National Survey of PBL and High School Reform

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Collected articles from BIE's 2007 national survey, with data from approximately 400 academic high school teachers who used PBL in math, science, social studies or English in various high school settings. The major reports are listed below, with a few examples of key findings and links to more information.

Beyond changing culture in small high schools: Reform models and changing instruction with project-based learning. Peabody Journal of Education, 85(3), 290-313.

This article appeared in a special issue on “Transforming the American High School: The Premise and Promise of Small Learning Communities”.

Teacher culture was reformed much more often than student culture and instruction.
Reform models were particularly strong on instructional reforms (including PBL) and student culture.
Start-ups outpaced conversion high schools, but conversions had more reforms than large comprehensive schools.

Project Based Learning as a Catalyst in Reforming High Schools. Paper presented at Annual Meetings of the American Educational Research Association. New York, NY: March 27, 2008.

This report summarizes descriptive findings and key relationships that were identified in the study.

PBL is central to progressive reforms in small high schools, especially in reform models.
PBL is related to teaching across the curriculum, student personalization and community engagement.
The most professionally engaged teachers were more frequent users of project based learning and related practices.
There is no indication that use of PBL is limited by student prior achievement, language, ethnicity or family income.

New Tech High Schools: Results of the National Survey of PBL and High School Reform. Novato, CA: Buck Institute for Education.

BIE provided data for all the partners who participated in our survey. The first part of this report summarizes how reform network teachers differ from others overall. The second part focuses on New Tech teachers.

Reform model teachers more often reported...

using PBL to a much greater extent in their academic courses
having taught 5 or fewer years
being involved in school leadership, setting policies, making decisions, establishing norms
having a school-wide emphasis on skills beyond academics and assessments that included students' projects or portfolios
students forming close academic advising or mentoring relationships with teachers and encouraging and supporting their peers as learners
students making their own decisions about what to learn or how to learn it

Teachers in New Tech Network schools more frequently reported

having had extensive professional development and increased their use of PBL
conducting projects that a) specified content standards, b) used rubrics to guide student work, and c) created a need to know for students prior to teaching content
fewer challenges to PBL, such as a) lack of time or b) lack of models for conducting projects in their subject
had access to a variety of web-based technologies to support PBL
students conducting inquiry activities, giving their best effort and supporting their peers as learners
using assessments such as open-ended problems, group work, and student peer reviews

Assessing the impact of online technologies on PBL use in US high schools. Paper presented at Association for Educational Communications and Technology. Anaheim, CA: October 28, 2010.

This paper explores how online technologies contribute to teacher use of project-based learning. Note. There have been versions of these findings presented at SITE, ISTE and AERA.

There is a greater amount of PBL use and teachers report fewer challenges and a greater sense of preparedness when they use more online technologies to support their practice.
While use of technologies differs across school types, the relationship of their use to PBL use is surprisingly consistent across school type and subjects taught.
Many teachers have browsed online libraries of projects and resources, use of online features for planning and managing projects is rare, except in the reform model schools.
In larger, comprehensive schools use of a feature “to get feedback from other teachers or adults” was related to five of the nine PBL preparedness tasks.
Among science teachers we see online feature use is associated with more PBL use (r=.36), a decrease in challenges (r=-.34) and increase in preparedness (r=.51).
Although math teachers reported the least PBL use (mean z score =-.35) and felt least prepared (z=-.31), there was a strong correlation between online feature use and PBL use (r=.60, p < .001).
There was a strong relationship between PBL use and use of online technologies among social studies teachers (r=.57, p < .001)
English teachers who used more online features felt better prepared for PBL use (r=.33, p < .01).

The survey instrument and raw data showing frequencies for each response are also available.