The last 18 months has seen the world look to myriad solutions for providing meaningful and critical learning experiences in the most uncertain of circumstances. Month-to-month, schools and school systems could not predict whether they would be operating in-person, fully remotely, or some combination of the two. It was under these circumstances that we set out to understand how school and system leaders were making decisions about, and designing, project-based learning experiences (PBL) to meet the needs of their students, especially those in contexts that they themselves considered to have access to fewer resources.
Earlier this year, we shared a preliminary finding that illustrated the power of social capital: the networks, relationships, and trust that a school or system has, along with the flexibility and autonomy that these relationships enable.
After interviewing and surveying 31 individuals about 24 cases of PBL implementation across 17 countries in 5 regions of the world (Africa, Asia and the Middle East, Europe, North America, and South America and the Caribbean), we learned that in addition to social capital acting as a crucial resource, there were four more findings about schools’ and school systems’ decision-making and design processes that can help others decide if and how PBL might be right for their own students.
Finding 1: Social capital (networks, relationships, and trust—along with the flexibility and autonomy these afford) is itself a valuable, yet often overlooked, resource.
As mentioned in our previous blog post detailing this finding, we recommend school and system leaders consider all of the different ways that people in the learning environment can serve as resources or challenges first, above all else, and especially above financial resources and challenges. After all, as one of our participants put it, “You don't need a lot of funding to do this, you can do it for totally free, as long as someone, somewhere has the will to do it.”
Finding 2: COVID-19 had both positive and negative impacts on PBL implementation or adoption in the 2020-2021 school year.
A few of the PBL cases we studied paused their use of projects during remote learning, in order to focus on more manageable learning activities that students could complete on their own. On the other hand, a few cases instead amplified PBL as a means of extending students’ engagement and autonomy in their learning during remote learning—making PBL a good instructional model in response to the pandemic itself.
Finding 3: There were six dimensions or tensions along which participants were making decisions.
In the PBL cases we studied, decisions were being made about the how, where, why, when, what, and who of PBL. Specifically, participants were able to make choices between seemingly opposite, but yet equally valid and potentially effective, approaches. The six dimensions describe the two extreme ends of the spectrum in terms of the choice that is being made.
Of course, most if not all PBL implementations are a mixture of the two extremes on any tension dimension, but the choices made will usually fall closer to one end than the other. We found that within each tension, neither choice is clearly the right choice for all PBL, nor is either choice the right choice even for a given context, therefore, we recommend that you explicitly consider the benefits of either choice along each of these six decisions or tensions when deciding about or designing a PBL model.
Finding 4: Resources like people, time, materials, and the flexibility stemming from governmental, administrative, policy, and community trust and support were universally helpful to implementation.
Most noticeably, students themselves, as well as the communities that schools and systems operated in, and the networks they had access to, were listed as key resources that supported PBL, regardless of each school or system’s context.
Our participants (surprisingly) agreed that not only is funding not a major challenge to using PBL, but it can actually even be an opportunity, since fundraising and budgeting can be incorporated into projects themselves and students learn to be resourceful in the face of inadequate funds.
Finding 5: Conversely, challenges like preconceived mindsets and cultures about the role and nature of school, inflexible regulations, policies, curricula, standards, and assessments, and a lack of time, technology, and other material resources were universal barriers to implementation.
One challenge that came up again and again in our conversations was a prevailing culture and mindset, across cases and contexts that “school only looks a certain way”, or the perception that “a teacher’s role is being a learning director”. This was often coupled with the mention of the widespread existence of an “assessment” culture in schools across the globe. This conventional way of thinking about school and learning was a significant and broad challenge to shifting instruction to any student-directed, experiential learning model like PBL.
Choices, Resources, and Challenges
In addition to the global resources and challenges mentioned above, we did find that some resources, and some challenges, were described more often when one or the other choice was made - apparently these resources and challenges distinguished one choice from the other within a particular tension.
For your own decision-making and design, we recommend you become aware of, and think about, which of these distinguishing resources and challenges are most applicable to your context when making choices along the six tensions. This approach can help to predict and perhaps even reduce the risk of PBL not working for your learning environment. Our six decision guides, included in the study report, can serve as a useful frame for this.
We hope that what we have learned and shared above and in our report proves useful for any decision-maker at a school or school system who is trying to decide if and how PBL might be right for their students. We especially hope that this is the case for such decision-makers who find themselves in contexts that seem low-resourced, or that seem unable to support sustained PBL. Finally, we owe a sincere debt of gratitude to all of the researchers, schools, school systems, and others who supported this study—especially those who so generously, transparently, and in detail described the choices and challenges they encountered when bringing PBL to life in their schools.
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Contexts, Choices, and Challenges: A Global Look at Project-Based Learning
Photo by Van Tay Media via Unsplash.
December 17, 2021
The last 18 months has seen the world look to myriad solutions for providing meaningful and critical learning experiences in the most uncertain of circumstances. Month-to-month, schools and school systems could not predict whether they would be operating in-person, fully remotely, or some combination of the two. It was under these circumstances that we set out to understand how school and system leaders were making decisions about, and designing, project-based learning experiences (PBL) to meet the needs of their students, especially those in contexts that they themselves considered to have access to fewer resources.
Earlier this year, we shared a preliminary finding that illustrated the power of social capital: the networks, relationships, and trust that a school or system has, along with the flexibility and autonomy that these relationships enable.
After interviewing and surveying 31 individuals about 24 cases of PBL implementation across 17 countries in 5 regions of the world (Africa, Asia and the Middle East, Europe, North America, and South America and the Caribbean), we learned that in addition to social capital acting as a crucial resource, there were four more findings about schools’ and school systems’ decision-making and design processes that can help others decide if and how PBL might be right for their own students.
Finding 1: Social capital (networks, relationships, and trust—along with the flexibility and autonomy these afford) is itself a valuable, yet often overlooked, resource.
As mentioned in our previous blog post detailing this finding, we recommend school and system leaders consider all of the different ways that people in the learning environment can serve as resources or challenges first, above all else, and especially above financial resources and challenges. After all, as one of our participants put it, “You don't need a lot of funding to do this, you can do it for totally free, as long as someone, somewhere has the will to do it.”
Finding 2: COVID-19 had both positive and negative impacts on PBL implementation or adoption in the 2020-2021 school year.
A few of the PBL cases we studied paused their use of projects during remote learning, in order to focus on more manageable learning activities that students could complete on their own. On the other hand, a few cases instead amplified PBL as a means of extending students’ engagement and autonomy in their learning during remote learning—making PBL a good instructional model in response to the pandemic itself.
Finding 3: There were six dimensions or tensions along which participants were making decisions.
In the PBL cases we studied, decisions were being made about the how, where, why, when, what, and who of PBL. Specifically, participants were able to make choices between seemingly opposite, but yet equally valid and potentially effective, approaches. The six dimensions describe the two extreme ends of the spectrum in terms of the choice that is being made.
Of course, most if not all PBL implementations are a mixture of the two extremes on any tension dimension, but the choices made will usually fall closer to one end than the other. We found that within each tension, neither choice is clearly the right choice for all PBL, nor is either choice the right choice even for a given context, therefore, we recommend that you explicitly consider the benefits of either choice along each of these six decisions or tensions when deciding about or designing a PBL model.
Finding 4: Resources like people, time, materials, and the flexibility stemming from governmental, administrative, policy, and community trust and support were universally helpful to implementation.
Most noticeably, students themselves, as well as the communities that schools and systems operated in, and the networks they had access to, were listed as key resources that supported PBL, regardless of each school or system’s context.
Our participants (surprisingly) agreed that not only is funding not a major challenge to using PBL, but it can actually even be an opportunity, since fundraising and budgeting can be incorporated into projects themselves and students learn to be resourceful in the face of inadequate funds.
Finding 5: Conversely, challenges like preconceived mindsets and cultures about the role and nature of school, inflexible regulations, policies, curricula, standards, and assessments, and a lack of time, technology, and other material resources were universal barriers to implementation.
One challenge that came up again and again in our conversations was a prevailing culture and mindset, across cases and contexts that “school only looks a certain way”, or the perception that “a teacher’s role is being a learning director”. This was often coupled with the mention of the widespread existence of an “assessment” culture in schools across the globe. This conventional way of thinking about school and learning was a significant and broad challenge to shifting instruction to any student-directed, experiential learning model like PBL.
Choices, Resources, and Challenges
In addition to the global resources and challenges mentioned above, we did find that some resources, and some challenges, were described more often when one or the other choice was made - apparently these resources and challenges distinguished one choice from the other within a particular tension.
For your own decision-making and design, we recommend you become aware of, and think about, which of these distinguishing resources and challenges are most applicable to your context when making choices along the six tensions. This approach can help to predict and perhaps even reduce the risk of PBL not working for your learning environment. Our six decision guides, included in the study report, can serve as a useful frame for this.
We hope that what we have learned and shared above and in our report proves useful for any decision-maker at a school or school system who is trying to decide if and how PBL might be right for their students. We especially hope that this is the case for such decision-makers who find themselves in contexts that seem low-resourced, or that seem unable to support sustained PBL. Finally, we owe a sincere debt of gratitude to all of the researchers, schools, school systems, and others who supported this study—especially those who so generously, transparently, and in detail described the choices and challenges they encountered when bringing PBL to life in their schools.
