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ОглавлениеCHAPTER 2
Learner-Centered Instruction
This chapter discusses four principles for PCBE related to learner-centered instruction. It then offers detailed guidance to help your team develop more of your shared vision for your classrooms, school, and district.
We do not offer these principles and guidelines as a blueprint for what you should do. Rather, we offer them to assist your team as you engage in rich discussions and collaborations to design an ideal PCBE system in your unique context.
Principles for Learner-Centered Instruction
Competency-based student progress requires instruction to be personalized—customized to each student’s learning needs—rather than standardized. But how can this seemingly difficult task be managed? It requires learner-centered instruction, along with new roles for teachers, students, parents, and technology (core idea 4). Learner-centered instruction has two major parts:
A focus on individual learners (their heredity, experiences, perspectives, backgrounds, talents, interests, capacities, and needs) [and] a focus on learning (the best available knowledge about learning, how it occurs, and what teaching practices are most effective in promoting the highest levels of motivation, learning, and achievement for all learners). (McCombs & Whisler, 1997, p. 11)
Four principles for learner-centered instruction have strong research support (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Lambert & McCombs, 1998; McCombs, 1994, 2013; McCombs & Miller, 2007; McCombs & Whisler, 1997; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018; Weimer, 2002).
Principle E: Learning by doing
Principle F: Instructional support
Principle G: Personalized learning
Principle H: Collaborative learning
These principles are highly interrelated and interdependent with each other and with the principles for competency-based education. The following is an introduction to each of these principles.
Principle E: Learning by Doing
Generally, the most effective way to learn is by doing, especially for younger students (American Psychological Association, 1993; Bransford et al., 2000; Freeman et al., 2014; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018; Newman, 2003; Preeti, Ashish, & Shriram, 2013; Schank, Berman, & Macpherson, 1999; Strobel & van Barneveld, 2009; Vega, 2012; Walker & Leary, 2009). Types of learning by doing include project-based, problem-based, inquiry-based, task-based, maker-based, and hands-on learning. We collectively refer to these forms of learning as project-based instruction, which enhances motivation, retention, and transfer to the real world.
Some people are concerned that project-based instruction may hurt students’ college admissions. However, efforts such as the Reimagining College Access project (Gewertz, 2018) are underway to change college admissions to focus more on students’ projects. Students from project-based schools, such as the Minnesota New Country School, are having great success with college admissions (Aslan & Reigeluth, 2016; Thomas et al., 2005).
In project-based instruction, each student chooses or designs a project as a vehicle to master specific content. Projects may be of many different types and scopes, as long as they are chosen or designed by the student and serve as a vehicle to master a predefined set of competencies, or learning targets. Giving students choice increases their motivation, but teachers and even parents may influence the choice or design of a project, especially for younger students. As students grow older, projects should increasingly focus on bettering the student’s world, not just the student (Prensky, 2016; Wagner, 2012)—see Principle I: Relevance to Students’ Current and Future Lives (page 58). This is sometimes referred to as community-based learning, service learning, or place-based learning.
• The projects are typically collaborative to prepare students for the way most projects are executed in the workplace, home, and community; but some are occasionally done individually.
• The projects are typically interdisciplinary because that’s what most authentic projects are like.
• They are of significant scope for the developmental level of the student, ranging from hours or days for preschoolers to months or years for high school students.
• The projects are also bound by time and space. They may be done in the classroom if they only require resources and activities available there, or they may be done in the real world (place-based and community-based learning) if they require resources and activities only available there. It seems likely that many real-world projects will eventually use augmented reality (Bower, Howe, McCredie, Robinson, & Grover, 2014), which superimposes virtual images, text, and sounds on a mobile device’s camera screen and speaker (for example, the game Pokémon GO), to support performance of the project. Projects may be done in a virtual world through computer simulations if such resources are available. The popular computer game Oregon Trail is an example of this, and schools will probably utilize virtual reality as that technology becomes less expensive and more powerful (Freina & Ott, n.d.). Presently the classroom is where most projects are conducted, and this will likely continue to be the case, especially for younger students.
In situations when such projects are not the best options for learning (as in the cases of literature and reading skills and some math skills, for example) other kinds of activities should be used.
Lab Atlanta
“At Lab Atlanta, a community makerspace in Atlanta run by a private school, high schoolers can take a semester-long course to invent projects that promote sustainability for their city, such as addressing air and water quality and improving public transportation” (Dintersmith, 2018, p. 24).
Principle F: Instructional Support
Gaining the ability to discover new knowledge and skills on one’s own is important, but using the discovery approach for all learning is highly inefficient (Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006; Sweller, 1994). Scaffolding accelerates learning and helps all students reach their potential. It can take the form of adjusting, coaching, or tutoring.
• Adjusting entails tailoring the complexity or difficulty of the project to the level of the student. To use a familiar, concrete example, imagine a project that entails learning to drive a car. The complexity or difficulty of the project could be adjusted by requiring a standard versus automatic transmission, requiring driving in heavy versus light traffic, requiring parallel parking or not, requiring hill starts or not, requiring rainy or icy road conditions or not, and much more.
• Coaching includes giving suggestions or hints to the student while the student is performing. For example, imagine a young student is having difficulty adding two fractions that have a common factor in the denominator, like ²⁄₉ and ⅚. Upon seeing the student struggle, the teacher (or digital assistant) could provide a hint reminding the student to look for the common factor.
• Tutoring involves teaching the student a competency, preferably just before it is needed in a project. For example, imagine a team of three students working collaboratively on a project that is being conducted virtually. At a certain point in the project, the students need to use a competency they have not yet acquired. The three students pause their work on the project and go to their individual tablets, where a digital assistant explains, demonstrates, and provides practice in the skill with immediate feedback. The program is tailored to each student’s interests and learning preferences. This also frees up the teacher to provide more personalized mentoring for every student (Murphy, Gallagher, Krumm, Mislevy, & Hafter, 2014). When each student has reached the criterion for number of correct performances in a row, the program certifies mastery and the student is cleared to continue to collaborate with teammates in the project’s virtual world. The project’s immediate needs provide powerful motivation for the students to master the needed content (learning targets). This scenario is but one of many ways that tutoring can be provided just before it is needed in a project.
Principle G: Personalized Learning
To accelerate learning and help all students reach their potential, it is essential to customize the learning experience (Hanover Research, 2015). Personalized instruction does not mean that students must learn alone. In fact, teacher guidance and collaborative project-based learning are common parts of PCBE. A good way to personalize the instruction is to help each student make good choices in all the following areas: goals, projects, scaffolding, assessments, and reflections (Watson & Watson, 2017).
• Personalize goals: All students should have their own long-term learning goals (taking years to achieve) and short-term learning goals (taking weeks or months to achieve). Their goals should be tailored to their individual needs, interests, talents, and prior learning.
• Personalize projects: Teachers can use many different projects to teach any given set of short-term goals and their learning targets, and they can select (and adjust) or design projects based on the student’s interests. Teachers can determine whether students should have teammates and who those teammates should be. They can also decide on the nature and amount of self-direction for each student.
• Personalize scaffolding: Teachers can personalize scaffolding, or instructional support (in the form of both coaching and tutoring), in two ways—the quantity provided and the nature (or features) of the help.
• Personalize assessment: Teachers can personalize assessment by customizing who assesses (teacher, self, peer, computer system, external expert) and the format for demonstrating competence.
• Personalize reflection: Reflection on a project experience is one of the most powerful and often overlooked instructional strategies (Schön, 1995). Students can reflect in different ways on both the conduct of the project and the learning that occurred.
One aspect of personalized learning is the personal learning plan. According to the Glossary of Education Reform (Great Schools Partnership, 2014):
A personal learning plan (or PLP) is developed by students—typically in collaboration with teachers, counselors, and parents—as a way to help them achieve short- and long-term learning goals, most commonly at the middle school and high school levels.
The terms individual learning plan and individual student learning plan are sometimes used as synonyms. PCBE is impossible without personal learning plans; they help teachers manage the learning process when students are learning different content at different rates (Ferguson et al., 2001; Yonezawa, McClure, & Jones, 2012). This level of personalizing is much easier with multi-year mentoring (principle R, page 91), whereby teachers know students well and don’t have to get to know a whole new group of students every year.
Principle H: Collaborative Learning
Collaboration is increasingly important in work environments. Collaborating in the school environment will help prepare students for that. It also has many advantages in the classroom setting. First, one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it. Collaborative learning gives students that opportunity. Second, it builds community and interpersonal skills. Collaboration is particularly powerful when used with multi-age grouping (principle R, page 91), wherein younger students learn from older ones, and older students of all abilities can be role models. Third, collaboration enhances motivation by meeting the need for affiliation, discussed in the introduction (page 4). Fourth, collaborative learning enhances critical thinking (Gokhale, 1995). Finally, it frees up time for the teacher to work on cultivating other aspects of the students’ learning and development, such as their social-emotional learning and metacognitive skills.
In the workplace, collaborative teams are typically highly diverse, because multiple perspectives strengthen a team’s problem-solving ability. Thus, it is helpful for students to work with others who differ greatly from themselves.
Collaboration can take the form of team-based projects or peer assistance. Most project-based learning should be team-based to promote deeper collaboration. However, students may complete some projects individually, and in those cases peer assistance should be the norm. Students who have the same teacher and therefore work in the same physical area (classroom, studio, or learning environment) turn to each other first when they need help in their learning process and view the teacher as a resource of last resort.
Detailed Guidance for Learner-Centered Instruction
We recommend that you read all the sections titled Principles in chapters 1 through 6 before reading the Detailed Guidance section in any of those chapters, because the principles are so interrelated and interdependent that it is crucial to understand the big picture before getting into specific details. Any effort to move to PCBE that focuses on one core idea without making changes in other core ideas is likely to fail.
Classroom-Level Considerations
To implement learner-centered instruction at the classroom level, you need to make decisions about projects, which should be the means by which each student masters content. First think in the ideal for a long-term vision (step 2.1 in chapter 10, page 196), and then compromise as necessary for your first implementation (step 2.3 in chapter 10, page 200).
Principle E: Learning by Doing
Ideally, projects should serve as the way the curriculum is organized, instead of subject-area courses. At Minnesota New Country School and others that take this approach, there are no courses, and students design their own projects based on the state standards that they need to meet and other interests they may have (Aslan, Reigeluth, & Thomas, 2014; Thomas et al., 2005). Student records should still list subject-area competencies mastered, as well as other competencies (social-emotional learning, higher-order thinking skills, and so on).
Thus, your team will ideally decide to replace courses with projects now. However, your team may decide to take a more gradual approach by using projects extensively within existing courses. Either way, you should decide how to support planning, conducting, and ending and displaying projects (addressed in the following sections). For more guidance on project-based learning, see Project Excellence: A Case Study of a Student-Centred Secondary School (Anderson, 1990); Transforming Education With Self-Directed Project-Based Learning: The Minnesota New Country School (Aslan et al., 2014); Project Based Teaching: How to Create Rigorous and Engaging Learning Experiences (Boss & Larmer, 2018); PBL in the Elementary Grades: Step-by-Step Guidance, Tools and Tips for Standards-Focused K–5 Projects (Hallermann, Larmer, & Mergendoller, 2011); How Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Project-Based Learning (PBL) Affects High, Middle, and Low Achievers Differently: The Impact of Student Factors on Achievement (Han, Capraro, & Capraro, 2014); Learning to Solve Problems: A Handbook for Designing Problem-Solving Learning Environments (Jonassen, 2011); Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling (Kerzner, 2009); Passion for Learning: How Project-Based Learning Meets the Needs of 21st-Century Students (Newell, 2003); Problem-Based Approach to Instruction (Savery, 2009); Project-Based Learning Research Review (Vega, 2012); and Project Management for Middle School: How One Middle School Teacher Guides His Students to Managing Their Project-Based Learning Groups Like Pros (Weyers, 2017).
Planning Projects
Should we have fixed project periods?
Even though student progress should be based on learning rather than time, you should consider having fixed project periods at higher age levels, especially when the projects are team-based. In the real world of work, most projects have deadlines, so it is important for students to learn to meet deadlines. In addition, it is important for students to work with different peers on subsequent projects, so they get to know more students better. This means you need to have a common time to finish with old teams and form new teams.
Some students learn faster than others. You can give them more projects or bigger projects to do during the project period. Avoid combining all the fast learners with each other and all the slow learners with each other. Students might also collaborate with students from other classrooms, particularly at higher age levels as interests become more specialized.
The length of the project period should usually be shorter for younger students, who are likely to work on many of their projects or activities alone, as in Montessori schools—though they do also have collaborative activities (Montessori, 1964). Individual projects can have a flexible timeframe, and students typically want to finish each project as quickly as they can. However, in some cases it is wise to establish a deadline, even if it is not the end of a project period. Some projects could be designed to last for two project periods or more. Help students become self-directed learners (principle N, page 73) by teaching them to gauge their project load and learn what is feasible for them. Each student could have a list of individual mini-projects to work on or books to read if he or she finishes a project early or while waiting for teammates to master competencies before the team can proceed with a project.
At the beginning of a project period, teachers should think about planning time and procedures for students to create their short-term personal learning plans. Teachers may also need an initiation process to get each individual student or team started on each of their projects.
What should the classroom be like for learning by doing?
For learning by doing, the classroom must be a workroom, designed somewhat like an artist’s studio or woodworker’s shop, where students can work collaboratively on their projects with appropriate tools and workspace. Typically, for older students, knowledge-building tools are digital technologies, like computers and tablets with internet connections, but other supplies and maker tools are also important, from simple art supplies and recycled materials to elaborate resources such as 3-D printers and mechanical or woodworking tools. Students of all ages can learn many concepts in a self-directed manner with the aid of hands-on manipulatives like those used in Montessori schools (Montessori, 1912, 1917, 1964), or with “kitchen science” supplies (supplies that are commonly available in supermarkets or other stores).
Which learning targets (short-term goals) will individual students pursue on their projects? Will the learning targets all be required standards, or will students be able to pursue some of their personal interests and talents?
Given the 21st century testing environment, teachers will probably have to focus on required standards, but all students could be given some latitude to pursue learning targets that reflect their personal interests and talents. Too often this latitude is only given to faster learners, even though the slower learners are usually in greater need of motivation.
Will the learning targets span several subject areas?
We recommend this because it allows a focus on improving the student’s world, which makes projects more authentic and motivating.
Who will select the learning targets—the student, teacher, or both?
Even for required standards, you can empower students to decide which of those standards (learning targets) they will address during the next project period. Recognize that making good decisions about this is a skill that teachers need to cultivate in students. Younger students typically need more guidance. Student choice and empowerment motivate learning, so it is worth taking the time to engage students in this process.
Once learning targets have been selected, how will projects be chosen?
There are three major options: teachers select the projects from a project bank, design the projects themselves, or help the students to design or select and adapt their own projects based on state standards or other standards.
There are considerable advantages to helping students design their own projects or at least select and adapt projects from a menu or online project bank—especially for older students. This enhances their motivation and self-direction, as well as their understanding of the standards. When students take it a step further and focus their projects on improving their world as well as themselves, they develop an orientation to activism, agency, and empowerment.
If the teacher selects or designs the projects, he or she should allow students some choice of projects from a menu and some opportunity to modify the projects, rather than just assigning projects as is to students. This enhances motivation and student ownership of their learning.
Each student will likely need several projects to address all the learning targets. Again, faster learners will be able to take on more projects than will slower learners, but it is still important to have faster and slower students partner together on however many projects each undertakes.
Where will each project be conducted?
For each project, the teachers or students will have to decide where to conduct it. Projects may take place in the classroom, elsewhere in the school, elsewhere in the district, or in the community. For older students, place- or community-based learning improves motivation and transfer of knowledge and skills to real life through greater authenticity of the project. One of the most powerful approaches to learning by doing is internships or apprenticeships in community organizations. Think about finding community partners who can help make such learning easier to manage. For more information, see the book Place- and Community-Based Education in Schools by Gregory Smith and David Sobel (2010) and find ideas in Community Partners for Student Projects.
Community Partners for Student Projects
In Switzerland, students in the last two years of high school typically spend half the school week working in an apprenticeship with a company (Singmaster, 2015).
Colorado adopted an apprenticeship program (www.colorado.gov/pacific/cdle/apprenticeships) that entails students working two days a week in a community organization to learn finance, information technology, business operations, or advanced manufacturing. All students learn the twenty-six workplace competencies that Colorado has defined for the program. Individual districts and even schools could adopt a similar program.
The Give and Take Project (www.realworldscholars.org/our-programs) from Real World Scholars supports students in partnering with local businesses and community organizations to build meaningful relationships that help communities thrive.
Iowa BIG (education-reimagined.org/pioneers/iowa-big) is a competency-based program in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In addition to their regular classes, high school students work on projects with local companies and organizations. This allows them to develop collaborative skills, gain real-world experience, and expand learning beyond the classroom.
Imblaze (www.imblaze.org) is a powerful mobile platform that connects learners who are interested in real-world internships with mentors and workforce opportunities in their communities.
CommunityShare (www.communityshare.us) has an online platform that matches educators with local partners—both individuals and organizations—who can serve as project collaborators, mentors, and more.
Will students work on projects individually or in teams?
Any given student may have some team projects and some individual projects regardless of where the projects are conducted. There are many advantages to team-based (collaborative) projects.
• Students help each other learn, saving a lot of the teacher’s time while truly personalizing the learning.
• The student who helps another student learn also benefits by learning the content more deeply.
• Students develop collaboration skills.
• Students develop strong and caring relationships (principle Q, page 90) and a better understanding and appreciation of student differences.
• Collaboration enhances student motivation, if managed properly.
There is one potential disadvantage: a teacher cannot judge mastery from the project’s final product, because there is no assurance that more than one student was able to perform to mastery on any given learning target. This concern disappears if each student is assessed individually on each learning target during the project, as described in Principle F: Instructional Support (page 29). Also, an individual reflection component at the conclusion of a project not only helps students to become more reflective learners, but also helps a teacher get a sense of the contributions made by individual team members and the quality of the collaboration that took place. Nonetheless, team products do not indicate individual learning.
If in teams, how will teammates be chosen?
Maximize the benefits of team-based projects by assigning teammates carefully and with intention. The first criterion should be the learning targets and projects that have been selected for this project period. The second should be student interests, because many different projects can be used to master the same learning targets, and different students are motivated by different projects. Other criteria include making teams as diverse as possible in terms of student demographics, speed of learning, skill sets, and personality traits. Those with stronger skills can help those with weaker skills, and mixed-ability teams help develop understanding and caring relationships among all members of the classroom. However, do not always match faster with slower learners, because slower learners also need projects in which they can further develop leadership skills. Group dynamics are always important to consider, but with proper coaching, bad group dynamics can be a good learning experience. Avoid having the same students always team up with each other—give students opportunities to interact with a variety of individuals and build a broad community.
If in teams, will students play different roles (focus on different learning targets), or will all students collaborate on all project activities (meet the same learning targets)?
If students who are working on the same project have somewhat different learning targets, give them different roles that are tailored to their targets. If they have the same targets, then collaboration on each activity is necessary, but make sure that all students participate fully so they all get to use the targets during the project.
What number of projects will each student work on during the project period, and how long will each project take?
Picking the right number and size of projects requires knowing how quickly a student learns and how quickly and effectively a team works together. Teachers should try to determine how long it takes a student of average learning speed to do each project, and then adjust that for how fast each student learns. They can divide the total number of hours by the number of weeks in the project period, and then work with each student to determine the total number of hours per week within the range that the student wants to work on the projects. Eventually, a learning management system will be developed to do most of this monitoring and calculation for teachers.
How will we schedule time for working on projects?
PCBE is most successful when large, flexible learning blocks replace small, rigid periods for the school day. At the elementary level, where students spend most of the day in one classroom, we encourage teachers to support lengthy, flexible learning blocks. Project-based learning is hampered when students are required to stop in the middle of their work. A rigid schedule divided into small blocks of time also creates barriers to teacher collaboration and interrupts a student’s sense of flow (Csíkszentmihályi, 1990), hindering motivation and self-direction. Constant transitioning can be particularly difficult for students with special needs. Of course, as students move into high school, supporting large, flexible learning blocks becomes a change that needs to take place at the school and district levels.
Conducting Projects
How will a teacher initiate each project?
A hook event to kick off the project work can provide motivation. Make sure each team is thoroughly familiar with the goals of the project, contextual information, resources needed and available, and other relevant information before they begin.
How much responsibility will teachers give individual students to manage their own projects and monitor their own progress?
Younger students may benefit from the teacher providing a structure for when to work on each project during a project period, but teachers can begin to give them some responsibility as early as preschool, as Montessori Schools do effectively (Lillard & Else-Quest, 2006; Montessori, 1964, 1967). Managing projects and progress is a skill. With coaching (Nowack & Wimer, 1997), students can assume ever greater responsibility as they age, but individual students differ in the kinds and amount of responsibility they can handle at any age. Older students need to coordinate with all their teammates. Teachers should monitor and coach this coordination and scheduling process.
How should teachers monitor student project work?
Teachers need some way to monitor what each student and team is doing—even for the most responsible students. This allows teachers to address problems with motivation, interpersonal relationships, personal situations, and project-management, as well as any other problems that may arise. Teachers can ask students to maintain activity logs, time logs, self-evaluation notes, and other kinds of reflections on their activities. Teachers should take time to observe the teams at work. Scheduling regular check-in meetings with teams is also helpful. The teacher’s job will be easier if the students use some sort of online tool, either to manage their projects (like Edio) or to take just-in-time tutorials with the ability to certify and document mastery (like Khan Academy). Otherwise, develop ways for the students to report their progress to the teacher.
How will teachers coach students for managing their own projects and monitoring their progress?
Especially when a teacher first switches from teacher-centered instruction to PCBE, most students will not have effective skills for managing their projects and monitoring their progress. Therefore, the teacher must coach them with explanations and demonstrations about specific skills for managing their projects and monitoring their progress (Nowack & Wimer, 1997). Such skills include scheduling work on each project, monitoring or reporting progress to the teacher, identifying and accessing the materials or resources that they might need, deciding whom they should go to first for help, and deciding how they will demonstrate mastery of learning targets as a project proceeds. For some useful tips on these matters, teachers can check online (for example, www.bie.org/resources and www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning) or with their fellow teachers.
What kinds of support should a teacher provide during students’ project work?
Coaching (Nowack & Wimer, 1997) and tutoring are a teacher’s main activities to support student learning during project work in several areas: learning targets, the project itself, higher-order thinking skills, and social-emotional learning. In the area of learning targets, if teachers have not been able to find or create tutorials, they should encourage teammates to tutor each other on their learning targets, but teachers should always monitor such tutoring and provide coaching to the tutors when needed.
In the project area, if teachers do not have a project-management tool for teams, they should develop some tools (digital or paper-based) for students to use to keep their projects on track and running smoothly. The Project Management Institute (2013) provides guidance about good project management. Again, teachers should encourage the teammates to coach or tutor each other on project management practices, and teachers should monitor project management activities and provide coaching or tutoring when needed.
In the areas of higher-order thinking skills and social-emotional learning, teachers should encourage the teammates to help each other, and they should monitor the teams to identify difficulties and provide coaching or tutoring when needed. For example, if a student gets very upset, a teammate could encourage him to use such self-control techniques as taking a deep breath, counting to ten, and expressing his feelings in a calm way with words.
In all areas, teacher support should take the form of asking (Socratic dialogue), rather than telling, to develop better thinking and self-direction skills and promote deeper learning.
How will teachers certify mastery of learning targets as students proceed during a project?
Teachers should not wait until the end of a project to certify mastery of learning targets. It is more efficient and more motivating for the student to work on a learning target until it is mastered, rather than having to go back and remediate later. Finally, it prepares the student better for the real world by helping the student to frequently monitor and evaluate his or her own success at learning.
Teachers can save time if they identify online tutorials that entail the student reaching a criterion for mastery and can keep record of competencies mastered. If this is not possible, teachers should teach their students how to certify their teammates’ mastery and develop some form or chart for the students to keep track of each teammate’s mastery. Of course, the teacher will need to monitor, coach, and likely verify this assessment and record-keeping process, but it will save the teacher time over doing the assessment and record keeping him- or herself, and it will help develop the students’ self-direction skills.
Ending and Displaying Projects
Procedures for ending projects are also necessary, including evaluating, revising, displaying, celebrating, and reflecting. Issues to consider include not finishing by the deadline, substandard project performance, and the roles of students and teachers in the various concluding activities.
What should be evaluated?
Both learning and project performance should be evaluated. To clarify the difference, a project performance could be writing an article for the school newspaper, while one of the learning targets might have to do with capitalization and punctuation. However, new competencies are best assessed while they are being learned, rather than at the end of the project (see Principle B: Competency-Based Student Assessment, page 16).
Who should do the evaluating?
As with managing their projects and monitoring their own progress, students need to develop appropriate skills and mindsets for self-evaluation, which includes self-reflection. Teachers must help students develop these skills to become effective lifelong learners.
How should students evaluate their own learning and performance?
It is helpful for students to have a rubric for self-evaluating their mastery of each learning target and another for their performance on the project—perhaps different rubrics for different parts or aspects of the project. The more often students are involved in developing their own rubrics, the better for developing their self-evaluation and self-direction skills. The less experienced a student is in self-evaluation, the more frequently the student needs to self-evaluate—evaluating smaller episodes of learning and performing.
What role should teachers play in evaluating both student learning and performance?
Teachers should have a rubric for each learning target and another for each major performance on the project. If it is a team project, they should not rely on team performance on the project to evaluate each student’s mastery of the learning targets. Such mastery should be evaluated for each student separately. Teachers typically observe individual student performances, either formally or informally, during and at the end of a project. More importantly, teachers observe and coach student self-evaluation activities. More guidance for doing this is offered in Principle F: Instructional Support (page 29).
How should teachers help their students to self-evaluate?
Teachers should begin by explicitly teaching students how to self-evaluate, which includes demonstrating how to do it and explaining during the demonstration. In addition, continual coaching is important. Good coaching involves providing guidance during student attempts to self-evaluate. Even younger students can learn to assume much responsibility for self-evaluation.
What should a teacher do if a student or team has not finished their project by the deadline or the final project or performance does not meet standards?
This is a learning process for teachers as well as for students. Missing a deadline is an opportunity for teachers to reflect on their own practices—how they can improve the support related to project deadlines. Also, meeting deadlines is important in the real world, so consequences may be appropriate. It is important that the students continue the project until it is done and they have mastered all the related competencies. There should be a process for asking for and approving extensions. It should go into the student’s record that the project was not completed on time or that some competencies were not mastered on time, for that alone could provide considerable incentive to some students, and it will be helpful for potential employers or higher education admissions. Different students will likely benefit from different consequences, and some students may need more severe consequences than others.
Teachers also need a policy about revising a product or redoing a presentation. This may include debriefing (Raemer et al., 2011), self-reflection (Schön, 1995), or a plan of action for addressing project deficits.
For students who work mostly on individual projects or tasks, it makes more sense to end each project whenever the student has finished or mastered it and begin a new project whenever an old one is finished, but there should still be consequences for missed deadlines.
How will teachers help students reflect on their project and learning experiences?
It is also beneficial to have a process for students to reflect on each project. Reflection can be one of the most powerful learning experiences. Help students reflect on the things that went well and what they might do differently in future projects. Also think about ways to have students reflect on other students’ (or teams’) projects. Debriefing (Raemer et al., 2011) is one tool for encouraging reflection. This could be built into a teacher’s process for evaluating student learning and project performances.
Debriefing
During a debriefing, team members reflect upon a recent experience, discuss what went well, and identify opportunities for improvement. Five powerful questions to address during a debriefing are (Stanier, 2017):
1. What were we trying to do?
2. What happened?
3. What can we learn from this?
4. What should we do differently next time?
5. Now what?
How should the results of projects be displayed and celebrated?
Teachers should also think about how their students should display or otherwise share the results of their projects and celebrate their accomplishments. A culminating event can take the form of performances or product showcases. Various kinds of performances include presentations, demonstrations, contests, discussion panels, community events, and other events. Various kinds of products include reports, artifacts (objects), and multimedia programs. Ways to showcase products include performances and displays. Think about who should be invited to the performances or showcases, and where and for how long any products should be displayed. Also, think about each student’s portfolio (real or virtual)—what should go into it for each project? In all cases, think about ways to celebrate and honor the students’ accomplishments. Celebrations enhance motivation and create a sense of community.
Principle F: Instructional Support
Scaffolding should be used to support learning within a project. Teachers can support both student performance and learning on a project by adjusting the complexity of the project to the level of the student and coaching and tutoring the student just in time during the project.
Once a project has been chosen, how can a teacher adjust the complexity or difficulty of the project to fit the level of the student?
There are at least two ways to decrease the difficulty or complexity of a project. One is to simplify the real-world conditions under which the project takes place. Think of a project as a single version of a broad task. To use a familiar example, imagine the task is for someone with no driving experience to drive a car. A version of this project with simplified conditions could be to successfully drive a car with an automatic transmission roundtrip from your rural home to a store parking lot ten minutes away, in the middle of the day, during clear, dry weather. This entails driving with relatively low speed limits in light traffic with few intersections, no wet or icy roads, and no gear shifting, so much less learning is required to perform successfully under these conditions. The Simplifying Conditions Method (Reigeluth, 1999; Reigeluth & Rodgers, 1980), which is described in chapter 3 (Principle L: Sound Progressions in Content, page 62), can be used to adjust the complexity or difficulty of a project.
Another, less preferable, way to decrease the difficulty is to create artificial supports for performance of the task, such as having some parts already completed for the student or not requiring that a certain part of the task be performed. The problem with this kind of adjusting is that it makes the task less realistic, which can reduce both student motivation and ability to transfer the competency to real-world situations (unless it is followed with a project that has no such artificial supports).
While a student or team is working on the project, how can a teacher decide when to provide coaching and what that coaching should be like?
The teacher should look for situations where a team is having difficulty in its project and a hint or a few words of guidance might be sufficient to help the students overcome the difficulty (as opposed to tutoring being needed). But teachers should keep in mind that we naturally tend to rush in when we see a student or team struggling, and we typically want to tell the students how to do it right. Sometimes, it is better to hold off and observe for a while to see if students can overcome challenges on their own. When help is truly needed, it should be in the form of questions or hints.
When should the scaffolding go beyond coaching to actually tutoring the student?
Tutoring is needed whenever a learning target is difficult for the student to master. It is particularly important for the following.
• Skills that vary in the way they are done in different situations (because the tutoring includes practice in the full range of real-world situations, whereas the project only provides one situation), including higher-order thinking skills.
• Understandings that require the formation of complex mental models (Perkins & Unger, 1999; Wiske, 1998), such as understanding the water cycle with all its interrelated principles—evaporation and all the factors that increase or decrease it, condensation and all the factors that influence it, and transportation of the water and all the factors that influence it (rivers, ground water, reservoirs, and so forth).
• Memorizing information that is truly important (such as memorizing the names of all bones in the human body in medical school).
• Dispositions that reflect attitudes and values very different from those the student currently holds.
• Social-emotional learning, such as developing empathy.
In most cases, tutoring should be provided just in time before the content or competency is needed in a project. Waiting until it is needed greatly enhances student motivation to learn it. However, there are some cases in which a skill cannot be mastered in one sitting. Some require sustained development over weeks, months, or even years, in which case they should be practiced before, during, and after they are needed for a project. Merrill (2013) provides powerful research-based guidance for designing tutorials.
Should tutoring be used to certify mastery for each student?
In a word, yes. The products of a team project do not provide information about individual student mastery of the content (as discussed earlier), for three main reasons: (1) it is possible only one teammate mastered any given learning target, (2) it is possible the student was able to do what needed to be done in this one case but has not learned to generalize to other cases, and (3) assessing mastery with a final product would require, in the case of “not yet mastered,” that the student go back and remediate, which is demotivating and costs extra time. Therefore, teachers should use tutoring to certify mastery for each student during a project. Teachers can assess mastery during tutoring by having the student practice a competency on different kinds of cases until mastery is reached. Integrating teaching and testing is more effective, efficient, and motivating.
What should the tutoring be like for skills?
The nature of tutoring is different for different kinds of learning. It will look different depending on whether the learning targets entail skills, understandings, memorizing, dispositions, or social-emotional learning. For skills, including higher-order thinking skills, a tutorial should demonstrate the skill with an explanation of how to do it, and it should create an opportunity for authentic performance of the skill with immediate feedback that confirms correct performance and helps the student correct inadequate performance (usually with hints or questions, though sometimes explanations or demonstrations are needed). The practice, and often the demonstrations, should include the full range of ways the performance differs for different situations. Demonstrations and performances for higher-order thinking skills should often occur over months or even years and across a variety of subject areas and project types.
What should the tutoring be like for understandings?
Tutorials are different for the three major kinds of understanding: (1) causal, such as understanding the law of supply and demand; (2) natural process, such as understanding the life cycle of a flowering plant; and (3) conceptual, such as understanding what a civil war is.
For causal understanding, a tutorial should have two phases: acquisition and application. Whereas skills are developed gradually through practice, causal understanding is more like a light bulb that goes suddenly from dark to light. Acquisition is promoted by observing the effects of causal events. Teachers can present concrete events (examples of the causes and their effects) to the student, or the teacher can enable the student to manipulate a causal factor (or set of factors) and observe its effects. For example, a simple computer simulation could allow the student to use the arrow keys to change the thickness of a convex lens and observe the effects on the focal distance and image. Application is promoted by providing opportunities for the student to use that understanding in new situations to (a) make predictions (given a causal event, predict what its effects will be), (b) provide explanations (given an event, explain what caused it), or (c) solve problems (given a desired effect, often called the goal, identify and implement the causal events that will result in the desired effect, often called the solution).
For understanding a natural process, a tutorial should demonstrate the phases in the natural process (example) along with a description of the natural process (generality). It should provide opportunities for the student to apply the natural process (practice), like predicting what will happen next in a particular situation. Finally, the tutorial should provide immediate feedback.
For conceptual understanding, there are many dimensions, each of which is based on a different kind of relationship between two or more concepts. The most common kinds of relationships include superordinate (a civil war is a kind of war), coordinate (a civil war is not a revolutionary war), and subordinate (one type of civil war is a religious civil war). In these kinds of conceptual relationships, one concept can be either a type or a part of another. Other conceptual relationships include analogical, experiential, and functional. A tutorial should portray the relationship (description) and provide opportunities for the student to use the relationship (application) with immediate feedback. Common instructional strategies include context (for superordinate relationships), comparison and contrast (for coordinate relationships), analysis (for subordinate relationships), analogy (for analogical relationships), case study (for experiential relationships), and purpose (for functional relationships).
For more about tutoring these kinds of understanding, see Causal Understanding as a Developmental Primitive (Corrigan & Denton, 1996); Designing Games for Learning (Myers & Reigeluth, 2017); Dimensions of Causal Understanding: The Role of Complex Causal Models in Students’ Understanding of Science (Perkins & Grotzer, 2005); Meaningfulness and Instruction: Relating What Is Being Learned to What a Student Knows (Reigeluth, 1983); and An Instructional Theory for the Design of Computer-Based Simulations (Reigeluth & Schwartz, 1989).
What should the tutoring be like for memorizing information?
For information that is truly important to memorize (such as memorizing the names of all bones in the human body in medical school), drill-and-practice has two major parts: presenting what is to be memorized and practicing recalling or recognizing it. Other strategies include repetition; chunking (presenting no more than 7±2 items until mastered); spacing practice sessions across days, weeks, or months; prompting; and mnemonics (songs, rhymes, acronyms, and so on, like ROY G BIV to remember the colors in the rainbow; Myers & Reigeluth, 2017).
What should the tutoring be like for dispositions?
Tutoring for dispositions must address the three major components of dispositions: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. All three components must be developed (for a new disposition) or changed (for an existing bad disposition) simultaneously (Kamradt & Kamradt, 1999). The cognitive component requires persuasion through cognitive reasoning. The affective component requires the use of strategies that condition the student to have a positive feeling when demonstrating the disposition. An effective method is social modeling (Bandura, 1977, 1986), such as observing a person with whom the student can easily empathize in a film. Finally, the psychomotor component requires demonstrations and practice with feedback to develop the appropriate behaviors.
What should the tutoring be like for social-emotional learning?
Like dispositions, social-emotional learning has multiple components, including information, understandings, skills, and dispositions. This makes guidance for it more complex than other kinds of learning and beyond the scope of this book. Here we can say that, while much of this kind of learning occurs through normal human interactions (especially collaborative activities on projects), there are many situations in which students need or can benefit from direct tutoring. For guidance on methods for enhancing social and emotional development, see Promoting Social and Emotional Learning: Guidelines for Educators (Elias et al., 1997); Social and Emotional Learning in Action: Experiential Activities to Positively Impact School Climate (Flippo, 2016); Social and Emotional Learning in the Classroom: Promoting Mental Health and Academic Success (Merrell & Gueldner, 2010); Transforming Education’s SEL Integration Approach for Classroom Educators (Transforming Education, 2019), and Building Academic Success on Social and Emotional Learning: What Does the Research Say? (Zins, Weissberg, Wang, & Walberg, 2004).
How should the tutoring be done?
If your whole school or district is not transforming to PCBE, then teachers will need to implement project-based learning and just-in-time tutorials within the course structure. They may not be able to offer students much choice of projects. One option for tutoring is to have students in a team provide it to each other, with the teacher observing and coaching such tutoring. It is often said that the best way to learn something is to teach it, so this benefits the tutor as well as the recipient (and the teacher). A variation of this is for students to create instructional tutorials for specific learning targets. Another option is to provide links to online tutorials like those from Khan Academy (Thompson, 2011). If students are working independently on projects that address similar skills, Marzano and colleagues (2017) offer helpful advice about creating a data wall with proficiency scales, so any student can easily find out which other students might be able to help him or her learn a particular topic or skill. Eventually, there will be electronic tools to serve the function of the data wall.
Principle G: Personalized Learning
To implement personalized learning, your team needs to make decisions about learning targets, projects, scaffolding, assessments, and reflections.
Personalized Learning Targets
Your team must decide the extent to which you can personalize what each student learns, despite any constraints you are under (like high-stakes tests). All students should learn some universal content (see Principle K: Balance of Universal Content and Individual Strengths, page 61), and it is likely that your state requires all students to learn certain content. Still, there are valuable opportunities for personalizing content. To the extent that teachers can let each student choose her or his targets, it will enhance motivation and allow students to cultivate their individual talents. Here are a few questions you might consider.
Roughly what percentage of the learning targets for a given period do we think should be personalized (selected by the student)?
For universal content and content on which students undergo high-stakes testing, you may not be willing or able to allow student choice. When deciding what portion of learning targets you’ll allow students to choose in any given project period, begin with the ideal and compromise as necessary for your first implementation. Your ideal may be as high as 50 percent, depending on the developmental level of the students, but you may need to initially compromise to around 10–20 percent.
Which targets should be selected by students?
To the extent that teachers can let each student choose her or his targets, the better—both to enhance motivation and to allow students to cultivate their individual talents. Thinking in the ideal, your team first needs to use your professional judgment to decide which targets are not so important that all students should be required to master them (which we call universal targets—see principle K, page 61), even if they are presently required by your state standards or district guidelines. Second, for the universal targets, teachers can still give students some choice as to which of them to work on when. Third, beyond the universal targets, for whatever percent of content students are allowed to choose, teachers should give students great latitude for the selection of targets of personal interest.
How should those targets be personalized?
Students typically need guidance to choose their own learning targets appropriately. It usually helps to start by having each student think about possible career goals (long-term goals—which will not be easy, given that most students haven’t thought much about that), and then to think about intermediate-term goals (stepping stones) that will help them to achieve those goals (Schutz & Lanehart, 1994). In that process, have each student think about civic responsibilities and other nonwork responsibilities and set intermediate-term goals that will help them meet those responsibilities. With this context, students may make better choices about learning targets for the next project period.
Career-Planning Tools
States around the country have approved new laws requiring schools to encourage career planning among high school students. This is promoting the development of online tools like Naviance, Kuder, and Career Cruising. It is likely that such tools will change significantly over the next few years, so we encourage your team to do a thorough search.
Personalized Projects
Various students can achieve the same learning targets through many kinds of projects. Different topics for the same content, different groupings (individual or team), and different kinds of products or presentation formats are a few ways the projects can be personalized. Some students may be more motivated to learn math in a project related to sports, while others may prefer one related to feeding the hungry in their community, and others. The more that teachers can personalize the projects through which students learn, the better.
Should a teacher help students to design their own projects, offer students a menu of projects to choose from, or adapt a project from such a menu?
In some schools, like the Minnesota New Country School (see chapter 7, page 121), teachers show students the state standards they must master, and then support students as they design their own projects to develop and demonstrate mastery of those standards. When students are accustomed to doing this throughout their schooling years, it works quite well. This student-led approach creates a higher level of motivation that results in deeper learning and better long-term retention, as well as the development of higher-order thinking and self-direction skills. Your team should discuss the supports necessary for teachers to help students design their own projects, compared to offering students a menu of projects to choose from and adapt or just selecting projects for students. Considerations include the logistics of each teacher monitoring, supporting, and assessing a number of different projects (for example, ten to twelve different projects compared to three to five projects or a single project), the tools available to support this work, and the capacity of individual teachers.
If a teacher decides to offer a menu of projects, how should she or he create that menu?
Teachers can also offer students a menu of projects to choose from or adapt. There are many online project banks that offer projects designed by teachers or other experts. If the teacher can’t find good projects on the internet, then he or she will need to design them. There are resources to help in this task. See Project Libraries and Project Design Guidance for resources related to both project banks and project design.
Project Libraries and Project Design Guidance
New England Board of Higher Education (www.pblprojects.org) has, with National Science Foundation funding, produced a clearinghouse of teachers’ resources for project-based learning.
Mrs. O’s House (www.mrsoshouse.com/pbl/pblin.html) provides a variety of problem-based learning projects.
PBLWorks (pblworks.org) offers free projects that it has curated from online project libraries. It also helps teachers use project-based learning (PBL) in all grade levels and subject areas. It creates, gathers, and shares high-quality PBL instructional practices and products, and provides services to teachers (professional development), schools (schoolwide processes and structures to support PBL), and districts (creating and sustaining districtwide PBL initiatives).
TeachThought (http://www.teachthought.com/project-based-learning/a-better-list-of-ideas-for-project-based-learning) provides a list of ideas for project-based learning for kindergarten through precalculus.
Lesson Planet (http://www.lessonplanet.com/) offers project-based learning lessons from 200,000 reviewed lesson plans.
Edutopia (http://www.edutopia.org) offers free materials and downloads for building rigorous projects for all grade levels.
Personalized Scaffolding
To maximize learning in a project-based learning environment, teachers must provide coaching and just-in-time tutorials during the projects. It is difficult to know how to personalize the quantity and quality of each, but we provide some guidance here.
How can a teacher personalize the quantity of coaching and tutoring?
Some students need more support for learning than others—more coaching, more demonstrations, more practice with feedback. A teacher has three options. First, if your school has an LMS with tutorials on all the new content, the teacher can cue students as to when to use them, and the tutorials provide the quantity of demonstrations and practice needed by each student to reach mastery. Alternatively, teachers can try to provide all the coaching and tutoring themselves, which is obviously a large burden. Finally, the students can provide each other with the amount of support they need. If a teacher uses team-based projects and develops a collaborative culture (which is enhanced by multi-year mentoring—see principle R, page 91), the students will provide each other with more coaching and tutoring within their teams as needed and can go to the teacher if they need more help. If the students have individual projects, the teacher can have students work on them in a common area, and encourage the students to go to each other first when they need to learn something new and ask the teacher as a last resort. Research shows that such peer assistance benefits the student giving help as well as the one receiving it (Goodlad & Hirst, 1989; Gordon, 2005; Topping & Ehly, 1998).
How can a teacher personalize the quality of coaching and tutoring?
Students differ in many ways: their interests, how loud or quiet they prefer the learning environment, how much motivational support they need, whether they are more comfortable with abstract or concrete thinking, whether they prefer working with someone else or alone, and much more. To the extent that coaching and tutoring take such individual differences into account, their quality will improve. Doing so requires the teacher to know each student well. But with self-directed learning, it is also important for the teacher to help individual students know their own preferences well. This teaches students to understand how they learn best and to advocate for the support they need. It is difficult but helpful to relate the demonstrations and practice to the student’s interests and tailor them to the student’s preferences. Eventually, intelligent tutoring systems will be developed to learn such things about each student and personalize the coaching and tutoring effectively.
Personalized Assessment
Personalizing assessment empowers and motivates students. Here are a few questions your team should consider.
Who should assess the student?
In most cases, the teacher will assess each student. But there are considerable benefits to having students assess themselves as well. It develops an important life skill, empowers the student, and often provides a deeper understanding of the content. Similarly, there are benefits to peer assessment. It typically enhances the learning of both students, and the feedback provided is usually more thorough (and personalized) than the teacher can afford to give to every student. If your school has an LMS with good tutorials, it can be designed to provide assessment with highly personalized feedback. Finally, teachers might consider using outside experts to assess final products or presentations for projects. This provides a level of authenticity that can be motivating for students.
What format should the assessment take?
Different students can benefit from different formats for assessment. Options include live performances, written reports, video reports, material products, software, and much more. Helping students to choose their formats empowers students and enhances their motivation.
Personalized Reflection
Having students reflect on their project experiences is one of the most powerful and underused instructional strategies. Here are a few questions for your team to consider.
How can teachers personalize reflection on the way the project was conducted?
Teachers can personalize the timing of the reflection by doing it during the project, at the end of the project, or both. They can personalize the format of the reflection by having it done in writing or through discussion, or a combination of the two. And they can personalize the participants by having it done individually, as a team, or in a large group with several teams. Of course, the points of reflection—often guided by a rubric—can also be personalized.
How can teachers personalize reflection on the learning that occurred?
Teachers can similarly personalize the timing, format, participants, and points of reflection on learning. The points of reflection could address the questions, What were the most important things you learned? How good was the learning process? How could it have been better?
Personal Learning Plans
When conceptualizing your approach to personalized learning plans, there are several questions your team should consider.
What should a PLP be like?
