Look, Listen, Interpret, Teach: A Reggio Emilia-Inspired Approach to Supporting Individual and Group Learning (LLIT)

Drawing on the collaborative research between Harvard’s Project Zero and educators in Reggio Emilia, Italy, this course offers you the opportunity to learn how to document student learning in ways that “make visible” what and how students learn and that provide useful data for reflecting on and improving teaching.

Learning is social. Every day, children and adults learn from and with others, encountering new perspectives, strategies, and ways of thinking. Together, groups can achieve greater perspective and understanding than any individual can alone, but we need tools for sharing thinking and making learning visible to others.

Look, Listen, Interpret, Teach: A Reggio Emilia-Inspired Approach to Supporting Individual and Group Learning examines group learning through the Making Learning Visible framework, which began as a collaborative research project between Harvard’s Project Zero and educators in Reggio Emilia, Italy, and has since been adopted by thousands of teachers, across grade levels and subject areas, to promote individual and group learning. Participants will explore how to use documentation to “make visible” both what and how students learn, both individually and in groups. Through observation, evidence collection, interpretation, and information sharing, participants will learn how to produce a record that students and teachers can use to build self-awareness and guide instruction. This course does *not* cover Project Zero’s Visible Thinking framework and the associated thinking routines.

Course Details

This online course was developed by Project Zero researchers Mara Krechevsky, Steve Seidel, Terri Turner, and Daniel Wilson, who have collectively led Project Zero's work with Reggio Emilia and the application of Reggio Emilia ideas for more than 30 years."The course begins with a one-week orientation, during which you will explore the online platform and get to know fellow members of the learning community. Six two-week content sessions follow, each with an average time commitment of approximately 2.5 hours per week, including a required, synchronous 60-90 minute meetings with your teammates (see below for more information on teams) once during each two week session. Throughout the course, educators will explore these core questions:

• What does it mean to learn and to make learning visible?
• What is my image of the learner? What’s my role as the teacher?
• What does it mean to document learning, and how can I use documentation to become a more effective educator?

Participation: Course participation is team-based, which promotes a deeper and richer learning experience and will help you sustain your use of core Project Zero ideas after the course concludes. Members will collaborate on team assignments. Teams are required to meet, either face-to-face or virtually, once every session.

Teams consist of 3-6 educators. Individuals can register and be placed on a virtual team with educators from similar time zones to facilitate scheduling the once-per-session team meetings. Two educators from the same school/organization wishing to learn together should register as individuals and email pzlearn@gse.harvard.edu to request placement on the same team.

Although the sessions are structured and coach-facilitated, all the online interactions in the course are asynchronous. You and your team members can decide when to work on the course materials as long as you submit assignments on or before the due dates.

Team members must be able to try out course ideas with learners in classrooms (either virtually or face-to-face) or in other learning environments in which they work with students. If you are not currently working in a school or educational organization, you will need a classroom context or a consistent group of students with whom you can try out the ideas you are learning throughout the course.

Course Instructor

Instructor: Megina Baker

Megina has over twenty years of experience as an early childhood teacher, teacher educator, and education researcher, both in the United States and in Sweden. Megina holds a Ph.D. from Boston College in Curriculum and Instruction, and degrees from Tufts University and Cornell University in Early Childhood Education and Human Development, respectively. She is currently a Program Developer for the Boston Public Schools Department of Early ChildhoodLinks to an external site., where she designs curriculum and professional learning for early childhood educators in Boston's Universal Pre-K programs - building on prior work with PZ colleague Ben Mardell in writing the integrated, play-based Focus on K2 curriculum. Prior to joining BPS, Megina was Director of Teaching and Learning at Neighborhood VillagesLinks to an external site., a systems-change non-profit dedicated to supporting childcare programs in Boston, where she helped to co-design a teaching and learning support system and a playful curriculum for toddlers. A former faculty member at Boston University, Megina mentored student teachers in the Early Childhood program, taught courses on playful learning, early childhood curriculum, and pedagogical documentation, helped to found the BU Institute for Early Childhood Well-BeingLinks to an external site., and collaborated with former PZer Stephanie Cox Suarez to run the Documentation StudioLinks to an external site.. She is a board member of the Boston Area Reggio-Inspired NetworkLinks to an external site. and sits on the Editorial Board of Voices of PractitionersLinks to an external site., a National Association for the Education of Young Children journal focused on teacher research. Megina is co-author of several books: Children at the Center: Transforming Early Childhood Education in the Boston Public SchoolsLinks to an external site.; Reclaiming Accountability in Teacher EducationLinks to an external site.; and A Pedagogy of Play: Supporting Playful Learning in Classrooms and Schools.

Course Designers

Daniel Wilson is a Principal Investigator at Project Zero and a Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. . His teaching and writing explore the inherent socio-psychological tensions – dilemmas of knowing, trusting, leading, and belonging -- in adult collaborative learning across a variety of contexts. Specifically he focuses on how groups navigate these tensions through language, routines, roles, and artifacts. He is the author and co-author of a number of books and articles, including Visible Learners: Promoting Reggio-Inspired Approaches in All Schools.

Mara Krechevsky is a senior researcher at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Mara has been conducting educational research for over 30 years, including directing Making Learning Visible (MLV), an investigation into documenting and assessing individual and group learning in U.S. classrooms from preschool to high school. MLV is based on collaborative research with educators from Reggio Emilia. Mara has worked with hundreds of teachers and administrators in the U.S. and abroad to create powerful learning environments for children and adults. She has authored or co-authored over 30 articles and book chapters as well as seven books, including Visible Learners: Promoting Reggio-Inspired Approaches in All Schools.

Terri Turner began work at Project Zero in 1999. Over the course of more than twenty years, she served as a project specialist on a number of projects, including Learning to Think, Thinking to Learn, Cultures of Thinking, Visible Thinking, and Making Learning Visible. All of these projects share an interest in better understanding how to create environments that encourage critical thinking and how to make these critical thinking moments shareable with learners inside and outside of the school context. Since its inception in 2008, Terri has also been the facilitator the Democracy Inquiry Group, a Reggio-inspired inquiry group of teacher educators from 11+ colleges, universities, and early learning centers.

Steve Seidel is a Principal Investigator at Project Zero, focusing on projects that study the use of reflective practices in schools, the close examination of student work, and documentation of learning. Over the course of nearly 40 years, he has led a number of projects, including Making Learning Visible, a study of group learning and assessment in partnership with the Reggio Emilia early childhood schools in Italy. For nearly 30 years, he served as Director of the Arts in Education Program and Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He also convenes a monthly discussion group on collaborative assessment for educators: ROUNDS at Project Zero. Before coming to the School, he taught high-school theater and language arts in the Boston area for 17 years.

What Past Participants Are Saying

“The course is so well designed. Its layout, structure, and pacing fit with a working teacher's life, and assignments can be easily applied to the classroom. It made me look at my classroom like a laboratory and sparked curiosity and camaraderie among colleagues.”

“I used to think my role as a teacher was to deliver knowledge and skills to my students. After finishing the course, I can see the importance of observing, collecting, documenting, and sharing–to make learning visible, empowering, and purposeful.”

Online Course Schedule

All registered participants will receive email invitations to access the course site 4-5 days prior to the course start date. If you joined the course as an individual and not a member of an already-formed team, you will be placed on a virtual team and sent a separate email introducing you to your virtual team members 4-5 days prior to the course start date.

All sessions open on Mondays and close on Sundays. Much of the work is asynchronous and there are no course “times,” other than the once-per-session team meetings; participants decide when to work on the course material, and when to schedule their team meetings, based on the assignment due dates that occur toward the end of each week.

Please review the course schedule to ensure that you and your team will be able to participate fully in the course, taking into account your local holidays and vacations. Teams can plan ahead for scheduled holidays and vacations and need to coordinate those plans with their coach.

September 2024 Term Schedule

Sessions open on Mondays and close on Sundays, but you do not have to work on Mondays; within each session, you work on your own time.

• Session 1 (Orientation): Opens Monday, September 23
• Session 2: Opens Monday, September 30
• Session 3: Opens Monday, October 14
• Session 4: Opens Monday, October 28
• Session 5: Opens Monday, November 11
• Session 6: Opens Monday, November 25
• Session 7: Opens Monday, December 9
• Course closes: Sunday, December 20

Who Should Participate

• Teachers, teacher leaders, and school administrators and leaders
• Museum educators and educators working in informal learning environments
• Facilitators of pre-K to adult learning

Required Course Textbook

The following textbook is required for participants in this course and is not included in the course tuition. The textbook is available for purchase on Amazon or through the publisher Jossey-Bass — in both paper and digital format.

• Visible Learners: Promoting Reggio-Inspired Approaches in All Schools. Mara Krechevsky, Ben Mardell, Melissa Rivard, and Daniel Wilson. (Jossey-Bass/Wiley, 2013)

Tuition, Discounts, and Scholarships

Tuition

For In-Depth Courses (7 sessions, 13 weeks), tuition is $655 per person registering as a member of a team, and $699 per person registering as an individual who will be placed (by Project Zero) on a virtual team.

Tuition note: Teams consist of 3-6 educators. Two educators from the same school/organization wishing to learn together should register as individuals and email pzlearn@gse.harvard.edu to request placement on the same team.

Scholarships

PZ professional learning scholarships cover 50-70% of a course’s tuition for eligible educators. Scholarship applications must be submitted and accepted prior to registration; if you would like to apply for a scholarship, please do NOT register for the online course until you have been approved for a scholarship. Please note: Scholarships are limited and awarded on a first-come, first-served basis.

To review scholarship criteria and apply for a scholarship, please use the In-Depth Course Scholarship Application link.

Confirmation and Payment

Registration confirmations are sent automatically from the registration software. Please keep these emails as they include your receipt of payment for documentation as well as your confirmation number should you need to access your registration in the future.

Payments are accepted via credit card or invoice for payment by check or wire transfer. Confirmation of registration does not confirm full payment if participants selected to pay other than by a credit card. All required paperwork and payments must be completed (or evidence provided of payments in process) by the registration deadline. Participants whose required paperwork and/or payments are not finalized at the registration deadlinewill be removed from the course roster and placed on a wait list.

Deadline for Registration

For the Look, Listen, Interpret, Teach: A Reggio Emilia-Inspired Approach to Supporting Individual and Group Learning and Visible Thinking in-depth course starting September 23, 2024, the deadline for registration is September 17, 2024 at 11:59pm Boston Time.

Please note: Space is limited. The course may fill prior to the registration deadline.

Refund Request and Participant Substitution Deadlines

Requests for refunds and participant substitutions for the in-depth course September 2024 term must be submitted by Tuesday, September 10, 2024 at 11:59 Boston Time.

To request a refund, submit a participant substitution, or to ask questions, please email pzlearn@gse.harvard.edu.