Agency by Design's flexible framework for maker-centered learning, developed by the Origin Project team, has been applied across a variety of formal and informal settings to great effect. Nonetheless, there has been a perennial concern from early childhood educators about the applicability of this framework for young learners. At the same time, over the course of Agency by Design's sustained work with early childhood educators, we have seen the power of the framework in various early childhood education contexts.
Since January 2018, researchers from Project Zero have been partnering with educators and administrators at the Victoria Educational Organisation's kindergartens in Hong Kong to extend and expand upon the work of Agency by Design by engaging in a two-year pilot study entitled Agency by Design: Early Childhood in the Making. The goal of this collaborative inquiry has been to develop an early childhood-specific framework for maker-centered learning while also nurturing other generative cognitive dispositions and habits of mind at this critical stage of development.
The result of this exciting pilot study is the Maker-Centered Learning Playbook for Early Childhood Education. This playbook includes lessons learned from the study, pictures of practice featuring the teacher collaborators in Hong Kong, and a host of educator tools and resources. Through the work of the Agency by Design: Early Childhood in the Making project, we hope to extend the originalframework for maker-centered learning, and by doing so, expand the potential for early childhood maker-centered learning amongst young learners around the world
Collaborators + Networks
CTF Education Group
CTF Education Group (CTFEG) is a unique integrated education group based in Hong Kong with a network of K-12 schools, school services, education investments, and a charitable foundation that supports philanthropic education initiatives.
CTFEG strives to establish a synergized ecosystem that empowers and engages students, educators, parents, and partners with the ultimate goal of advancing the frontiers of teaching and learning.
Early Childhood in the Making partners with Victoria Educational Organisation (VEO), a leader in early childhood education in Hong Kong since its establishment in 1965. VEO has a strong, well-established presence throughout Hong Kong with eight nurseries and kindergartens located around the city. Setting itself apart from other preschools in Hong Kong, VEO provides an all-encompassing, rich multicultural learning environment that blends both Eastern and Western cultures. VEO also strives to keep its curriculum and teaching approach in line with educational research and also the changing needs of community. It is accredited by the International Baccalaureate (IB) Organization.
publicationsSlow Looking: The Art and Practice of Learning Through Observation
Slow Looking: The Art and Practice of Learning Through Observation
Slow Looking provides a robust argument for the importance of slow looking in learning environments both general and specialized, formal and informal, and its connection to major concepts in teaching, learning, and knowledge. A museum-originated practice increasingly seen as holding wide educational benefits, slow looking contends that patient, immersive attention to content can produce active cognitive opportunities for meaning-making and critical thinking that may not be possible though high-speed means of information delivery. Addressing the multi-disciplinary applications of this purposeful behavioral practice, this book draws examples from the visual arts, literature, science, and everyday life, using original, real-world scenarios to illustrate the complexities and rewards of slow looking.
Field NoteTruth and Historical Amendment: Critical Mending in the Classroom
Truth and Historical Amendment: Critical Mending in the Classroom
Jaime Chao Mignano is a Senior Practitioner Specialist on the JusticexDesign (JxD) project, and an ongoing leader in the project's conception and development, including developing tools and supporting educators to apply the emerging JxD framework in their contexts.
We find ourselves in a thorny historical moment, in the United States and around the world. Like my colleagues on the JusticexDesign project—and like many educators—I wonder: How will we support our students in deepening their understanding of the world around them and exploring the complex interplay of histories we are taking part in? In the US, we are debating the fate of American monuments, the legacy of American founders, and the impact of America's own super story on the lived experiences of its people. How might we offer a path of agency to our students that champions historical honesty? And as we guide our students in considering colonial legacies, migration crises, and global economic injustice, what are some ways we might actively value the voices of communities adding their own truth to a contested history, even at terrible risk?
Artist Titus Kaphar's work offers a rich model, pieces "that are honest, that wrestle with the struggles of our past but speak to the diversity and the advances of our present." WIS History teacher Nora Brennan, a colleague in Agency by Design's Making Across the Curriculum project, and I had been struck by Kaphar's 2017 TED Talk, "Can Art Amend History?" He asks, with his own children in mind, "What is the impact of these kinds of paintings on some of our most vulnerable in society, seeing these kinds of depictions of themselves all the time?" Kaphar concludes by urging us to "amend our public sculptures, our national monuments" in order to expand and deepen our historical narrative.
In the fall of 2018, Nora took her history class to visit the Titus Kaphar collection in the "UnSeen: Our Past in a New Light" exhibit in the National Portrait Gallery. This experience was clearly powerful for students—we could sense that Kaphar's artworks were shifting their gazes, pointing them to an actively unfolding dialogue on American history. Nora knew she wanted her students to connect more deeply to Kaphar's philosophy of historical amendment. She combined this art exhibit and the history lessons she was teaching on the Civil War and Reconstruction as the foundation to challenge students to research a Civil War monument and reimagine it.
At the same time, Nora knew it was important to contextualize this project in the very active conversation in the U.S.—and around the world--about monuments and public memory. The controversy around Civil War monuments was and is a real current event—many city and state governments have been taking steps to address the symbolic presence of historical racial terror embedded in public spaces by tearing down monuments, renaming streets and buildings, etc. We wanted students to situate their thinking within these substantive critiques - not to attempt reconciliation but to explore their own perspective.
Nora drew on the Agency by Design framework to build her students' sensitivity to the design of monuments and portraits. She knew that historical artworks can both express and obscure, offering us complex legacies that we can guide students in unpacking and probing. We wondered what maker empowerment might look like as students approach a portrait of Robert E. Lee or a statue of John. C. Calhoun.
publicationsThe Inquiry Cycle in Action
The Inquiry Cycle in Action
The Agency by Design Inquiry Cycle has been designed to support educators in the processes of designing, documenting, assessing, and reflecting on maker-centered learning. This tool was collaboratively developed over time, and formally prototyped with cohorts of maker educators in two locations: Oakland, California, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In this paper, Agency by Design researchers Jessica Ross and Edward P. Clapp loosely use the structure of the Inquiry Cycle to describe the iterative process of developing this tool, along with some suggested implications for practice. Throughout the piece, we share the experiences of our teacher partners as they grappled with this tool—tweaking, hacking, and remixing it—as they explored its potential for designing, documenting, assessing, and reflecting upon their work in the maker-centered classroom.
thinking routines"深入拆解" 的思考模式
"深入拆解" 的思考模式
這個思考模式通過讓學生慢慢、細心地觀察物件和系統中的細節,鼓勵他們不止觀察物件的表面特徵,更重要的是了解其內部運作。這個思考模式可以激發學生的好奇心,鼓勵他們勇於提出問題,並且能做更深入的研究。
thinking routinesPARTES, PROPÓSITOS, COMPLEXIDADES
PARTES, PROPÓSITOS, COMPLEXIDADES
Essa rotina de pensamento ajuda os estudantes a desacelerar e a fazer observações detalhadas e cuidadosas, incentivando-os a olhar além das características óbvias de um objeto ou de um sistema.