners Study the Boston Marathon

Ben Mardell's 32-minute documentary about teachers' and kindergarten students' learning while engaged in an MLV-inspired study of the Boston Marathon; the video shares the strategies used by teachers and what children learned along the way.

The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach

Why are children not mastering what they ought to be learning in school? Ten years after its original publication, Howard Gardner's answer to this pressing question is the natural sequel to his acclaimed Frames of Mind and The Minds New Science. Merging cognitive science with educational agenda, Gardner shows how ill-suited our minds and natural patterns of learning are to current educational materials, practices, and institutions, and makes an eloquent case for restructuring our schools. ISBN: 978-0465024384

Accountability in Three Realms: Making Learning Visible Inside and Outside the Classroom

Abstract: This article describes the changing culture of a public school as members of its community explore new ways of being accountable to progressive ideals in an age of skills-based learning and standardized testing. Using documentation makes adult and student learning visible in and outside the classroom, supporting three forms of accountability: (a) accountability to self (looking at what one intended to teach in relation to what actually happened); (b) accountability to each other (contributing to collective learning as well as one's own); and (c) accountability to the larger community (evaluating the relationship between the school's mission and classroom practice). Documentation leads to more intentional and reflective teaching, provides evidence of student learning not represented by standardized tests, and supports the development of a school's identity. The authors conclude that documentation, although not a replacement for standardized tests, is a versatile tool that blurs the line between formative and summative assessment.

Good Work: Theory and Practice

A summary of the research around Good Work.