I recently had the opportunity to complete the reading on Project-Based Learning (PBL) and learned a great deal, particularly since this is an area I have very little knowledge of/experience with.
Diane McGrath's article "Getting Started with Project-Based Learning" defines PBL as "teaching and learning around projects that are driven by an authentic question or problem that is central to the discipline/curriculum, involves the building of a community of learners, and culminates in the presentation of a student-constructed work" (p. 1).
One point that McGrath brought up was that students who engage in PBL perform as well as, or better than, students in traditional classrooms, on standardized tests. Although, as I mentioned above, I do not have a great deal of background in PBL, I would imagine this to be true. Unfortunately in the field of education, so much is driven by standardized tests and so much time is spent on "teaching to the test", we are doing our students a disservice by not engaging them in authentic experiences that promote creativity, higher-order thinking, collaboration, problem-solving skills, and more that will stay with them for a lifetime rather than instructing students on how to best perform on a multiple choice examination. I believe that PBL holds a great deal of potential for educators and students alike, and am interested in learning more about this concept and how to integrate into my own school.
Connecting this to my own experiences, I plan to speak to some of the teachers to my school to learn more about their skills and knowledge related to Project-Based learning, and consider how we might be able to roll out PBL within our school. I realize that something like this would probably have to start small (perhaps within one grade level in a subject area such as Math or Science which lends itself well to work such as this) and then could be incorporated on a broader, school-wide scale with the lessons we learn throughout the process.
3 comments:
Your idea to experiment with implementing PBL sounds really exciting. It's easy to start small with this. A teacher can sit down with a copy of the curriculum and highlight parts that look like they could be combined with each other into a project. As you wrote, we're still being measured as schools based on our performance on tests. For PBL to work in this environment I agree totally with your comment on my blog. To make sure that students are still prepared for these tests just make sure that the projects actually allow students to learn the curriculum. It falls fall short of what Papert described in the video: abandoning the curriculum so that students can "discover" projects on their own. I think that also means you've got to give up on LoTi levels 5 and 6. In my reading both of those require students to "discover" their own ideas for projects. But you can still create authentic PBL by starting with a given curriculum that you know will be tested objectively.
Courtney,
I'm glad that as an administrator you found relevance in project-based learning. I am planning to email the "Rubrics, Portfolios, and Tests, Oh My!" article to my administration. I find the grading practices particularly useful.
We do spend so much time worrying about the test that it does tend to take away some of our creativity as educators. What you mentioned about performance on standardized tests was very interesting though. You are in a charter school, right? Does your school get more freedom in the testing category or are you still subject to all the same standardized assessments?
I also like your idea about trying some of the techniques but starting small. It may be a good idea to form a PBL committee with different teachers where they can test it out and share their experiences with the rest of the faculty. Let me know how it goes.
Ashley
Standardized testing is so important that teachers don't really have a lot of time to implement PBL into their lesson. Being a tech ed teacher,I find that students retain information, are eager about learning the subject matter, and actively engaged. PBL does take some planning and work, but the work or outcome is student-centered.
I agree that because of standardized testing students are being deprived of something I think they can use throughout life.
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