Making Space for Active Learning: The Art and Practice of Teaching

This powerful collection will inspire new and veteran teachers to “make space” for children’s interests, for teaching as relational and intellectual work, and for new insights and ideas. The authors introduce the Prospect Center’s Descriptive Review of Practice, a collaborative inquiry process that provides an opportunity for teachers to examine their practice and gain new perspectives from other participants. The contributors to this volume respond to each child’s modes of thinking as they develop curriculum or find “wiggle room” in curricula they are given. By demonstrating how it is possible to pursue careful knowledge of craft, this book offers ways of teaching that allow for continuing growth and change.

Book Features:

• An inquiry methodology that assists teachers to reflect on the classroom and develop curriculum that responds to children’s interests and needs.
• Specific examples of a variety of sources teachers can draw on and think about to improve practice.

A method of data collection that can inform practice while allowing for the unevenness, messiness, and essential humanness of teaching and learning

Anne C. Martin taught in public elementary schools for over 30 years in New York City, London, and Brookline, Massachusetts. Ellen Schwartz taught in the public schools of Vermont and Massachusetts for 29 years. She is a mentor to practitioner fellows working with the Prospect Archives at the University of Vermont.