The Ford PAS NGL Thought Leader Series

This month's topic:
Curriculum as a Tool for Meaningful Project-Based Learning

By Ilene Kantrov and Leslie F. Hergert
Pathways to College and Careers, Learning and Teaching Division
Education Development Center, Inc.

Project-Based Learning

Teachers know that their students like to do things. John Dewey advocated for hands-on, student-directed learning over a hundred years ago. Teachers make up projects for students to do in classrooms, organize field trips and career explorations, engage students in service-learning, and create other ways to make learning active and help students make connections between school work and life.

Project-based learning (PBL) has become a field in itself with experts and advocates working to make sure that PBL is an integral approach to teaching and learning, rather than an add-on activity, and is structured in ways that ensure students learn required knowledge and skills. The Buck Institute for Education, a leading advocate for PBL, defines it as a "systematic teaching method that engages students in learning knowledge and skills through an extended inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions and carefully designed products and tasks" (www.bie.org). Research on this approach shows promise for engaging students and promoting critical thinking, while at the same time leading to results on standardized tests comparable to or better than other approaches (e.g., lectures) (Ravitz, 2009; Walker and Leary, 2009).

The Buck Institute definition includes many elements that are essential to the success of PBL as a teaching and learning strategy: it must be systematic, help students learn knowledge and skills, include an extended inquiry process, be structured around authentic questions, and result in carefully designed products. To include all these elements requires careful planning, research and writing skills, and coordination and support of students through a complex process. That is, successful PBL requires a well-designed curriculum.

Curriculum for PBL

A strong curriculum is more than the materials used by teachers and students in the classroom and/or the lesson or unit plans that provide instructions for classroom work. A curriculum is a coherent plan that links goals for learning and the work that happens in the classroom. A curriculum embodies an approach to teaching and learning, which distinguishes it from a textbook. It is both a course of study and a set of tools that guide teachers to help students develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that they need for success in postsecondary education, employment, and civic participation. Students engaged in PBL typically work on addressing a real-world problem over an extended period of time; engage in in-depth research, collaboration, and critical thinking; and work across disciplines to create novel solutions.

Our own organization, Education Development Center (EDC), has been developing engaging and innovative curricula for over 50 years. Currently, we are developing several inquiry- and project-based high school curricula that blend academic work with career and technical education and exploration, and are both academically challenging and engaging for students. For the Ford Partnership for Advanced Studies (Ford PAS) program, EDC, in collaboration with Ford Motor Company Fund, has developed 20 curriculum modules in business, science, economics, technology, and other fields, which are being used in over 600 schools nationwide (www.fordpas.org). EDC is also developing similar curricula in Digital Media Arts and Law and Justice as part of The James Irvine Foundation’s Linked Learning initiative in California (www.irvine.org).

The impact of such curricula can be dramatic. In the spring of 2007, Antwon Crutcher was enrolled in Donna Gilley's Introduction to Business class at John Overton High School in Nashville, Tennessee. Antwon, a senior, was just getting by in school, and his attendance was spotty. Ms. Gilley was teaching a project-based module, Planning for Business Success, from the Ford PAS curriculum in which students are challenged and supported to develop their own business plans. In this module, students learn to use spreadsheets for cost analyses, conduct Internet research, design market research surveys, use basic statistics to analyze survey results, make decisions and solve problems in teams, and give and receive feedback to teammates. Antwon put hours of work into his plan for Prestige Auto Detailing, a custom auto-detailing business, which was so impressive that Ms. Gilley encouraged him to enter a national business plan competition. Antwon’s entry won the state competition, advancing him to the National Business Professionals of America competition in New York. Though he had previously expressed no desire to go on to college, his renewed interest in learning made him receptive to Ms. Gilley's encouragement, and he applied and was accepted to Nashville State Community College (NSCC). After a year at community college, he transferred to the business program at Middle Tennessee State University, where he is now completing his sophomore year.

A highly experienced and skilled teacher, Ms. Gilley might well have inspired Antwon even without the help of the Ford PAS curriculum. But, she reported, "having a structured curriculum that is designed around 21st century skills and true interdisciplinary topics is invaluable to a teacher. For many years, teachers have been charged with creating curriculum that would work with several teachers, develop resources and assessments, and teach/facilitate the units. With the Ford PAS curriculum, teachers can spend their time on motivation of students and personalizing the curriculum instead of development—what a blessing!"

Professionally Developed Curriculum Resources

Some teachers develop their own curricula for PBL in their classes. They know the standards they need to cover and they know their students. Yet most teachers do not have the time to research, plan, develop, and test such curricula for every project. A strong curriculum supports teachers in using PBL more often by freeing them from having to develop every project and providing a structure for those projects they do want to develop. An engaging, research-based curriculum enables teachers to best serve their students’ needs and employ their professional judgment, while at the same time benefiting from the best research about both their subjects and how students learn.

Often teachers are reluctant to initiate PBL because of the difficulty of doing it well. Projects must be structured to address the content students are expected to learn and to provide scaffolds for learning, supports for diverse learners. The project's focus may require access to expertise that is outside teachers' immediate reach. We know from our own experience how time consuming it is to write a strong curriculum and ensure that it works well.

EDC curriculum writers (who also typically have experience in the classroom) visit workplaces and talk to industry professionals about what their work entails and what knowledge and skills are essential for their success. They talk with teachers about content to be addressed, students' interests, and teaching challenges. The product of this collaborative effort is a coherent curriculum design that articulates learning goals focused on "big ideas" and aligned with both academic and workplace standards. The writers and editors take the curriculum materials through an iterative process of multiple drafts, external review by both teachers and industry practitioners, and revisions. They pilot-test the materials in a variety of settings with a range of students, observing the curriculum in the classroom and collecting data from both teachers and students to inform revisions. Finally, design professionals help to configure and format the final products so that they are usable by both teachers and students.

High-quality curriculum materials can enhance teachers' capacity to best reach their students and help them learn subject knowledge and related skills in an engaging way. Rather than detracting from teachers' knowledge and expertise, curriculum can be a helpful tool to enable teachers to guide and inform classroom practice, as well as deepen their understanding of both their subject areas and effective pedagogy. A well-organized curriculum can free teachers to focus on understanding the strengths and needs of their students and gear their instruction to best support students' learning.

As a teacher using a middle grades mathematics curriculum funded by the National Science Foundation and designed by professional curriculum developers once told us, "The more you look at how the curriculum developers have structured every single problem, the more you realize the thought that went into each problem to build toward understanding important ideas. Now that I have a comprehensive curriculum to follow, I have a better sense of where I'm going...It also helps a lot to know that the order of units suggested in the program is based on research about how kids learn math and a lot of field-test experience about what works well for students" (Kantrov and Goldsmith, p. 35).

What a PBL Curriculum Looks Like

Curriculum to support PBL must include clear and developmentally appropriate learning goals, formative assessments to guide instruction and summative assessments to measure achievement of learning goals, and classroom work that scaffolds learning as students carry out such complex projects. Scaffolding has been defined as "providing assistance . . . enabling a child or novice to solve a problem, carrying out a task or achieving a goal that he or she would not be able to achieve on his or her own" (Puntambekar & Hübscher, 2005). For example, scaffolding can include providing students with questions and procedures to focus and structure their investigations, selecting materials for them to use in creating a product that achieves the project's goals, modeling by the teacher of a skill that students need in order to carry out the project, and structuring supports for diverse learners over the course of the project. As students develop competence, scaffolds are intended to be gradually removed (to "fade") so that students increasingly carry out complex tasks on their own.

The Ford PAS curriculum provides many examples of how a quality curriculum can support teachers in implementing a PBL approach. For instance, the module Media and Messages is organized around developing communication skills needed to improve a business. Students are given a role and several challenges: to interview/survey the target audience for the business, choose a new product, develop an advertising campaign, and use persuasive speaking skills to make a final presentation of their ideas. The unit was developed with input from business and marketing experts as well as teachers, drew on research on effective adolescent literacy development, and was pilot-tested in several classrooms. The final product includes a student guide, a teacher guide, handouts, readings, Web-based resources, and assessment tools. Many teachers have used the module as designed to teach literacy skills in an engaging way and to introduce students to some of the opportunities and challenges of business careers. Others have extended the unit to encourage students to apply the principles and skills they have learned to a local business or a cause they feel passionate about. (The curriculum is available at no cost on the Ford PAS Web site, www.fordpas.org).

A key characteristic of well-designed PBL curricula is that the projects are what John Bransford calls "keystone" rather than "capstone" projects. In a capstone project, students are asked to "apply" what they have learned in a culminating project. In a "keystone" project, the project—such as the design of a business plan or the development of an advertising campaign for a new business in the Ford PAS modules described in this article—drives students' learning throughout their learning experience. Students learn knowledge and develop skills as they need them to carry out components of the project. This approach reflects the research on how young people learn which has been the subject of cognitive science studies over the past 30+ years (Bransford, J., personal communication, 2009).

The Power of Project-Based Curriculum

Our experiences with Ford PAS, Digital Media Arts, and Law and Justice provide inspiring evidence of the potential of a high-quality, professionally developed curriculum. In the hands of skilled and dedicated teachers, it can transform teaching and learning. Combined with ongoing professional development and reflection, such curricula can also enable teachers to expand PBL and other effective strategies throughout their practice. Ultimately, of course, what matters most is the experience of students. Echoing Antwon, Ariel, a student at Douglas Byrd High School, in Fayetteville, N.C., offers this assessment of the potential for well-developed curricula: "Everything about [Ford PAS] seems to be helping me improve my studies and understand myself better.... [Ford PAS] opened my mind to the different things I can be.... It's not just one road. You have many options you can choose."

References

Buck Institute for Education. (2010). What is PBL? Downloaded March 29, 2010, from http://www.bie.org/about/what_is_pbl

Kantrov, I., and Goldsmith, L. T. (2001). Guiding curriculum decisions for middle-grades mathematics. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Puntambekar, S., and Hübscher, R. (2005). Tools for scaffolding students in a complex environment: What have we gained and what have we missed? Educational Psychologist 40(2), 1-12.

Ravitz, J. (2009)..Introduction: Summarizing findings and looking ahead to a new generation of PBL research." Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning 3(1), Article 2.

Walker, A., and Leary, H. (2009). A problem based learning meta analysis: Differences across problem types, implementation types, disciplines, and assessment levels. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning 3(1).

Previous Thought Leader Essays:

Grow and Sustain Career Academies Through Annual Evaluations
By Tom Besaw, CTE Director, Volusia County

High School Education: Multiple Pathways and Student Choice
By Charles "Charlie" Mojkowski, Independent Consultant and a Senior Associate, Big Picture Learning (www.bigpicturelearning.org) and the Alternative High School Initiative (www.ahsi.org)

Curriculum: What Is It, and Why Do We Need It?
By Ilene Kantrov, Director, Center for Educational Resources and Outreach, Education Development Center, Inc.

Earning Respect for Career Academies — and Keeping it
By Hans Meeder, President, Meeder Consulting Group

Supporting Career Academies is Smart Business, not Charity
By Richard K. Delano, Ford Motor Company Fund Advisory Council

Outlining the Financial Benefits and Positive Outcomes of Career Academies and Demonstrating how They More Than Justify the Investments in Building a Career Academy Network
By Richard K. Delano, Ford Motor Company Fund Advisory Council

Reinventing the Workforce and Bolstering the Economy through Career Academies and More Relevant High Schools
By Cheryl Carrier, Program Director, 21st Century Education Programs, Ford Motor Company Fund