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

Jennifer has been with Project Zero since 2006. Prior to RECE, Jennifer was Senior Project Manager for the Pedagogy of Play (PoP) research project and has also worked on Agency by Design, the Good Play project, and Qualities of Quality: Excellence in Arts Education and How to Achieve It, among other projects. 

She has also co-designed and co-instructed two Project Zero online courses: Let's Play: Teaching Strategies for Playful Learning (with Ben Mardell) and Teaching and Learning in the Maker-Centered Classroom, exploring the promises, practices, and pedagogies of maker-centered learning (with Edward Clapp). 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).