June 25-29, 2017

Each Friday we post a list of articles, blog posts, research studies, and other resources we’ve run across that relate to Project Based Learning.

Here’s what we liked this week:

Unboxed: Journal of Adult Learning
High Tech High
If you haven’t heard of it before, check out this super-useful series from High Tech High. In the spring 2017 issue, teachers share stories about equity and deeper learning, Dewey vs. Friere, and a project about Romeo and Juliet.

PBL World Educators Focus on Process
Getting Smart
Emily Liebtag reports on BIE’s recent PBL World event, with reflections on the importance of process in PBL: the process of learning, of creating project products, of critique and revision.

Leaders Must 'Walk the Walk' and Create a Culture of Innovation
Education Week Teacher
Larry Ferlazzo shares responses to the question, “How can school leaders (directors, principals) support curriculum innovations?” I especially like this piece of advice: “Innovation takes time and takes collaboration.”

The Purposes of High Quality PBL
Getting Smart
Why students today need what PBL teaches, and how educators can compare their practice to the emerging consensus on what high-quality PBL is.

What Teens Want From Their Schools: A National Survey of High School Student Engagement
Thomas B. Fordham Institute
A new study worth digging into for nuggets that support the use of PBL, such as, “Among high school students who consider dropping out, half cite lack of engagement with the school as a primary reason, and 42 percent report that they don’t see value in the schoolwork they are asked to do.”

When Finnish Teachers Work in America’s Public Schools
The Atlantic
This should not happen in a PBL school; one Finnish teacher in an American school said, “I feel rushed, nothing gets done properly; there is very little joy, and no time for reflection or creative thinking (in order to create meaningful activities for students).”

Ginger and Amy Storer Converse about PBL
Remarkable Chatter podcast
Lots of good stuff in this podcast from a curriculum coach in Montgomery ISD, bear Houston TX., including how she started in PBL and learned the difference between it and just doing “projects.” Nice examples of “main course” projects she designed.

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