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Action Research

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Harvard Project Zero’s Mara Krechevsky talks about making learning visible

Documenting children’s learning is an intricate process. In this expert interview, Mara Krechevsky, a senior researcher at Harvard’s Project Zero research centre, discusses the ins-and-outs of making learning visible. Documenting children’s learning is a complex and (sometimes) confusing process. Questions of how educators can use documenting to support learning are deeply intertwined with debates surrounding ethical and political assumptions in education. Mara Krechevsky has over 30 years’ experience in education research with a specific interest in documenting learning. In her role at Harvard, she has worked on a myriad of ‘visible learning’ projects including directing Project Zero’s Making Learning Visible, an initiative that began as a collaboration with educators from Reggio Emilia. Project Zero is a research centre at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Founded by philosopher Nelson Goodman in 1967, Project Zero began with a focus on understanding learning in and through the arts. Since then, the centre’s mission has…

Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s family learning program

This post features an interview with Emma Spencer, Family Learning Coordinator at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (UK).  The Yorkshire Sculpture Park sits upon 500 acres of jolly green parkland that an Australian who has never visited rural England may be pitifully excited to see. The open-air gallery won the 2014 Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year and is also home to the National Arts Education Archive. In 2014 the Park was awarded a three- year grant from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to conduct an action-research project looking at the development of its family-learning programme. I recently spoke with Emma Spencer about the project’s findings and future plans for early years learning at the gallery. Could you please give some background on the action research project? What were your initial ideas and motivations? Starting out, the key focus of the research was around bringing people from the community together with the Park.…

The Children’s Wing at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark

This post shares my thoughts on the children’s wing at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. Last month I visited another, the awesome Children’s Wing at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark. I had heard numerous colleagues talk about the space and was excited to finally have the opportunity to go myself. The Children’s Wing opened in 1994 and is made up of a three-story space purpose-built space especially for children. Whilst I was there I met with one of the artist-educators working on the programme who discussed the team’s approach. The aim of the activities is to encourage children to explore the notion that ‘small-scale experimentation with materials and ideas are the foundations of artworks displayed throughout the gallery.’ Underscoring this premise is an understanding that through encouraging children’s exploration of materials and artistic processes, they will gain a sense of curiosity around the art featured in the gallery spaces. The Wing consists…