High school English language arts teacher Merion Taynton took “a leap of faith” in November 2016 and jumped in “with both feet” into Project-Based Learning (PBL).
While teaching Goethe’s Faust in her Grade 10 class in a Chinese independent school, she adopted PBL in an attempt to “grapple with the ideas” within the text rather than “the text itself.” What would you sell your soul for? How much are your dreams worth? Those were the questions Ms. Taynton posed, as she set aside her regular teaching notes on 19th Century European Literature. Students would complete their own projects and decide, on their own, how to present their findings. “I’m going to do a video,” one said. “I’m going to produce a rap song” chimed in another, and the whole approach was ‘anything goes’ as long as the students could produce a justification.
Ms. Taynton’s project-based learning experience was not just a random example of the methodology, but rather an exemplar featured on the classroom trends website Edutopia under the heading “Getting Started with Literature and Project-Based Learning.” Better than anything else, this learning activity demonstrates not only the risks, but the obvious pitfalls of jumping on educational fads in teaching and learning.
After spreading like pedagogical magic dust over the past five years, Project-Based Learning recently hit a rough patch. Fresh educational research generated in two separate studies at Durham University’s Education Endowment Foundation (EFF) in the United Kingdom and as a component of the OECD’s Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) has raised serious questions about the effectiveness of PBL and other minimal teacher-guided pedagogical strategies.
The EFF study of Project-Based Learning (November 2016) examined “Learning through REAL projects” involving some 4,000 Year 7 pupils in 24 schools from 2013-14 to April 2016, utilizing a randomized control trial. The research team found “no clear impact on either literacy..or student engagement with school and learning.” More telling was the finding that the effect on the literacy of children eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) – a measure of disadvantage – was “negative and significant.” Simply put, switching to PBL from traditional literacy instruction was harmful to the most needy of all students.
The 2015 PISA results, released December 6, 2016, delivered another blow to minimal teacher-guided methods, such as PBL and its twin sister, inquiry-based learning. When it came to achievement in science among 15-year-olds, the finding was that such minimal guided instruction methods lagged far behind explict instruction in determining student success. In short, the increase in the amount of inquiry learning that students report being exposed to is associated with a decrease in science scores.
Much of the accumulating evidence tends to support the critical findings of Paul A. Kirschner, John Sweller and Richard E. Clark in their authoritative 2006 article in Educational Psychologist. “Minimally-guided instruction,” they concluded, based upon fifty years of studies, “is less effective and less efficient than instructional methods that place a strong emphasis on guidance of the student learning process.” The superiority of teacher-guided instruction, they claimed, can be explained utilizing evidence from studies of ” human cognitive architecture, expert-novice differences, and cognitive load.”
Project-Based Learning, like inquiry-based approaches, may have some transitory impact on student engagement in the classroom. Beyond that, however, it’s hard to find much actual evidence to support its effectiveness in mastering content knowledge, applying thinking skills, or achieving higher scores, particularly in mathematics and science.
In September 2015, an Ontario Education What Works: Research into Practice Monograph, authored by David Hutchison of Brock University, provided a rather mixed assessment of PBL. While the author claimed that PBL had much to offer as a “holistic strategy” promoting “student engagement” and instilling “21st century skills,” it faced “challenges that can limit its effectiveness.” Where the strategy tends to fall short was in mastery of subject content and classroom management, where time, scope and quality of the activities surface as ongoing challenges.
Implementation of PBL on a system-wide basis has rarely been attempted, and, in the case of Quebec’s Education Reform initiative, Schools on Course, from 1996 to 2006, it proved to be an unmitigated disaster, especially for secondary school teachers and students. The “project method” adopted in the QEP, imposed top-down, ran into fierce resistance from both teachers and parents in English-speaking Quebec, who openly opposed the new curriculum, claiming that it taught “thinking skills without subject content.” In a province with a tradition of provincial exit examinations, PBL cut against the grain and faltered when student scores slipped in 2006 in both Grade 6 provincial mathematics tests and the global Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) assessments.
None of the critical research findings or claims of ineffectiveness have blunted the passion or commitment of PBL advocates across North America. With the support of the ASCD’s Educational Leadership magazine and web platforms such as Edutopia, a handful of PBL curriculum and program experts, including Jane Krauss of International Society for Technology Education (ISTE), Suzie Boss of Stanford’s Center for Social Innovation, and Dr. Sylvia Chard of the University of Alberta, have been effective in planting it in hundreds of school systems from Oregon and California to New York State and Ontario, in New England and the Maritime Provinces.
The PBL movement in North America is propelled by progressive educational principles and an undeniable passion for engaging students in learning. Powered by 21st century learning precepts and championed by ICT promoters, it rests upon some mighty shaky philosophical foundations and is supported by precious little research evidence. Lead promoter Suzie Boss is typical of those advocates. “Projects make the world go round,” she wrote in a 2011 Edutopia Blog post, and “Confucius and Aristotle were early proponents of learning by doing.” That may be quite imaginative, but it is also completely fallacious.
Most of the PBL “research” is actually generated by one California organization, the Buck Institute for Education, where the lead promoters and consultants are schooled in its core principles and where PBL facilitators develop teaching units and workshops. It’s actively promoted by ISTE, Edutopia, and a host of 21st century skills advocates.
Even Canadian faculty of education supporters like Hutchison concede that implementing PBL is “time-intensive” and fraught with classroom challenges. Among those “challenges” are formidable obstacles such as a) managing the significant time commitment; b) ensuring that subjects have sufficient subject depth; c) balancing student autonomy with the imperative of some teacher direction; and d) keeping projects on track using ongoing (formative) assessment instruments. When it comes to implementing PBL in ESL/ELL classrooms or with larger groups of Special Needs students those challenges are often insurmountable.
What works best as a core instructional approach – explicit instruction or minimal teacher guided approaches, such as PBL and Inquiry-Based Learning? Which approach is best equipped to raise student achievement levels, particularly in mathematics and science? Are the potential benefits in terms of promoting student engagement and instilling collaborative skills enough to justify its extensive use in elementary schools?
Educhatter 
In my world, there is another PBL: problem based learning which is similarly student-directed and sometimes can be aimless, frustrating and ineffective. From my experience in higher ed, team-based learning is a superior approach. This combines content delivery (usually in the form of independent work curated by the teacher – a reading and reading guide, an online module, a short recorded lecture) with in-class testing. The latter is low stakes and done individually then repeated as a team. The team testing provides much engagement and peer debrief. The elements that are particularly challenging are teacher debriefed. This is followed by in class team cases, where the knowledge is applied and the teacher (again) provides guidance, coaching and debriefing. This approach works well when properly applied and is being used by some in K-12. I think that the key here is that “teacher guidance” is essential when concepts are being learned. This does not necessarily mean that students should simply be talked at (we know that retention is poor with that approach). But similarly moving to an entirely discovery approach is badly flawed.
‘We know that retention is poor with that approach.’ Do we? This seems somewhat of a generalization. Explanations using certain techniques can be very sticky.
The “other PBL” problem based learning has some research to support it. I have taught this approach in teacher education.One reason for its success (as opposed to project based learning) seems to be the curiosity engendered by a problem that needs to be solved. Medicine and engineering where is came from are made of problems that need to be solved.
Among some of the other issues Paul’s intro and his response below raise include
– different terms for “inquiry” which are often conflated and confused
– the place of background knowledge or at least knowledge needed to actually engage in the inquiry so that gaps in such knowledge will be pursued
– assessment in addition to the usual facts and understandings desired
I am doing a multi-part investigation of this for the History and social sciences subject council in Ontario.
Published so far is a piece on why this is more spoken of yet much less seen.
More to come . . ..
Your thoughtful response raises a salient issue – the proven success of Project-Based Learning in the medical science faculties and professional practice. Indeed, the educational research supporting PBL was initially drawn from medical science where it is standard practice. In preparing the commentary, I encountered many references to the research basis in medicine, but I found little or nothing outside that field. It’s typical of education to appropriate methods and practices from one field and to adapt them without recognizing the changing context. Working with adult students with a sound foundation in general science and human biology is surely different than “practicing” PBL in an elementary class or attempting to implement it in a regular high school class with students spanning 3 to 4 levels of competency or abilities.
As a high school teacher, I worked hard to introduce PBL into my teaching practice, but found it extremely challenging with all but the most academically able classes. I found it next-to-impossible to mange more than four groups in any one activity. It takes hours of planning to successfully execute one successful PBL activity and I limited myself to one class a day, so that I was fresh enough to do the active guiding to make it work. It does not work at all unless it is part of one of your established routines and, since it takes incredible planning, it is usually utilized infrequently. One PBL activity I designed, a Grade 12 activity on “Causes of the Cold War,” required considerable in depth subject knowledge to simply guide the exercise. Leaving the students to their own devices, I was always very disappointed with the outcomes – mostly superficial analysis and flimsy hypotheses, or worse – completely erroneous conclusions. Sometimes it required “reteaching” to dislodge the fallacies.
Work summarized by Barton and Levstik more than a decade ago support your experiences.
Yet inquiry is a big deal in many Canadian and American curricula.
So what can we do?
More on this later but 2 places to start
– get students curious enough to want to do the work and be persistent when it gets tough
– promote student metacognition
I shall elaborate soon.
As you suggest, graduate or high-level undergraduates working towards a common career goal have a clear shared purpose and motivation. As the article mentions, one of the parameters of PBL is where teachers and students sit relative to the master-novice spectrum, and certainly med students are closer to the middle of that spectrum, while public secondary students are novices, many of whom have no context to evaluate the value of the content. Another factor is likely that, in a med school setting, all professors are on the same page with regards to PBL, and have had at least some educational experience as students. Meanwhile, in high school, students have between four and seven teachers, all of whom are rarely implementing the same method. So a student who comes from a class where the teacher gave them a “fill-in-the-blank” worksheet where all the student had to do was transcribe from either the book or the teacher’s mouth is likely to be very resistant to a YouCubed exercise where they actually have to *think* about the material, let alone a full-fledged project.
“Yet inquiry is a big deal in many Canadian and American curricula.
So what can we do?”
Ditch it.
Not going to happen. Governments, boards, curriculum establishments, grad schools, teacher training institutions, I dare say most parent groups I have seen all support it. Most alternative schools and a number of private schools are all variations of PBL including the ever popular Montessori or Waldorf schools.
The major crime of teacher directed learning? It is boring.
PBL or Inquiry learning? Interesting engaging!
Every teacher training institute repeats the refrain ” you are not the sage on the stage- you are the guide on the side”
That said there is in my humble opinion, a lot more teacher directed education and a lot less PBL going on in schools than the average critic believes.
The dilemma that this discussion and the previous one about PISA both have in common is what we should consider as student achievement and what methods therefore should be used to improve achievement? Closing the achievement gap could be considered a different goal to raising the achievement level overall.
PBL requires a certain level of academic skill and knowledge for students to be successful with it. The reality is that classes do have students with this level of knowledge to be successful with PBL. The dilemma is implementing PBL into a classroom with a range of students. When planning lessons, should teachers be focused on teacher directed lessons that help struggling students find success or should they try to implement PBL to keep stronger students engaged?
Doug’s comment about Montessori reminded me of a conversation I had with my brother today during brunch. Both his kids are enrolled in Montessori in the U.S.. His oldest in Grade 4 is given work that must be completed by the end of the week, but it’s up to him to organize himself to finish it on time and without reminders. He says it take a certain type of student and parent to embrace this approach. He also said the need to teach to the test in the U.S. impacts the quality of education there.
Let’s be clear on what we mean by PBL
project based- no evidence for
or
problem based- evidence for
and yes, there is much less “inquiry” or whatever you want to call it
than some believe
and true
too much of it is “discovery based” which without teacher input does not work
more later
Just read the article that you linked to. I found this quote especially depressing: “We were due to do a unit on 19th Century European literature, and they have done a small amount of research in preparation. Today, we were going to start reading Goethe’s Faust. And then I stopped. Really? What can the students possibly gain from that?”
Yes, Angie, that is depressing, but unfortunately it’s the motivation for some simple-minded experiments in PBL in high schools.
Another “flavour of the day”. If the appropriate role of teachers is “guide by the side”, perhaps they will soon be “the pedigogue without a job”.
Reblogged this on The Echo Chamber.
Thank you for revealing the tremendous lack of empirical evidence to support project based learning in Ontario. Just because it is different does not make it better. There are seven year waves of education (recall the whole language approach to delivering elementary language). Hopefully this wave is a short one.