Critique of Project Zero

Curriculum PlatformEDLF 780Fall 2003

Presented by:PJ

Fenstermacher

About Project Zero• Founded in 1967 at Harvard• Focus on cognition and development in the arts• Investigating the development of the learning

process• Promote understanding• Expanded to education across all disciplines:

– Classrooms– Schools– Other educational and cultural organizations

• Creating communities of reflective, self-directed learners

Teaching For Understanding

TfU Key Concepts:1. Multiple Intelligences2. Critical And Creative Thinking3. Assessment as Learning4. Learning In and Through the Arts

Fundamental Questions

• What is Understanding and how does it develop?• How can teachers improve student’s

understanding?• How can educators continue their learning?• How can educators share their “understanding”

with others?

New Techniques for Instruction

• Looking at teaching systematically• Making better instructional decisions• Planning and carrying out instruction• Discuss and compare experiences• Reflect on practice

Multiple Intelligences

Naturalist• The ability to recognize and classify plants—all

varieties of flora and fauna, rocks and minerals, and animals.

• The ability to recognize cultural artifacts such as cars or shoes and the environment around oneself.

• The ability to notice appearances, sounds, textures, and characteristics of natural objects and environments.

• Skills in recognizing and classifying artifacts.

Existentialist• What the Earth was like thousands of years ago? • Why are we here on Earth? • If there is life on another planet? • Where do living things go after they die? • Are there ghosts or spirits? • What is important about life? • What is our role in the world? • Where do I fit in the big picture? • What is beauty, truth, goodness? • Fundamental questions of existence

Interpersonal• Person to person contact and relationships found in

pairing, grouping, and cooperative team work. • The ability to verbally as well as non- verbally interact

with people or groups of people and takes leadership roles.

• The ability to perceive and make distinctions in the moods, intentions, motivations, and feelings of other people.

• The ability to understand and interact effectively with other people.

• Talkative, social behavior.

Intrapersonal• Knowledge and understanding of oneself—

regarding feelings, emotions, thinking, self-reflection, and metacognitive skills.

• The ability to set personal goals, work alone, and have a clear sense of direction in life.

• An accurate picture of one's strengths and limitations; an awareness of inner moods, intentions, motivations and desires.

• Intuition about what they learn and how the learning relates to themselves.

• Feelings, values, and attitudes.

Logic-Mathematical

• Scientific reasoning and thinking skills that are dominated by inductive reasoning techniques such as finding patterns, identifying abstract concepts, searching for relationships and connections, classifying, categorizing, sequencing and outlining. 

• Solving problems with logic, calculating math problems quickly, and preference for seeing things categorized in a logical sense of order.

• Sensitivity to logical patterns and relationships, statements and propositions, functions, and other abstractions.

Musical• A keen sensitivity to music, sounds,tonal patterns,

or the human voice.• Beating out rhythms, enjoyment of singing and

playing musical instruments and frequently listens to music while studying.

• Sensitivity to rhythm, pitch, melody, timbre, or tone of a musical piece.

• The capacity to think in music, hear patterns, and perhaps manipulate patterns.

• The capacity to perceive (appreciate), discriminate (criticize), transform (compose), express (perform).

Verbal-Linguistic• Skillful use of language and words including anything

associated with complex thought possibilities such as reading, writing, abstract reasoning, and symbolic speaking.

• Skillful listening and enjoyment of speaking in public, reading, spelling correctly, and writing.

• A good memory for names and dates, and  a strong vocabulary.

• The ability to manipulate the syntax or structure of language and phonology or sounds of language.

• Sensitivity to the meaning of words and order among words. • Sensitivity to the rhythms, inflections, and sounds of words. • Sensitivity to the rhetorical aspects of language; language

can be used to inform, please, stimulate, persuade, excite, etc.

Visual-Spatial• The ability to visualize an image or idea and to create

mental pictures. Color plays an important role in this intelligence.

• Enjoyment of drawing, painting, sculpting, working jigsaw puzzles and mazes, using maps, and preference for videos and pictures to words.

• Sensitivity to color, line, shape, form, space, and the relationships between these elements.

• Sensitivity to the balance, composition, and tension that characterize visual/spatial displays.

• The ability to mentally manipulate or rotate perceived objects or forms.

• The ability to produce or create a graphic likeness of perceived objects or forms.

Bodily-Kinesthetic• “Learning by doing” • Knowing what happens through physical movement• Keen sense of body awareness• Like physical movement, dancing, making and inventing things with

your hands, and role-playing• Communicate well through body language and other physical

gestures• Perform a task much better after seeing someone else do it first

and then mimicking their actions• Like physical games of all kinds• Like to demonstrate how to do something for someone else• Find it difficult to sit still for long periods of time• Easily bored or distracted if not actively involved in what is going

TfU Framework1. A generative topic worth understanding2. Understanding goals that define the concepts, skills

or processes the unit is intended to develop.3. Performances of understanding or activities that

help students build and develop understanding of the topic.

4. Assessment that provides feedback and guidance intended to help students advance their understanding.

5. A rationale or explanation about why the project would enhance understanding of the topic - reflection.

Critical and Creative Thinking

Ways of Teaching Thinking: 4 Instructional Approaches 1. Thinking Through Thinkpoints - an approach that helps teachers and

students identify generative topics or ideas within the curriculum and then encourages students to explore those topics in critical and creative ways.

2. Thinking Through Dispositions - an approach that aims to enrich and deepen understanding by cultivating not only students' thinking skills, but also their inclinations, attitudes, and habits of mind.

3. Thinking Through Transfer - an approach that aims to secure and deepen learning by activating and connecting students' knowledge to topics and subject areas both in and out of school.

4. Thinking Through Assessment - an approach that aims to improve thinking performances and deepen understanding through the design and employment of thinking-centered assessment.

Assessment as Learning

Instructional Rubrics1.Articulated clear criteria for assessing

writing, 2.Asked students to assess their own work, 3.Provided opportunities for improvement

through revision, and 4.Was sensitive to students' developmental

stages, referring to appropriate grade level standards.

Assessment as Learning

Rubric-Referenced Self-Assessment 1. Are written in language that students

can understand; 2. Refer to common weaknesses in

students' work and indicate how such weaknesses can be avoided; and

3. Can be used by students to evaluate their works-in-progress and thereby guide revision and improvement.

Learning In and Through the Arts• Most social communication is nonverbal.

• Thoughts occur as images.

• Metaphors are central to cognition.

• Cognition is grounded in embodied experience.

• Reason, emotion, and experience co-mingle.

Curriculum Priorities

In Planning:• Studying the conditions under which professionals can accomplish good

work; • Investigating the nature of interdisciplinary curricula and programs in

schools;• Exploring how to teach for understanding—in other words, to help

students learn to use knowledge to solve unexpected problems, rather than simply recite back facts;

• Designing strategies for creating a "culture of thinking" in the classroom that encourages students to think critically and creatively;

• Making assessment an ongoing and integral part of the curriculum, so that it reinforces instruction and guides students in reflecting upon their work;

• Developing and implementing in-school assessment criteria and procedures that can document the full range of student abilities;

• Using the power of new technologies, especially computers, to advance learning and provide access to new realms of knowledge;

Curriculum Priorities

In the Classroom:• Relating classroom instruction to the tasks and experiences students

will encounter outside of school and particularly in the world of work; • Evaluating various efforts by cultural institutions to enrich education

in the arts by bringing artists into schools as mentors, performers, or teacher trainers;

• Devising games, interactive exhibits, and other activities that appeal to a variety of learning styles and will invite new audiences into museums;

• Designing learning structures and strategies in organizations to facilitate personal and organizational inquiry;

• Designing and facilitating reflective communities around personal and generative actions for the individuals in the group and their communities;

• Examining the understanding, teaching, and assessment of thinking dispositions.

BibliographyGardner, H. (1991). The Unschooled Mind: How children think

and how schools should teach. New York: Basic Books.

Perkins, D. (1992). SMART SCHOOLS: FROM TRAINING MEMORIES TO EDUCATING MINDS. New York, NY: The Free Press