David Perkins Bio

David Perkins earned his Ph.D. in mathematics and artificial intelligence from MIT in 1970. He is currently a senior professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is also senior co-director of of the educational research group, Project Zero.

Perkins researches and writes about teaching for thinking and meaningful learning. His books deal with learning for students in and out of the classroom, for teachers, and for institutions interesting in harnessing the power of their collective knowledge. One of Perkins' impact goals is to facilitate personal and organizational understanding and intelligence. His work reflects a theory of mind that emphasizes the interwoven relationship among thinking, learning, and understanding. The three are dependent upon one another. Meaningful learning leads to understanding and depends on thinking with and about what one is learning. In order words, thinking about what and how you are thinking is important to learning and understanding.

Perkins' titles include:

The Mind's Best Work (1981) a look at the psychology of creativity
The Teaching of Thinking (1985) with Raymond Nickerson and Edmond Smith
Knowledge as Design (1986) about meaningful instruction design
Teaching Thinking: Issue and Approaches (1989) a practicioner's guide
Block: Getting Out of Your Own Way (1990) the psychology of counterintuitive behavior
Smart Schools: From Training Memories to Educating Minds (1992) a new vision of schooling
Inventive Minds (1992) a collection of articles about inventiveness
The Intelligent Eye (1994) learning to think by looking at art
The Thinking Classroom (1995) developing a culture of thinking
Software Goes to School (1995) role of technology in education
Outsmarting IQ (1995) how to grow your intelligence
The Eureka Effect (2000) an investigation and guide to breakthrough thinking
King Arthur's Round Table (2003) how collaborative conversations create smarts
Learning at Work (2005) about leading learning in the workplace
Making Learning Whole (2009) teaching for understanding and engagement

Edutopia's Intro to Project-based Learning

This is a short and nice video that explains the difference between project-based learning and curriculum learning. This website has a lot of information and resources about project-based learning and experiential learning.

Making Learning Whole

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Using his memories and love of playing baseball as a kid, David Perkins, co-director of Harvard's Project Zero, describes how teaching all subjects at all levels can be made more effective through teaching the "whole game." Perkins presents the 7 principles of teaching the whole game. Here are the main ideas of the book:

1. "Play the Whole Game" explains how complete treatments of even more complex subjects can be presented in junior versions.
2. "Make the Game Worth Playing" understanding the whole game makes the game worth playing because students get the point of why they need to know what they're learning.
3. "Work on the Hard Parts" shows how teaching the whole game reveals gaps in knowledge that can then be addressed and focused on.
   
4. "Play Out of Town" challenges learners by taking them out of their comfort zones in a subject. Train them to be able to transfer their learning to related subjects.
5. "Find the Hidden Game" goes beyond the obvious to teach the rules, tricks, and strategies that are often hidden to students, but essential in the real world.
6. "Learn from the Team" encourages students to communicate and work with one another to improve learning, even in areas where collaboration is does not come naturally.
7. "Learn the Game of Learning" makes sure students are taught and given practice in how to learn. Help them become self-managed learners who will continue to learn even when you the teacher are gone.
   

The principles are universals of learning, applicable to any age from kindergarten through college.

Making Thinking Visible

One of the biggest evolutions in teaching and learning since we have found ourselves in the knowledge age where information is easily accessible with a click is that the goals for learning are more about thinking than knowing. Knowing content is essential. Each domain still has certain foundational knowledge from which all else flows, however knowing is not enough. Thinking, problem-solving, and working through problems collectively are critical learning goals.

Helping students develop rigorous thinking and analytical abilities as they learn domain knowledge is the goal of "Making Thinking Visible" and "Making Learning Whole." Much of these thinking routines can be accomplished in collaborative learning with teams and with project-based learning.

From Making Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchhart and David Perkins (February 2008) in Educational Leadership

Six key principles of Visible Thinking:

1. Learning is a consequence of thinking. Students understand and remember content better when they think through it. Teaming allows learners to build and share knowledge with each other.

2. Good thinking is part skill and part attitude. It is essential to develop and foster open-mindedness, curiosity, attention and observation skills, imagination, inventiveness, and growth mindsets.

3. The development of thinking is a social endeavor. We learn best from those around us and our engagement with them. Social interaction in classrooms should be all the time, not sporadic.

4. Fostering thinking requires making thinking visible. Externalizing and documenting our thoughts in various ways helps us become aware of our thinking and how to make it grow.

5. Classroom culture sets the tone for learning and shapes what is learned. Depending on their form, these forces can support or undermine the rhythm of thoughtful learning:

(1) classroom routines and structures for learning
(2) language and conversational patterns
(3) implicit and explicit expectations
(4) time allocation
(5) modeling by teachers and others
(6) the physical environment
(7) relationships and patterns of interaction
(8) the creation of opportunities.

6. Schools must be culture of thinking for teachers. Instruction can only improve as teachers learn and develop. Administrators need to value, create, and preserve time for teachers to discuss teaching and learning, grounded in observation of student work.

How do we fostering thinking about thinking in our work across the grades?
What would we like to explore to evolve our practice?
What might be the pros and cons of adopting more thinking routines in our teaching?

Why Teach with Project Learning?

reprinted from Edutopia

Why Teach with Project Learning?

Project learning, also known as project-based learning, is a dynamic approach to teaching in which students explore real-world problems and challenges, simultaneously developing cross-curriculum skills while working in small collaborative groups.

Because project learning is filled with active and engaged learning, it inspires students to obtain a deeper knowledge of the subjects they're studying. Research also indicates that students are more likely to retain the knowledge gained through this approach far more readily than through traditional textbook-centered learning. In addition, students develop confidence and self-direction as they move through both team-based and independent work.

In the process of completing their projects, students also hone their organizational and research skills, develop better communication with their peers and adults, and often work within their community while seeing the positive effect of their work.

Because students are evaluated on the basis of their projects, rather than on the comparatively narrow rubrics defined by exams, essays, and written reports, assessment of project-based work is often more meaningful to them. They quickly see how academic work can connect to real-life issues -- and may even be inspired to pursue a career or engage in activism that relates to the project they developed.

Students also thrive on the greater flexibility of project learning. In addition to participating in traditional assessment, they might be evaluated on presentations to a community audience they have assiduously prepared for, informative tours of a local historical site based on their recently acquired expertise, or screening of a scripted film they have painstakingly produced.

Project learning is also an effective way to integrate technology into the curriculum. A typical project can easily accommodate computers and the Internet, as well as interactive whiteboards, global-positioning-system (GPS) devices, digital still cameras, video cameras, and associated editing equipment.

Adopting a project-learning approach in your classroom or school can invigorate your learning environment, energizing the curriculum with a real-world relevance and sparking students' desire to explore, investigate, and understand their world. Return to our Project Learning page to learn more.

This article originally published on 2/28/2008

Think-Puzzle-Explore

Here are the questions that would be used to guide students through the think-puzzle-explore thinking routine.

What do we think we know about this situation?

press the student: What makes you think that?

This first stage is like KWL except one major difference - conditional language: What do we think we know, (but it might not be correct?) This encourages students to offer tentative ideas and personal thoughts and to remain open to inquiry and discovery. Teacher respects the process of student generated ideas and inquiry, pressing for deeper thinking.

What are you puzzling over? More active and engaging than what would you like to know. Invites personal thinking and problem-solving than just stockpiling facts.

How might we solve our puzzles? What means and methods might we use? How might we work together?

goal: to make classroom inquiry more learning oriented than work oriented.

Introduction to Learning by Doing

This is a 10 minutes video that highlights real students working in teams to think about real world projects, studying everything from worms to robots. The main advantages to this type of learning is that kids retain more of what they are actually able to to, skills such as research and communication skills are easily embedded in the learning, and kids have a voice in what they are learning out. The excitement about learning is very noticeable.

In the middle part of the video, MIT mathemetician talks about the first step to transforming our practice to learning by doing is giving up the idea of a staid and set curriculum and exchange it for pushing and challenging student to think and tackle real work challenges in real time. Learning becomes less controlled and more expansive and creative. Students become managers of their own learning. Students learn knowledge by using it.

Visible Thinking Core Routines

This site offers a detailed explanation of the core thinking routines:

ore Routines

The core routines are a set of seven or so routines that target different types of thinking from across the modules. These routines are easy to get started with and are commonly found in Visible Thinking teachers' toolkits. Try getting started with with one of these routines.

What Makes You Say That? Interpretation with justification routine

Think Puzzle Explore A routine that sets the stage for deeper inquiry

Think Pair Share A routine for active reasoning and explanation

Circle of Viewpoints A routine for exploring diverse perspectives

I used to Think... Now I think... A routine for reflecting on how and why our thinking has changed

See Think Wonder A routine for exploring works of art and other
interesting things

Compass Points A routine for examining propositions

Learning in Today's World

Marco Torres is a leading voice in creating engaging and technology rich learning experiences for kids. This video interview students, mostly high school age, about how realistic projects that empower them get them really excited and interested in learning.

Constructivist Learning - Not a New Idea

This video is a very deliberate and academic look at what project-based and problem-based learning is. The video is direct and thorough, taking the listener through the benefits of project-based learning for developing thinking skills, independents, and concept integration. The video is good about explaining how a teacher might adopt a learning based style where he or she is more facilitator or coach who guides the process instead of the content deliverer.

Expedition-based Learning

In this video, teachers talk about making learning more relevant and modern by using project-based learning that is interdisciplinary where all the content disciplines are wrapped into one Big Question they choose to learn around. These teachers like the hands-on inquiry based nature and the creative opportunity and collaborative opportunities offered by project-based learning.

5th grade Courtyard Project

This video starts with a teacher planning meeting where they are starting to design a project for the 5th grade to undertake. It is interesting to see all of the ideas come out and how the teacher collaborate. This discussion highlights how the skills they are trying to engender are so much more forefronted than the content. Content is there but it is really about doing. The video then shows the kids attach the project of the courtyard. They are engaged, working, thinking, learning, and having fun in a real life project that is meaning and real.

Three Phases of Project Development

from ProjectApproach.org



Projects, like good stories, have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This temporal structure helps the teacher to organize the progression of activities according to the development of the children's interests and personal involvement with the topic of study.

During the preliminary planning stage, the teacher selects the topic of study (based on the children's interests, the curriculum, the availability of local resources, etc.). The teacher also brainstorms her own experience, knowledge, and ideas and represents them in a topic web. This web will be added to throughout the project and used for recording the progress of the project.

Phase 1: Beginning the Project

The teacher discusses the topic with the children to find out the experiences they have had and what they already know about it. The children represent their experiences and show their understanding of the concepts involved in explaining them. The teacher helps the children develop questions their investigation will answer. A letter about the study is sent home to parents. The teacher encourages the parents to talk with their children about the topic and to share any relevant special expertise.

Phase 2: Developing the Project

Opportunities for the children to do field work and speak to experts are arranged. The teacher provides resources to help the children with their investigations; real objects, books, and other research materials are gathered. The teacher suggests ways for children to carry out a variety of investigations. Each child is involved in representing what he or she is learning, and each child can work at his or her own level in terms of basic skills, constructions, drawing, music, and dramatic play. The teacher enables the children to be aware of all the different work being done through class or group discussion and display. The topic web designed earlier provides a shorthand means of documenting the progress of the project.

Phase 3: Concluding the Project

The teacher arranges a culminating event through which the children share with others what they have learned. The children can be helped to tell the story of their project to others by featuring its highlights for other classes, the principal, and the parents. The teacher helps the children to select material to share and, in so doing, involves them purposefully in reviewing and evaluating the whole project. The teacher also offers the children imaginative ways of personalizing their new knowledge through art, stories, and drama. Finally, the teacher uses children's ideas and interests to make a meaningful transition between the project being concluded and the topic of study in the next project.

This summary outline has explained some of the common features of projects, but each project is also unique. The teacher, the children, the topic, and the location of the school all contribute to the distinctiveness of each project.

This website, ProjectApproach.org, offers lots of resources for project learning with younger children.

Elementary School Garden Project

This is a short video of a principal who takes about the learning, emotional, and social awards of her elementary school students understanding a garden project at their school. It is a nice commentary on how academic skills like writing can be embedded in meaningful hands-on learning projects.