Jennifer Oxman Ryan

Jennifer Oxman Ryan is a Senior Research Manager at Project Zero whose research focuses on teacher action research, playful and maker-centered learning, school/community partnerships, and professional learning communities. She is currently on Project Zero’s Reimagining Early Childhood Education (RECE) initiative, exploring the current landscape of early childhood education and investigating challenges and emergent opportunities in the field. 

Prior to RECE, Jennifer was Senior Project Manager for the Pedagogy of Play (PoP) research project. Funded by LEGO Foundation, PoP developed playful participatory research methods for investigating with educators what playful learning looks and feels like, and how to create classroom and school conditions where playful learning thrives. 

Jennifer has been with Project Zero since 2006, having worked previously on Agency by Design, the Good Play project, and Qualities of Quality: Excellence in Arts Education and How to Achieve It, among other projects. Her current research interests include play, arts and maker-centered education, school/community partnerships, and professional learning communities. 

She has also co-designed and co-instructed two Project Zero online courses: Teaching and Learning in the Maker-Centered Classroom, exploring the promises, practices, and pedagogies of maker-centered learning (with Edward Clapp) and Let's Play: Teaching Strategies for Playful Learning (with Ben Mardell). She has published in many venues, her most recent pieces including A Pedagogy of Play: Supporting playful learning in classrooms and schools (with Ben Mardell, Mara Krechevsky, Megina Baker, Savhannah Schulz, and Yvonne Liu Constant, 2023); Playful provocations and playful mindsets: teacher learning and identity shifts through playful participatory research (with Megina Baker, 2021); and Maker-Centered Learning: Empowering Young People to Shape their Worlds (with Edward Clapp, Jessica Ross, and Shari Tishman; Jossey-Bass, 2016).