CEPress advances a pedagogical vision grounded in the practice of Critical Exploration in the Classroom.

Elizabeth Cavicchi contributed to editing Always Wondering:  a Mélange of Eleanor Duckworth and Critical Exploration, 2013, the first project of Critical Exploration Press, and has worked with the group since that founding. Simultaneously a teacher and researcher, her involvement with critical exploration in the classroom began during her doctoral studies with adviser Eleanor Duckworth at Harvard Graduate School of Education.  In their self-initiated activities with batteries, wires, bulbs and other electrical materials, three learners, herself and nineteenth century investigators meet the unknown; these learning experiences are developed in her dissertation(EdD. Harvard 1999, preceded by EdM. 1997). As a Postdoctoral Fellow at the MIT Dibner Institute for History of Science and Technology, Cavicchi explored the observations, confusions and effects that arose in nineteenth century experiments with electromagnetism by recreating the instruments and putting herself in the role of investigator. At MIT’s Edgerton Center, she expresses critical exploration in the classroom in developing and teaching the seminar “Recreate Historical Experiments:  Inform the Future with the Past”. In that seminar, undergraduate and graduate students rediscover personal curiosity and wonder in collaborative activities with observing and experimenting, interrelating with themes of social justice, history and creativity. As exploring uncovers uncertainties, her students and herself come into dialogue with each other and historical investigators.  Cavicchi’s passion for doing art and science together evolved across MIT studies in physics(SB’78), humanities and science(SB’78), and environmental art(SMVisS’80).  Being researcher for Philip Morrison’s public TV series Ring of Truth(1987) opened her awareness of participatory, investigatory and democratic possibilities for history, science, and learning.  Having trained to teach high school physics at Boston University (M.A.T. 1986), she taught engineering physics at Wentworth Institute of Technology and University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she participated in nonlinear optics research. A visual artist and tandem bicyclist, Dr. Cavicchi has written and presented internationally, including narratives from her teaching and on her re-creations of nineteenth century electromagnetic experiments.