Learning at the Point of Challenge
Keynote presentations by Dr. Ron Ritchhart, Dean Ashenden and Simon Brooks
Concurrent Workshops presented by passionate educators inspired by Project Zero ideas
Location: Wesley College, Glen Waverley Campus
Timing: Saturday 24th August - 8am-1:10pm
Schedule for the day:
8:00 am: Arrival and Registration
8:45 am: Opening & Keynote - Ron Ritchhart
9:45 - 10:15 am: Morning Tea
10:15 - 11:30 am: Workshops
11:30 - 12:15 pm: Dean Ashenden – Can Australia’s Schooling Be Reformed?
12:15 - 1:00 pm: Simon Brooks – Curiosity Based Learning
1:00 - 1:10 pm: Close
Past events -
Play as a Strategy for Learning
Lessons from the Pedagogy of Play Project
Play is at the heart of childhood. Through play, children learn how to collaborate, how to negotiate rules and relationships, and how to imagine, create, and dream. They learn to solve problems, think flexibly and critically, and communicate effectively. Whether playing with objects, engaging in pretend play, or tinkering with ideas and testing theories, children’s play is essential to their social, intellectual, physical, and emotional growth. Please join Project Zero (PZ) researchers from the Pedagogy of Play (PoP) project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in an exploration of what it means to embrace play as a core part of learning in school. This webinar will describe the results of the PoP project, an 8-year, cross-cultural research collaboration between PZ and the Lego Foundation to develop a systematic approach to the practice and study of playful learning and teaching in schools. The presenters will share key principles, practices, and resources for supporting learning through play in classrooms and schools.
Access Links & Resources Shared
Mara Krechevsky
Mara Krechevsky is a senior researcher at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Mara has been conducting educational research for 40 years, including directing Making Learning Visible (MLV), an investigation into documenting and assessing individual and group learning from preschool to high school, based on collaborative research with educators from Reggio Emillia, Italy. Mara also co-directed Children Are Citizens, a project based on the belief that even young children are citizens of the here-and-now, and Inspiring Agents of Change, a project to cultivate children’s inventive dispositions. She is currently a researcher on the Pedagogy of Play and Educating for American Democracy projects. Her most recent co-authored books are A Pedagogy of Play: Supporting Playful Learning in Classrooms and Schools and Visible Learners: Promoting Reggio-Inspired Approaches in All Schools. Mara is also the unofficial limericist at PZ.
Yvonne Liu-Constant
Yvonne Liu-Constant is an early childhood educator who loves teaching children as much as she loves working with teachers. Yvonne has taught children ages 3 to 8 at independent and public schools, as well as adults in undergraduate and graduate programs. Currently, she is a researcher at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and teaches early childhood education at Lesley University, Cambridge, MA. Yvonne is trained as a cultural researcher, and she is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, and English. She co-authored A Pedagogy of Play: Supporting Playful Learning in Classrooms and Schools and translated it into Chinese. She also published research comparing childrearing practices of Chinese Immigrant and European American parents, and translated into English the Taiwanese children’s book Run, Little Hei Hei, Run.