Project Based Teaching

How to Create Rigorous and Engaging Learning Experiences

Suzie Boss, John Larmer

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781416626732
• eBook ISBN: 9781416626763
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

It's no secret that in today's complex world, students face unparalleled demands as they prepare for college, careers, and active citizenship. However, those demands won't be met without a fundamental shift from traditional, teacher-centered instruction toward innovative, student-centered teaching and learning. For schools ready to make such a shift, project-based learning (PBL) offers a proven framework to help students be better equipped to tackle future challenges.

Project Based Teachers encourage active questioning, curiosity, and peer learning; create learning environments in which every student has a voice; and have a mastery of content but are also comfortable responding to students' questions by saying, "I don't know. Let's find out together."

In this book, Suzie Boss and John Larmer build on the framework for Gold Standard PBL originally presented in Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning and explore the seven practices integral to Project Based Teaching:

• Build the Culture
• Design and Plan
• Align to Standards
• Manage Activities
• Assess Student Learning
• Scaffold Student Learning
• Engage and Coach

For each practice, the authors present a wide range of practical strategies and include teachers' reflections about and suggestions from their classroom experiences.

This book and a related series of free videos provide a detailed look at what's happening in PBL classrooms from the perspective of the Project Based Teacher. Let's find out together.

A copublication of ASCD and Buck Institute for Education (BIE).

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Chapter 1

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Build the Culture

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A positive classroom culture creates an inclusive community of learners for PBL.

When Telannia Norfar's high school students arrive for pre-calculus class, they know exactly what to expect. Projected on the screen at the front of the room are clear instructions for the day's Success Starter. This three-minute individual activity warms up their thinking for the learning and project work ahead.

A typical Success Starter might ask students to solve an equation and calculate future college costs. For example:

Using the formula to find the cost for Alia to attend college, how much will it cost when she is a sophomore? Remember that Alia is 12 right now.

A(t) = 17907(1.04)x

Options:
A $25,487.20
B $24,507.00
C $23,564.40
D $22,658.10

This is not make-believe. These students from Northwest Classen High School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, are in the early days of a project in which they will apply their understanding of exponential, logarithmic, and rational functions to help real-life clients develop financial plans. They have already met their seven clients whose financial needs include saving for college (in the case of Alia's family), paying for a home mortgage, planning for retirement, or a combination of those factors. Students have started to tackle their driving question: How can we design financial plans to help our clients meet their needs?

A companion video about building the culture for PBL can be found at www.bie.org.

As soon as students complete the warm-up, Norfar outlines the learning objective for the day: "I can create an equation in one variable that represents a financial model and use it to solve a situation."

She asks, "What does this objective mean? What would it mean to know this? How would it help us answer our driving question?" and then instructs students to turn and talk about those questions with their three tablemates.

Students confer for a quick discussion, connecting the new concept to their project goals. Then they regroup with the whole class to hear the teacher introduce a new problem about exponential functions. Norfar gives her students just enough information to get started. They can choose to work on the problem on their own, in collaboration with classmates, or with the support of resources the teacher has made available.

"You might not reach an answer today. You might not reach an answer tomorrow. Struggle is OK," Norfar reminds students as she begins to circulate and observe. Students know that, by the third day, they will be expected to present their understanding and problem-solving strategy to the class.

Conversation starts to build as students discuss the problem and compare strategies. Norfar pauses at the desk of a student who is sitting silent. The girl looks up and confides, "Mrs. Norfar, I'm horrible at math."

"You have a short memory!" she replies with a kind smile. "You say this every time we tackle a problem. Remember last time when you struggled and then overcame your confusion? Remember our norms that we wrote together? One of them was "We all have a growth mindset.' And remember, I'm here for you."

Why Classroom Culture Matters for PBL

Classroom culture is multifaceted and challenging to define, but it is essential to get right if you want all students to thrive with PBL. Across an entire school, culture encompasses the shared values, beliefs, perceptions, rules (both written and unwritten), and relationships that govern how the institution functions (Çakirog˘lu, Akkan, & Güven, 2012; Kane et al., 2016). School culture is also reinforced by norms, expectations, and traditions, including everything from dress codes to discipline systems to celebrations of achievement. Researchers know that students learn best when they feel safe (Scott & Marzano, 2014), and a strong culture encourages effort, supports collaboration, amplifies motivation, and focuses attention on what matters for learning (Deal & Peterson, 2009). A culture that fosters high achievement ensures that the conditions for learning are ever-present and conveys "a shared belief that we are part of something special and great" (Fisher, Frey, & Pumpian, 2012, pp. 6–7).

Indeed, culture is so intertwined with learning that it has been called the hidden curriculum (Jerald, 2006). Sean Slade (2014), an expert on serving the needs of the whole child, argues that culture is shaped by everything that students see, hear, feel, and interact with at school. He elaborates:

Within a couple of minutes of walking into a school or a classroom, you can tell, define, almost taste the culture that permeates that space. Is it an open, sharing environment? Or is it a rigid, discipline-defined playing field? Is it safe and welcoming, or intimidating and confronting? Does it welcome all voices, or does it make you want to shrink? Is it waiting for instruction and leadership, or is it self-directed with common purpose? (para. 2)

Classroom culture takes on particular significance in PBL. When the goal is to foster inquiry, risk taking, persistence, and self-directed learning, culture is too important to leave to chance. Building the right culture for PBL requires ongoing effort and attention by both teachers and students. Instead of being hidden, a PBL culture needs to be openly constructed, reinforced, and celebrated.

★ Gold Standard Project Based Teaching Indicators: Build the Culture

When a positive culture for learning is established, you should see evidence in how students interact with you and one another. Indicators for building the culture include the following:

• Norms to guide the classroom are cocrafted with and self-monitored by students.
• Student voice and choice is regularly leveraged and ongoing, including identification of real-world issues and problems students want to address in projects.
• Students usually know what they need to do with minimal direction from the teacher.
• Students work collaboratively in healthy, high-functioning teams, much like an authentic work environment; the teacher rarely needs to be involved in managing teams.
• Students understand there is no single "right answer" or preferred way to do the project and that it is OK to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from them.
• The values of critique and revision, persistence, rigorous thinking, and pride in doing high-quality work are shared, and students hold one another accountable to them.

See the Appendix for the complete Project Based Teaching Rubric.

How Teachers (and Students) Shape Culture

Teachers shape culture in both obvious and less noticeable ways. In Norfar's classroom, for example, culture is reflected by the daily Success Starters and other routines, belief in a growth mindset, and even the physical arrangement of the room with students seated in tables of four to foster collaboration. These elements contribute to a welcoming yet academically challenging culture that is built on a foundation of caring relationships.

"My students know I love them," Norfar says, and she regularly underscores that message with her words, gestures, and high expectations. She also doesn't hesitate to mix in some humor.

The teacher's role in building a positive culture is akin to "developing the sorts of attitudes, beliefs, and practices that would characterize a really good neighborhood," according to educational expert Carol Ann Tomlinson (2017, p. 43). Signposts of this kind of classroom "neighborhood" include mutual respect, a sense of safety, an expectation of growth, and a sense that "everyone feels welcomed and contributes to everyone else feeling welcomed" (p. 43).

To find evidence of culture in the classroom, PBL veteran Feroze Munshi suggests looking at your learning environment as if you were an anthropologist. He encourages teachers to consider, "What are the shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices [in your classroom]? What language is used? What are the practices and routines? What artifacts do you see?" All of these components contribute to the culture of learning.

Four Strategies for Building PBL Culture

Let's take a closer look at four culture builders that are especially important for PBL. They involve focusing deliberately on beliefs and values, shared norms, the physical environment, and protocols and routines. For each, a wide range of strategies and classroom traditions will help you and your students build and reinforce a positive PBL culture.

Remember, too, that the right culture for PBL is likely to feel unfamiliar for some students, especially if they have only experienced traditional instruction or top-down discipline in the past. As you introduce more democratic strategies, such as cocreating class norms, talk with students about the purpose and benefits of these activities. Reinforce the message that everyone in the learning community plays an important role in creating and maintaining culture.

Although you will likely put more energy into building culture early in the school year, this needs to be an ongoing effort. Culture building isn't something that happens with just one project, slogan, or team-building activity. Throughout the year, from one project to the next, you'll want to continue reinforcing the values, habits, and routines that contribute to a learning environment in which all students can succeed with PBL.

Ray Ahmed, a high school chemistry teacher at a culturally diverse school in Brooklyn, New York, acknowledges that it takes effort to build and reinforce the right classroom culture for students to succeed with PBL: "We're trying to teach students to be respectful, listen to each other, work together, and have an academic mindset. It's harder in September but so much easier in February when kids are holding each other accountable to the norms."

Beliefs and Values: Sharing What Matters

At the end of every project, Larkspur, California, middle school teacher Rebecca Newburn asks her students for feedback. She reminds them to be kind, specific, and helpful, reflecting their class norms. "I ask them, "What was helpful? What was not? How was the pacing? Was there too much hands-on or not enough? What helped you learn the most?'"

Once she receives their surveys, she follows up with emails to individual students. "I might say, "I really like your feedback about the pacing of the project. Can you tell me more? What would have been better?'"

Students are often surprised by her response. "They'll say, "Oh, my gosh, you actually listened!' I'm modeling that listening to their feedback adds to the culture. I'm showing them that they really do have a voice." Being transparent about what you value helps students see you as a partner in learning and a supporter in their PBL endeavors. Teachers share their beliefs and values with students directly and through action.

Math teacher Telannia Norfar, for example, reminds students that she believes they all can succeed—even if they have not been successful in math in the past. One of her refrains is "Everybody here is brilliant," and she talks about expectations every day, all year long. She also connects learning goals to students' life goals. A project about financial planning, for example, is readily applicable for college-bound students.

Many of Norfar's students will be the first in their families to attend college. "That means there's no one in their family who knows how it all works," she says. "Even though we're helping another family with financial planning for the project, I am also helping my students understand college planning."

Similarly, humanities teacher Erin Brandvold looks for opportunities to "just be super-positive." For example, if a student asks her which reading choice is the easiest, she will reply, "It's the one you're most interested in. That's what will keep you going."

Another belief shared by most Project Based Teachers is that students deserve to know the purpose for what they are learning. PBL makes that "why" obvious by connecting academic concepts to real-world contexts. Well-designed projects naturally answer the perennial student question "When will we ever need to know this?" Making sure students have an authentic audience for their efforts is another way that teachers bring meaning to learning experiences.

For chemistry teacher Ray Ahmed, the goal with PBL "is to strategically help students learn core academic content around things they care about." At the same time, he cares about meeting students' social and emotional needs. "That's where projects come in nicely," he says. "You can address all the aspects of social and emotional and intellectual learning through a project that engages the students."

Although these veteran teachers want PBL to be engaging for students, they also recognize that this approach to learning is not easy. In words and actions, Project Based Teachers convey their belief that students can rise to the challenge and produce high-quality work to meet demanding goals.

Norfar's students have been known to say, "Why don't you just tell us the answer?" Her response reflects her beliefs and values: "I honor what students say. I listen if they need to vent. But then I tell them, "You need to grow. If you only learn by someone telling you, you're going to have a hard time when you have to figure things out for yourself. I'll scaffold it for you so you can succeed. You may have to wrestle. There's nothing wrong with being stuck. Just breathe, and then approach it in a different way.'"

In her comments, we can hear the core values and beliefs that are shared by effective PBL teachers—and that are critical to building a positive culture for learning.

Shared Norms: Creating a Community of Project Based Learners

Visit a PBL classroom and you are likely to see banners, posters, or slogans that convey class norms. These typically sound different from rules, which tend to be teacher-generate...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword by Bob Lenz
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Build the Culture
• Chapter 2. Design and Plan
• Chapter 3. Align to Standards
• Chapter 4. Manage Activities
• Chapter 5. Assess Student Learning
• Chapter 6. Scaffold Student Learning
• Chapter 7. Engage and Coach
• Chapter 8. Closing Reflections
• Appendix
• References
• Study Guide
• Related ASCD Resources
• About the Authors
• Copyright