In his presentation at my school a few years ago, Dr. Yong Zhao asked us to consider how we can make every student great in their own way. His answer? Capitalize on their strengths by personalizing the curriculum, engaging students in learning to make products or finding solutions to problems and creating a global campus. Sir Ken Robinson, in his introduction to his book Creative Schools, echoes a similar sentiment. Robinson (2015) believes that “the aims of education are to enable students to understand the world around them and the talents within them” (p. xxiv). Finally, in his book, Creating Innovators, Tony Wagner asks the reader to consider how we can teach children to collaborate, disrupt, innovate and adapt to a world that is rapidly changing. His solution? Give them rich experiences and develop their confidence to explore, question, test, experiment and push boundaries (Wagner, 2012, p. 219). My school also recognizes this need to transform education and prepare its students for an uncertain future, and a few years ago committed to a forward-thinking and ambitious strategic plan called Towards 2020. The goal is to create a joyful learning environment for students that is focused on creativity, solving authentic problems, innovation and personal growth and prepares them for whatever might lie ahead.
As you look closer at some of the pillars of the strategic plan – personalized authentic learning, global and local connectedness, entrepreneurial spirit, resilience and wellness, strategic partnerships and a collaborative and innovative faculty – an argument could be made that PBL has the potential to be the connective tissue that holds these all together. I believe that if we focus on PBL and its connections to personalized authentic learning, problem-based learning and creating thinking classrooms, and we research ways to better support teachers as they try PBL in their classrooms, that we can accomplish many of the goals in the recent strategic plan. However, effective PBL cannot just happen overnight. It takes a great deal of thought and planning to ensure that project-based learning is a transformative teaching tool. Effective PBL is so much more than just “doing a project”. As Larmer, Mergendoller and Boss (2015) caution, “PBL is not a silver bullet that works every time, in every classroom….Much depends on the teacher, the project design, and the implementation” (p. 59). My school is currently devoting a great deal of its PD budget to training teachers in Gold Standard PBL. As I embark on my sabbatical, the key question I hope to address is what supports can be put into place so that PBL (and its connected areas) can be used as a catalyst for change to inspire innovative and personalized approaches to teaching and learning, and can help us reach many of the goals outlined in the Towards 2020 Strategic Plan. I would like to explore how this focus on PBL is impacting our classrooms, what supports we can put in place to more effectively reach the goals outlined in our strategic plan, how PBL connects to a broader effort to transform education (its connection to personalized authentic learning, problem-based learning and to developing thinking classrooms) and what we can learn from other schools already effectively implementing PBL.
REFERENCES:
Larmer, J., Mergendoller, J., & Boss, S. (2015). Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Robinson, K. (2015). Creative Schools. New York: Penguin Books.
Wagner, T. (2012). Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World. New York: Scribner.
Zhao, Y. (2012). World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
From Teaching to Learning 