To Teach Important Skills (and Boost Test Scores) Try Project-Based Learning

[rucky]

By Dr. Yvonne Marie Andres, co-founder of Global SchoolNet

...According to the report Learning for the 21st Century, “today’s education system faces irrelevance unless we bridge the gap between how students live and how they learn.” To address this need, a growing number of innovative education systems around the United States and worldwide are engaging their students in project-based learning. Project-based learning, often called PBL, is an instructional methodology in which students learn important skills by doing actual projects, applying core academic skills and creativity to solve authentic problems in real world situations. Students use a wide range of tools and the culminating projects are tangible and observable “artifacts” - that serve as evidence of what they've learned. Student-produced videos, artwork, reports, photography, music, model construction, live performances, action plans, digital stories and websites are all examples of PBL artifacts.

Project-based learning is based on the “constructivist” learning theory, which finds that learning is deeper and more meaningful when students are involved in constructing their own knowledge. Students are given the opportunity (within the required content framework) to select a topic that interests them and then are responsible for creating their project plan. Rather than a lecturer, typically, the teacher’s role is that of an academic advisor, mentor, facilitator, “task master” and evaluator.

Learning Projects for Every Age and Subject Area

Project-based learning opportunities are diverse, challenging and innovative -- ranging from understanding terrorism, the mathematics of music or exploring innovative waste management solutions, to creative story telling, online safety and studying global warming. There are learning projects for every age and to support every subject area and include numerous implementation models for project-based learning. Students can work either offline or online, and can work alone on individual projects -- or collaboratively as part of a project team. And, with the availability of the Internet and technology tools, their project partners can be across the table or around the globe. Students can interact with one another in meaningful educational, cultural, and scientific projects that provide deep learning experiences.

According to study conducted by the Center for Research in Educational Policy (1999), PBL students improved test scores in all subject areas over a two-year period, out performing control schools by 26%. Compared with learning solely from textbooks, this approach has many benefits for students because it involves critical thinking, knowledge application, time management, organizational skills and increased student responsibility for their own learning.

more: http://www.care2.com/causes/education/blog/teaching-students-management-skills-1/

[midnight]

1. This is an important idea. I have always thought that if I was taught math

through the daily was that I use it, I would be much more literate in that area.

[John N Morgan]

2. Johnny what is the rate of reduction of the surface area of the ice coating the silo? Assume it's

40 deg F. It's an everyday kind of problem, I just don't see it being asked.

First, you have to have an understanding of the fundamentals then you can apply them to a situation. It seems the "improvement" is gained from the prolonged reinforcement of established constructs, not from new material.

Like first, you have to know the addition operation exists then you can deal with sums of groups, etc.

But when you get to derivatives and rates of change ... there's some classroom work involved.

Besides, good old classroom/book instruction produced America's greatest engineering advancement.

Project Based, pfffft! Do they mean, let's learn how to mine coal. Betty pick up that shovel and fill that hopper car. How many tons of coal is that? 16? hmmmm

[rucky]

3. Textbooks are involved...

to provide the fundamentals needed to complete the project, and as the primary reference. I've studied and taught project-based learning. The way of approaching it does not involve tossing out the standard curriculum & direct instruction at all. It's a way to integrate several concepts taught in the classroom and extending it to real-life application. It's more rewarding to teach and more fun to learn this way, and learning it improves test scores is not surprising to me - but it does reinforce my experience with the approach.

[IrateCitizen]

5. I've taught math before, and the lack of numeracy is quite incredible.

However, I fault that to too much of the "classroom" work, combined with the introduction of calculators too early in the curriculum. I never understood why I was never allowed to use on in math class until I reached trigonometry, but having to manually do operations allowed me to develop a general sense of numeracy -- a feeling for how numbers work. When I would ask any high school seniors to add together 2 two-digit numbers and they had to use a calculator to do so, there's just something wrong.

However, there are going to be a lot of kids now who simply are not going to spend considerable amounts of time doing practice problems and computations in order to develop these kinds of skills. Likewise, there are a lot of kids for whom "book learning" isn't what fits their learning profile, especially in a society and culture that has become as "visual" as ours. Finally, exclusive "classroom" work treats subjects as if they are to be approached in an individual setting, when anyone who has worked a day in their lives knows that most real-life problems are hardly approached "individually" -- they are attacked with a team approach. THAT, not just classroom/book instruction, is what has produced our greatest technological advancements.

Project learning accomplishes all these objectives, if done properly. It provides classroom/book instruction as an introduction to new concepts. Those students strong in this area then take the knowledge they have gained through that initial instruction, and help other members of their team. More interpersonal learners will benefit from this phase. Using the knowledge to actually build or create something will then engage still other aspects of the learning profile, such as kinesthetic and spatial. Lastly, at all steps of the process, the students have to work together in order to complete the project successfully. Of course, a more "traditional" assessment should also be given after the project to ensure that individual students have mastered the new concept(s) learned and reinforced through the project.

[wolfgangmo]

7. Welcome to the clue train.

All aboard.

Ahem. Having said that, project based learning does not throw out the key concepts, the underlying patterns and concepts nor the application of ideas, rather it takes all of that and wraps it up in a real life project.

It takes the abstract and makes it real and so drives it deep into the students memory.Please stop making assumptions based on little or no knowledge. That direction lies a job at Faux Skews.

[roguevalley]

14. I agree. You lose everyone in k-3 when the basic skills aren't

taught and reinforced. Its work, repetitions and hard. I know. I did it for half my life. But no one wants the work. THey want to have 'projects'. I had a list of skills to teach that were laid on me as do projects. But they never gave me any money or stuff to do it. I was expected to either pull the things out of my butt or my kitchen to teach it or go away. I chose to leave. I paid about 2 grand a year maintaining my classroom as it was. I didn't need to add science and social studies and math crap too.

[IrateCitizen]

4. This is very similar to what John Dewey did...

... at his Chicago Laboratory School many years ago. Students learned by participating in collaborative, cooperative project work. One example was the building of a clubhouse to learn and reinforce math skills in middle-elementary students.

[HereSince1628]

6. It sounds great, it was much harder to implement than I expected

at the college level.

[Igel]

8. I've heard a number of lectures on it.

I don't trust anybody who has a panacea for all the world's problems in a bottle. That's how the PBL and "21st century skill" people tend to be. Zealots. Zealots tend to engage in advocacy-based research. It's one thing to argue a position because you think it's superior; it's another to argue a position with the fervency of fundamentalist faith. Science is built on the former; it's not built on the latter, at least not until the last decade or so (but that's another rant).

The lectures also nearly all dealt with charter schools, where the kids who went in really wanted to be there and the teachers were trained and mentored. Direct instruction gets great results, when the kids want to be there and the teachers are trained and mentored. The students know that they matter and they muster the discipline to do what's needed.

It helps that the controls tend to be wimpy and the students tend to be underperforming. It also helps that the students may improve a lot, but still don't tend to fall very much in the top 10%. Every new educational fad that comes along has great achievement results in the early stages--always for the same reasons. (There's probably a really good monograph there, but it'd never get published.)

One example--in Cleveland, I believe--had students doing the project during class hours but taking *additional* time to learn what was needed, and pretty much only what was needed, for their projects. Takeaway for the true believers: PBL works. Takeaway for the sceptics: Who knew that additional class time produced additional results? However even the sceptics, like me, have to admit that motivation and no discipline is a lot better than no motivation and no discipline (where "discipline" doesn't involve class management but personal determination and commitment). But the zealots don't say it's the motivation that's at work: They insist it's their *method*. Why? Because you can teach the method. If it's based on the motivation of a self-selected cohort or specially recruited teachers, it's not sufficiently generalizable. What the zealots don't want, really, is for theirs to become just another tool. (Which is what it becomes in any event.)

Of great note is the stawman: Nobody uses just "direct instruction" any more. It's usually part and parcel of what's done, but, again--that requires maturity and discipline that used to be provided by parents. It's not now, so instead time has to be taken to lure kids to learn (because, after all, "teach" is a causative verb in the meaning that really counts).

[HereSince1628]

10. Problem-based Learning requires basic skills, social skills and problem solving ability

This is a problem even at the college level, where one might assume all these basic skills are present or can be readily developed by a supportive group effort.

But, they aren't present and the most important lesson learned is that group-work sucks. People don't all participate, some can't, some won't, some must be in charge even if they couldn't dump water from a boot if you told them the instructions were written on the bottom.

Moreover, the distribution of the necessary elementary skills skews with socio-economic factors so it really cannot be talked about in 1) an environment that sees critique as cramungeionry, 2) doesn't want to stigmatize a student by pointing out that they lack basic skills, 3) other things I could mention and N)a desire to keep tuition dollars streaming in.

That said, students rarely fail to learn. It is usually pedagogy that fails to work. It's the job of instructors to notice that things aren't working and adapt. Weeks or Semester long commitments to the unstructured form of PBL's sound inviting, but the commitment takes away from time and space costing degrees of freedom instructors need to have in order to inact modifications to their instruction.

PBL's sound great, they aren't easy. If you choose to do them, you will work your ass off. You will particularly work your ass off at night dealing by email with things that you thought were covered in preschool and kindergarten.

[HereSince1628]

11. sorry about double-dribbling on that. I'm never sure how I do it

so I'm never sure of how to avoid it!

[yurbud]

9. here's a radical idea: give public school teachers the freedom to try stuff like this

instead of just the privatized charter school scammers.

[gimberly]

12. We need to put students into groups based on abilities, not date of birth

In order to succeed and grow, students need both ability and effort. By High School, there is a huge difference between the best and the worst students in a class. Therefore, teachers generally water down the lessons and aim for the middle and try to help as many students as possible. If all the students in a class were closer in abilities, then lessons could better target the particular skills that need to be worked on. When students master a skill, they should be allowed to go to the next topic, with a new teacher and new classmates. Splitting education into 12 distinct grades based on birthdate is a waste of time. Being with the same peer group and teacher for an entire year makes things stale. There is not enough incentive for the hard working students to push themselves to learn and develop skills and move on. We need a system that is more responsive and less rigid, but I don't see it happening any time soon.

[katty]

13. yes,& during this depression: learn to grow yr own food