Project Based learning

I worry about any movement in education that comes with a cute name. If teaching for 25 years has taught me anything, it is that these “named” movements come and go. That being said I definitely see the value in much of the thinking behind “Project-based learning”. One of the real values I have seen in PBL is in the amount of engagement that often emerges from the realness of such learning. I remember a movement when I first started teaching called “learning by solving real world problems” (it had some cute acronym that I have forgotten). Based on my experience with that technique I have often tried to incorporate ideas of project based and real world applications into my teaching when ever possible. As defined by California’s Buck Institute for learning, PBL is "a systematic teaching method that engages students in learning knowledge and skills through an extended inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions and carefully designed products and tasks." I can not imagine that there are many thinking educators who would not see the value in teaching using this approach. Science teachers have long seen the value of an inquiry approach, movement toward PBL shows the value for all disciplines moving in this direction.
One of the difficulties I have seen implementing PBL at the high school level is our lack of ability to work in a multidisciplinary manner. I can certainly see how applying the thinking behind PBL would work much better in a elementary classroom. The esN article on PBL Project-based learning; engages students, garners results, reinforced my understanding of the importance of implementing projects in a multidisciplinary approach. I would argue that rather than moving away from PBL at the high school level, traditional high school should find ways to work in interdisciplinary teams. These interdisciplinary teams should be designed and maintained around a function of engaging kids in learning, PBL is certainly one of the ways this could be done. I worry in move to increase test scores we may move away from this type of approach to teaching, make teaching and learning less engaging and in the long run end up with even lower performing students! I was excited to read about Adaptive Curriculum and then disappointed to see there was not high school level material.
In the Edutopia article “Put to the Test: Confronting Concerns about Project Learning” Yeung argues that there are ways to keep standards in focus as you move to better engage students in their learning. The article does a nice job backing up the idea that there are clear connections make to the standards. Yeung goes on to counter the argument that students are not ready for the collaborative nature of the work. It is the job of teachers to teach these collaborative skills, I would argue that these skills are probably more valuable in the long run than many of the content standards we address. Finally PBL requires teachers to improve their abilities to serve as facilitators in the classroom rather than as actors or presenters of material. This may be a big change for some traditional teachers, but I would definitely argue that this is a change that needs to take place.
The interview of Howard Gardner provides the learning theory that supports the move to including PBL in the classroom. Gardner raises the concern that we try to teach too many subjects or topics and that this causes us to not go deep enough in what we do teach. He speaks very clearly about what we do not do well in education and suggests the direction we should be moving.
In closing Howard Gardner makes a suggestion to move from teacher centered learning to child centered learning. This reminds me of something I often think of as I am leaving the school at 5:30, are any of my students as tired as I am? The tired ones are the ones doing the work, doing the thinking, doing the learning…I need to get to a place where the kids are as tired as I am!