Project-Based Learning for Gifted Students

A Step-by-Step Guide to PBL and Inquiry in the Classroom

Todd Stanley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032145020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000495355
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

Project-Based Learning for Gifted Students: A Step-by-Step Guide to PBL and Inquiry in the Classroom outlines how to implement PBL in the gifted classroom. This fully updated second edition:

• Guides teachers to create a project-based learning environment in their own classroom.
• Includes helpful examples and reproducible lessons that all teachers can use to get started.
• Focuses on student choice, teacher responsibility, and opportunities for differentiation.
• Provides a step-by-step process for linking projects with standards and finding the right structure.
• Helps build a practical and engaging classroom environment.

Use this must-have guide to challenge students' thinking, promote rigor, and build engaging authentic, real-world, inquiry-based learning experiences.

CHAPTER 1 What Is Project-Based Learning, and Why Should We Use It?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003237310-2

In this chapter, project-based learning is defined, and the elements that comprise PBL are discussed. In addition, the value of using PBL in the gifted classroom is explored. There are many benefits of project-based learning, among which are student independence, student empowerment, and the teacher's ability to tailor projects to the deep and varied needs of gifted students.

What Is Project-Based Learning?

Project-based learning (PBL) is exactly what its name implies: learning through the process of completing a project over a period of time. A more comprehensive definition is as follows:

projects are complex tasks, based on challenging questions or problems, that involve students in design, problem-solving, decision making, or investigative activities; give students the opportunity to work relatively autonomously over extended periods of time; and culminate in realistic products or presentations. (Thomas, 2000, p. 1)

This style of teaching and learning is different from more traditional styles, such as teacher-led instruction or reading chapters in a textbook. In the latter methods, the student is given the information or skills being taught. The major difference in PBL is that students discover for themselves. They are provided with the structure, resources, and guidance, but it is their responsibility to determine how best to learn the material.

But what does PBL actually look like? In one project, students may be given 2 weeks to create presentations regarding the study of cells. The only parameters are that the topic must involve cells and that the product (a presentation) must include a visual aid. Students must determine for themselves how their time should be spent over the course of these 2 weeks: They may allocate their time to conducting research, creating the presentation, producing the visual aid, or practicing. In addition, students will need to determine how much time should be devoted to each of these activities. By completing a project such as this, students discover how to learn independently, as well as how to be responsible.

The Difference Between Projects and Project-Based Learning

Almost as important to understand is what project-based learning is not. Simply having students participate in a hands-on activity where they produce a product other than a pencil-and-paper assessment does not necessarily constitute project-based learning. An activity like that might just be a project. For example, if a teacher has a mock trial where all of the roles and characters have been assigned and clearly defined, then it is not PBL, even though the end product looks unique from what is typically seen in the classroom. Project-based learning must involve room for students to discover, choose, and create for themselves. Table 1 outlines some of the major differences between projects and project-based learning.

Although there are many variables that can be changed within PBL—from the amount of time students have, to the resources they are given, to the product, and so on—what always remains the same is that students are given the majority of the responsibility for their own learning. PBL employs the old Confucian adage: Give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day; teach a person to fish, and they'll eat forever. When we give students information, how enduring is that learning? Like the person who has learned to fish, if a student learns how to get information for their project, then that student is equipped to gather information in the future and will feel more confident and self-reliant about learning. To learn more about this, you can view "Todd Talks - Projects vs Project-Based Learning" (available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0zmS4tBIwA).

Table 1
Projects Versus Project-Based Learning

Projects	Project-Based Learning
Are based on directions	Is based on inquiry
Are teacher-directed	Is student-directed
Can be done individually	Usually involves collaboration
Involves end products that usually all look the same	Involves end products that are different for every student
Are dose-ended	Is open-ended
Lack context for how they look in the real world	Is based on real-world experiences
Involve students as students	Involves student as experts
Do not provide much opportunity for student choice	Provides student choice for almost every component
Involve an end result shared with the class	Involves end results shared with an authentic audience
Typically take place after the learning	Is the learning

To make the mock trial assignment previously discussed into a PBL experience, a teacher could ask students to develop a case to be argued by two teams. The students would also create the characters needed for the trial (e.g., prosecuting lawyers, defense lawyers, witnesses), hold depositions, and enact the situation in a real-world manner, which would necessitate research and preparation. This way, choice has entered into the equation, along with independent, student-driven research and authentic assessment. I did just such a project with my third graders involving Goldilocks and the Three Bears, where students put Goldilocks on trial for breaking and entering. I gave the students the choice of choosing the various witnesses they would call to the stand as well as developing the questions that would be asked. I simply provided the structure for how a trial was set up. I came to learn later this is another form of inquiry learning known as case-based learning (see Stanley, 2019a), which has a lot of similarities to project-based learning.

The Difference Between Project-Based Learning and Problem-Based Learning

One question I have been asked a lot, even in an email inquiry from China, is: What is the difference between project-based learning and problem-based learning (PrBL)? Or is there even a difference? Both of these fall under the umbrella of inquiry learning. Inquiry learning is where students are encouraged and allowed to let their curiosity drive the learning, going wherever it might take them. This fosters a lot of creativity and higher level thinking because students are not simply following a marked path—they are off-trail, exploring and learning for themselves. Project-based learning has elements of this but with a little more structure. It typically has an end goal in mind. This is why PBL works very well with standards because those can be students' end goal.

Project-based learning has many aspects in common with problem-based learning. Because they are both under the umbrella of inquiry learning, there is certainly a lot of overlap. There are problem-based elements to many projects, and there are characteristics of projects in many problem-based learning experiences, but there is a difference between the two. The biggest difference is that project-based learning tends to focus on the product, while problem-based learning focuses on the process. Let us unpack those a little to make a clearer distinction.

The product of a project is what one produces in order to demonstrate mastery of learning. For example, if students were tasked with creating a character for a living wax museum, having to research their character, find costumes and props that bring them realistically to life, and prepare a speech that introduces the person's importance to history, all of the learning would be summed up in this final product. As the teacher, you do not have to determine mastery of the research while students are in the middle of the PBL experience. You can wait until the final product to see this because a student cannot have the final presentation of the living wax figure unless research was done. All of the skills and content that is learned during the project are brought together in the final product. With this being said, a teacher could simply evaluate the final product in order to see all that was learned. Because of this, in PBL, the product matters a great deal.

For problem-based learning, the product does not matter as much. The process of getting to the product matters most. This is why with problem-based learning, you can give students an unsolvable problem because the product and its success is not where the learning is displayed. The learning is assessed during the process of getting to the product. For example, if you task students with solving world hunger, students can research and create all sorts of solutions, but the likelihood that they will be successful is next to impossible. Mastery in PrBL is not demonstrated in the final product. It is demonstrated in what students learned along the way. Instead the teacher might look at how well the students organized themselves and their work management, their ability to work cooperatively with others, their ability to apply concepts to their plan, and other such skills.

Again, because there is overlap between PBL and PrBL, there will be times a teacher evaluates mastery during a PBL experience not just at the end, but during the process. Many times these are formative assessments and checkpoints the teacher uses to make sure that students are going down the right path of learning. These assessments should not be about compliance but rather to see the level of understanding that is taking place. No teacher who is managing their class well should be shocked at what is demonstrated in students' final products because they should have been observing the learning process the entire time and have a pretty good idea of what to expect.

Why Use Project-Based Learning in the Gifted Classroom?

There is no denying the importance of 21st-century skills in the classroom. The mastery of these skills involves students being able to do more than just memorize knowledge, and instead apply skills and build the ability to problem solve (Stoof et al., 2002). Businesses have long been complaining that students the educational system is sending their way are very intelligent but woefully inept at figuring out problems, arguing that students know a lot of "facts," but are not "competent" (Bastiaens & Martens, 2000).

We, as educators, have to do a better job in preparing students to solve real problems they might encounter in the workplace. How do we do that in the current system of reading textbooks, filling out worksheets, and taking tests? How many times in your life have you had to take a test outside of an educational setting? In real life, we are usually dealing with projects, either at work, at home, or in other settings. If we truly want to get students ready for the real world, we should be teaching them how to handle the real-world problem solving of a project.

According to PBLWorks (n.d.), research studies have demonstrated that project-based learning can provide students:

• ■ exposure to adults and careers,
• ■ a sense of purpose,
• ■ success skills,
• ■ rewarding teacher relationships,
• ■ creativity and technology, and
• ■ deeper learning.

This last point is especially telling of why project-based learning is such a good fit for gifted classrooms, which are charged with the difficult task of going deeper with thought-provoking material than traditional instruction. Teachers with gifted students have to offer such challenging work for these students because of their high abilities. Gifted students are capable of doing more, and PBL allows students to work to their full capabilities.

Project-based learning has been shown to have major positive effects on the learning of students. With its student-centered approach, it helps students to take what they have learned and apply it in new learning tasks (Ravitz et al., 2012). It also greatly improves a student's ability to collaborate and problem solve amongst other 21st-century skills (Schaffer et al., 2012). This includes their creative and reflective thinking ability as well (Taylor et al., 2010). Probably one of the most important factors in student learning is the motivation the student has for it (Reeve, 2006). It has been found that PBL promotes student motivation, and as a result, their learning achievement improves (Hung et al., 2012).

Even in subjects for which it might seem more difficult to use project-based learning (e.g., mathematics), students engaged in PBL have performed better than those students taught using traditional methods (Grant & Branch, 2005; Horton et al., 2006; Johnston, 2004; Jones & Kalinowski, 2007; McMiller et al., 2006; Toolin, 2004). In a study of two secondary schools, one project-based, the other more traditional:

Students at the project-based school performed as well or better than students at the traditional school on items that required rote knowledge of mathematical concepts, and three times as many students at the project-based school as those in the traditional school attained the highest possible grade on the national examination. (Thomas, 2000, p. 31)

Based on all of these data, we might ask ourselves not why we should use project-based learning in our gifted classrooms, but rather why we would ever not choose to use project-based learning, given its results and benefits.

The Three New R's

The original three R's for education were:

• ■ reading,
• ■ writing, and
• ■ arithmetic.

These were always a bit of a stretch, considering that only one of them actually begins with the letter R. Contrast these educational tenets with those of project-based learning, which all appropriately start with R:

• ■ readiness,
• ■ responsibility, and
• ■ relevance.

Project-based learning is designed to teach students these three Rs, all valuable life skills.

Readiness

Readiness involves the level that a student is already at when you introduce a project. Imagine that there are three students, each at a different level of readiness. Student #1 is at a beginner level, where they know nothing and need to grasp the initial concept. Student #2 has a basic understanding coming in and is ready to build on this understanding to go a little deeper. Student #3 has a clear understanding of the skill in question and is ready to take the project in related directions and further the depth of their understanding. Even when wor...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents Page
• Preface to the Second Edition Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: What Is Project-Based Learning, and Why Should We Use It?
• Chapter 2: Creating Ownership With Calendars, Contracts, and Rubrics
• Chapter 3: How to Use Learning Standards and Bloom's Taxonomy With Projects
• Chapter 4: Finding the Structure That Works for You, Your Classroom, and Your Students
• Chapter 5: Ways to Vary the Structure of Projects
• Chapter 6: Implementing the Structure With Students, Parents, Administration, and Staff
• Chapter 7: Teaching Students to Create Rubrics
• Chapter 8: Technology, Resources, and Classroom Environment
• Chapter 9: Teaching in the Project-Based Classroom: Becoming a Manager
• Conclusion: Empowering Students
• References
• Appendix A: Reproducibles
• Appendix B: Examples of Projects
• About the Author