Lifelong Kindergarten

120 Fall 2020

Cultivating Creativity through

Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play

Reviewed by Paul Pearson

While lacking the nuts and bolts detail of a “how-to”

manual, Lifelong Kindergarten presents an inspiring

model for museums involved with, or contemplating

initiation of, maker spaces or online programming

communities in their own environment, or in

partnership with external spaces or schools. The book

also has value for museum educators and exhibition

designers ready to challenge traditional interpretive

programs and who are searching outside the ﬁeld for

insight and examples that may inform their eﬀorts

to attract, engage, and support participant audiences

through deeper, more extended creative project-based

experiences and resources within their own museums.

The book is organized into six, equal-weight chapters.

An introductory chapter deﬁnes “Creative Learning,”

then a chapter each on the “four P’s of creative

learning”: Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play. Each of

the ﬁrst ﬁve chapters concludes with “In Their Own

Voices,” a Q&A interview with a young alum or current

member of the Scratch programming or Clubhouse

communities. A concluding chapter summarizes the

case for moving from an information or knowledge

society to a “creative society” and includes lists of tips

helpful to learners, designers and developers, teachers

and caregivers interested in advancing toward that

goal. The book is well-written in clear and common

prose and avoids or explains jargon for easy reading by

a general audience.

Resnick proposes the development of creativity as

essential to an individual’s ability to thrive within

the accelerated pace of change that characterizes

today’s world. He joins many contemporary observers

in concluding that schools today are habituated to

educational methods and standards that prioritize

rote learning and rigid controls that no longer serve

the needs of either students or society, if ever they

did. Today’s regressive classroom environments

may produce predictable performers as measured by

standardized tests, but Resnick says they are failing

to cultivate the kind of “Risk-takers. Doers. Makers

of Things” that have been the “driving force for

economic, technological, political and cultural change

throughout history.”

Resnick describes a creative learning curriculum that

weaves together several strands of (widely studied and

systematically abused) historic educational theories

that inform his current practice. He traces backwards

through the ideas of his mentor and colleague

Seymour Papert, a mathematician and computer

scientist who worked and studied with constructivist

Jean Piaget, to American pragmatist philosopher and

Book Review

In Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play,

Mitchel Resnick makes the case for wide adoption of a project-based, collaborative

learning model that undergirds his work with the MIT Media Lab’s Scratch software

online coding community for kids and a closely-related afterschool program he

co-founded called Computer Clubhouse.

121Fall 2020

educational reformer John Dewey, before landing at

the feet of Friedrich Froebel, the early 19th-century

German pedagogue considered to be the “Father of

Kindergarten” (an approach which Resnick nominates

as “the greatest invention of the previous thousand

years”). Resnick’s heroes are united in a core belief that

deep learning is best accomplished (at least by youth)

through active engagement with the world (learning

by doing), an idea that resonates with the very heart

of contemporary educational practice in children’s

and other museums that use interactive, open-ended

learning experiences as their primary means of visitor

engagement. Resnick echoes many complaints by

teachers that our national obsessions with “testing,

data collection, competition and punishment” are

pushing joy and play out of classrooms entirely,

even for a school’s youngest cohort. “Kindergarten

is becoming like the rest of school,” Resnick argues.

“I believe the rest of school (indeed, the rest of life)

should become more like kindergarten.”

Understanding and facilitating collaborative creative

processes and designing opportunities in museums

that promote prolonged engagement with materials

and ideas related to exhibition themes is a challenging

goal for many exhibition design and program teams.

In his ﬁrst chapter, Resnick diagrams what he terms

“the creative learning spiral,” an iterative cycle of

actions that synthesizes constructivist ideas of how

people learn and highlights the key components of a

creative process we might infer from watching a group

of kindergartners playing with building blocks or other

basic materials: IMAGINE > CREATE > PLAY > SHARE >

REFLECT > IMAGINE >. . ., etc. This learning cycle

is repeated with new variations and inputs, until the

group determines, upon reﬂection, that what it has

built is satisfying or they decide to move on to another

set of materials and challenges.

Lest we believe this example applies only to younger

learners, Resnick and his colleagues see this process

play out daily at the MIT Media Lab, where older

students initiate and design new projects, build rapid

prototypes, test them, discuss results, and redesign

on the ﬂy. Resnick observes that whether the materials

and tools are wooden blocks and bare hands or

microprocessors and laser cutters, the fundamental

elements of the creative learning process are the

same. Designing experiences that support “low ﬂoors

and high ceilings” is one of the mantras repeated in

the book that is highly relevant to museum learning

environments that often see participants of diverse

ages and skills confronted with the same content and

Lifelong Kindergarten:

Cultivating Creativity through Projects,

Passion, Peers, and Play

Mitchel Resnick

Published by the MIT Press,

Cambridge, Massachusetts,

paperback, 2017.

208 pages

122 Fall 2020

materials, but experiencing and processing them from

very diﬀerent perspectives. A sympathetic experience

developer might see this as a productive tension that,

with the right prompts and conditions, can be used

to enrich the individual and collective social learning

experience and lead to breakthroughs in creativity

and insight.

Program or exhibition designers involved with maker

spaces or project-based resource areas in their facilities

will ﬁnd a wealth of strategies and examples in Lifelong

Kindergarten. Throughout the book, Resnick examines

the concept of experiential, interactive learning

through examples found in the maker movement’s

highly social, project-based formats, as well as via toys

and activities like LEGO

Mindstorms Robotics kits

that support creative play and collaboration. It is not

surprising that Resnick, as a trained computer scientist,

draws most of his models and conclusions from his

own experiences developing and facilitating the Scratch

programming language and online network of users,

including thousands of youth enrolled in Computer

Clubhouse chapters. Resnick hopes to expand the use

of new tools and technologies for learning and oﬀers

several principles and methods that educators might

adapt for facilitating creative learning experiences.

In the chapter titled “Passion,” Resnick advances

another cornerstone of the creativity package. This

is the idea that learners with a passionate interest in

their learning subjects are more motivated to think

deeply, work harder, enlist support, and share process

and results with others. Resnick adds texture to the

argument by showing many examples of how students

automatically apply previously acquired conceptual

learning and acquire the new technical skills they

need to accomplish complex tasks when engaged with

projects of their own device. As a counterweight to

those who feel traditional schools could not adapt to

a curriculum centered on a student-generated

projects model, Resnick points to Brightworks, a

successful, mixed-age (5 to 15) day school in San

Francisco, founded in 2011, that moves students

through three-month “arcs” of exploring topics deeply,

expressing self-chosen aspects of that topic through

extended projects and then presenting these projects

and ﬁndings to the local community.

“Peers” focuses on how learning is magniﬁed,

broadened, and reinforced in social and community

contexts. In this chapter, Resnick describes the

example of Brazilian “samba schools” where members

convene to create and practice music and dance

routines in preparation for the nationwide annual

carnival. Samba school participants are of all ages and

levels of experience, from young novices to seasoned

veterans and expert musicians. In samba schools,

Resnick and his colleagues found inspiration for

structuring and operating the mixed-age collaborative

Computer Clubhouse and Scratch programming

communities that encourage and support peer-to-peer

learning, project sharing, feedback, and working in

self-determined teams, either in-person or online.

The examples and takeaways from this chapter might

be particularly apt for museums looking for long-

duration collaboration models with community

partners, afterschool programs, scouting, or other

clubs in their local area.

In chapter 5, Resnick asks: “What types of play are

most likely to help young people develop as creative

thinkers?” Resnick describes various forms and

meanings of play and agrees with John Dewey that

playfulness of mind is a critical condition of creative

endeavor. In demonstrating that “not all play is

created equal,” he contrasts playpens (restrictive,

rule-bound, socially limited, safe) with playgrounds

(expansive, exploratory, experimental, generative,

risky) and asserts the playground model as an

appropriate metaphor for the kind of learning

environment that promotes the kind of free agency,

experimental risk-taking, playful tinkering, and social

networking necessary to the development of creative

mentality and skills. For many museum professionals,

the idea of converting a traditional gallery into a

rule-free, open “playground” for tinkerers and

Book Review Lifelong Kindergarten

123Fall 2020

risk-takers might project a vision of mayhem. If we

remember that “playfulness of mind” is the goal, then

the playground metaphor is more tenable. Linking

play with an attitude of inquiry prompts a question:

Are today’s museums primarily concerned with

preservation and communication of old knowledge

frozen in time – or can they be forums for creative

engagement with the past and present, where diverse

audiences can contribute to the formation of fresh

knowledge and new meanings?

The author discusses the tensions and tradeoﬀs that

might come with the broad adoption of a model

that seems antithetical to a current school mode,

which seems designed for conformity and control

of its inmates. Assessing learning outcomes for

learners involved with creative projects is a problem

for schools and museums. Resnick is skeptical that

numerical data is the best way to measure an individual

student’s learning progress or educational success

as a whole. While admitting the diﬃculties of scaling

nonnumerical assessment methods to huge cohorts

of public-school students, he suggests student

portfolios, and other qualitative methods, as more

productive ways to both document and measure

their learning. He concludes, “we need to rethink our

approaches to assessment, making sure we focus

on what’s most important for children to learn, not

what is easiest for us to measure.”

In the ﬁnal chapter, Resnick reiterates the central

concept of Lifelong Kindergarten by describing an

inspiring visit to a Reggio Emilia classroom, a model

learning environment developed in Italy in 1945

and replicated in many countries. It is designed to

support children’s exploration through daily active

engagement with phenomenon and year-long projects

with special attention to documenting their work as

they go (through notebooks, posters and artwork,

performances, photography, etc.) or what the Reggio

model calls “making learning visible” and sharable

with each other and the community at large. The

ﬁnal chapter closes with “Ten Tips for Designers and

Developers” that could easily slide into any must-read

manual for interactive exhibition or program design.

A sampling: “Design for Designers” is about turning

the goal of design process away from creating a

ﬁnished product for others to marvel to building

tools that assist others in ﬁnding pathways to their

own creativity. “Widen the Walls” acknowledges that

people have diﬀerent interests, backgrounds, and

learning styles and addresses the core question: “How

can we design technologies that attract and engage

them all?” “Connect with Both Interests and Ideas”

advises that people are more apt to forge meaningful

connections to new ideas that seem relevant to their

own lives or that can be discovered while creating

something of their own. “Prioritize Simplicity” uses

a LEGO

model that emphasizes materials and

parts that can be combined or manipulated toward

many outcomes at low cost but with inﬁnite creative

potential. “Understand (Deeply) the People You’re

Designing For” is both obvious and profound for

exhibition developers and touches on necessary front-

end audience research, while supporting the idea of

integrating prototypes and formative evaluation. (“It’s

not enough to ask people what they think or what

they want,” oﬀers Resnick; “you also need to watch

what they do.”) Other tips center on interdisciplinary

design team processes that testify to the advantage

of opportunities for regular input and debate among

coequals with diverse perspective and experience as

well as opening up avenues of input into design to

larger cohorts of potential users (“Control the Design,

But Leverage the Crowd”). “Iterate, Iterate – Then

Iterate Again” adopts tenets of the aforementioned

“creative learning spiral” as an appropriate framework

for eﬀective design process.

Despite its important subject and insights, it is hard

to classify this book and assess its value for potential

readers here. In deﬁning the problem, Resnick’s

critique of our contemporary educational system will

reverberate with the existing views of many in the

museum ﬁeld. The book’s research is journalistic and

124 Fall 2020

informal. This is not an academic treatise or formal

study, although it presents numerous individual

interviews and provides vivid examples of the

principles of creative play in action. The book’s author

draws many conclusions about the potential societal

beneﬁts of broad adoption of its learning model,

without presenting objective data to demonstrate

these implied impacts. While oﬀering a clear rationale

supporting the purpose and general structure wherein

creative learning collaborations might be possible,

this slim volume lacks the detail and linearity

required in a nuts-and-bolts workbook or how-to

manual for those interested in setting up a project-

based school curriculum or afterschool program. For

readers desiring more depth or granularity, the online

resources of the main exemplars in this book will

provide much more detail of methods, curriculums,

and lesson plans. Resnick also provides a tidy

bibliography of two dozen references for those seeking

background and templates on the use of digital

media, the Scratch coding, early childhood education,

theory and practice of project-based learning, and the

maker movement.

As I was reading Lifelong Kindergarten, I was hoping

to discover more explicit utility and instruction

for Exhibition’s audience. I kept thinking about the

quandary exhibition developers often ﬁnd themselves

working through when attempting to apply external

experience models (whether found in classrooms,

maker spaces, online or in other venues) to museum

environments. Especially problematic are models

designed for communities of peers who will be

engaged with one another, and their facilitators, over

extended periods of time (as in schools) and have the

opportunities and structures that support building

of trust, collaboration, and shared learning. When

sorting experience models, or activities proposed

for potential inclusion in an exhibition, one of the

questions asked (as I'm sure you have asked yourself)

is: is this a model for a facilitated program, or an

exhibition experience? In other words, will this set

of visitor activities integrate comfortably with,

or as, an exhibition, or is it a program model that

requires conditions, facilitation, time and tools,

as well as consistency of audience, that our exhibition

and museum is unlikely to provide or attract?

Because Mitchel Resnick directly describes a

wonderfully intricate program model, there are

inherent diﬃculties translating it to an audience of

exhibition developers and designers. It is not that

Lifelong Kindergarten does not contain signiﬁcant

implications for the work of museums; indeed,

I believe it does, but its content and teachings are

more speciﬁc to the larger audience of educators and

school administrators than to museum professionals.

That being said, the guiding philosophy and

inspirational spirit of the book is totally in line with

the values and thinking in evidence at museums

committed to experimentation with the kind of

interactive, social learning environments that place

audience at the center of their experiences.

Ultimately, the book settles into the categories of

introduction and inspiration. Lifelong Kindergarten

provides positive testimony and reinforcement

for educators and experience developers who are

contemplating, or already engaged in, establishing,

and facilitating project-based creative learning

experiences for children and teens.

Lifelong Kindergarten is not a cookbook for exhibition

developers with detailed recipes for every occasion.

It is more akin to a broader essay on the elements

and philosophical principles that support a way of

cooking that favors collaboration, experimentation

and process over conformity and predictable results.

A reader looking for a no-fail recipe will be as frustrated

as a reader looking for insight and inspiration will

be rewarded.

Paul Pearson is a former museum administrator and

planning consultant who currently teaches with Johns

Hopkins University’s online graduate museum studies

program. ppearso3

gmail.com

Book Review Lifelong Kindergarten