Daniel Wilson is the Director of Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). He is a Principal Investigator at Project Zero, a Lecturer at HGSE, and the Educational Chair for Harvard’s “Learning Environments for Tomorrow” Institute, a collaboration between HGSE and Harvard Graduate School of Design. His teaching and writing explore the socio-psychological tensions – dilemmas of knowing, trusting, leading, and belonging – that are inherent in adult collaborative learning across a variety of contexts. Specifically, he focuses on how groups navigate these tensions through language, routines, roles, and artifacts.

In 2000, Daniel co founded HGSE’s Learning Innovations Laboratory (LILA), an interdisciplinary professional learning community that facilitates cross-organizational learning on contemporary challenges of human development and change in organizations. He co-authored the book, Visible Learners: Promoting Reggio-Inspired Approaches in All Schools (Jossey-Bass, 2013) which shares the research lessons from the Making Learning Visible project, a 13-year collaboration with schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy and K-12 schools in the United States.

Daniel also is currently directing the Leading Learning that Matters project, a multi-year collaboration with 25 independent schools in Victoria, Australia that aims to document 21st century learning and leadership practices. His co-authored book, Learning at Work (2005), outlines practices that support formal and informal learning in the workplace. Since 2015, Daniel has co-directed the Pedagogy of Play project, a collaboration between Project Zero and the LEGO Foundation that cultivates school cultures that value and support learning through play. From 2006-2011 he was a fellow at IDEO, an acclaimed design company, where he researched how design teams at IDEO develop learning and leadership behaviors—such as help-seeking and feedback-giving—as part of their professional practice.

Since joining Project Zero as a researcher in 1993, Daniel has also participated on projects such as: Teaching for Understanding (1993-1996), Understanding for Organizations (1996-1999), Teaching for Understanding in Universities (1996-1999), Wide World Project (1999-2002), Project-based Learning in After Schools Project (2000- 2002), the Storywork Project with the International Storytelling Institute (2002-2004), the Making Learning Visible project (2008-2011), and Making Learning and Thinking Visible in Italian Secondary Schools (2017-2019).