Tag: project based learning

From Progressive to Balanced: Why Teachers Matter in the Traditional vs Progressive Education Debate

I have been on Twitter a while. For most of that time I’ve been a lurker. In Canada, I did participate for a while in #CdnEdChat which was where I discovered what a great platform Twitter could be for CPD. It is amazing the amount of information that can be disseminated in 140 characters or less. Now I don’t have time to get involved in the same way as I did in Canada but still I always find myself checking out Twitter to see what’s current and newsworthy.

One of the debates that I find fascinating is the one between traditional and progressive educationalists and their advocates. I suspect this debate is not nearly as polarised as tweets on Twitter would suggest. In the past, I would certainly have described myself much more progressive than traditional in my outlook. I was someone who wholeheartedly embraced project-based learning but as I become more experienced the more I believe that we are called teachers for a reason. I’m not to saying project-based learning doesn’t have a place in the Primary classroom but rather that it is only one of the tools we should be using.

I love the idea of self-directed learning. Certainly, I think that by the time students leave school this should be something they are able to do. But at what point does this become possible? There are a whole raft of skills and knowledge that you need to be able to direct your own learning. These are not acquired by osmosis. Careful and purposeful teaching is needed if students are to gain the necessary skills and knowledge needed to direct their own learning. That is the job of a teacher.

As I mentioned in a previous blog the other issue I have with Discovery learning is that while it may be effective in some circumstances it’s not efficient. If memory serves I think it was Jared Diamond who pointed out that scholars believe writing was ‘invented’ independently 5 times in history. I only point this out to illustrate how difficult learning to write is and that if we left our students to discover it by themselves it would take a long time indeed for them to learn how to write.

What I do find remarkable is that there is a debate about ‘traditional’ vs.’progressive’ education. When I was a university, admittedly a while ago, I don’t recall any debate. It was a given that progressive, child-centered education was the only type of education that was worth learning about. (There is another possibility. There was a debate but I was such a bad student I missed it…) So it is interesting to me that there is such fervent debate about it today. In part, this is to be expected as our understanding of how humans learn deepens and cognitive science is able to impart knowledge that earlier theorists didn’t have access to.

The debate is an important one and one I will keep following with interest. My views have evolved over time. A combination of new information and more teaching experience is reinforcing the belief, that while there is a place for project-based learning, a taught curriculum is necessary if students are to maximise their potential as learners.

Maximizing Learning Time: Reevaluating PBL Strategies

I was reading this blog post by Greg Ashman and I had a bit of an epiphany.

Bear in mind I am a Primary teacher so my focus and expertise are somewhat different from my secondary colleagues. With that said I have always thought and believed that project-based learning (PBL) has a place in a teachers’ toolkit. When it’s done well there can be a lot of experiential learning going on that doesn’t happen with explicit instruction.

Lately, however, I’ve had this nagging feeling that I was missing something really obvious. Where I am teaching now we have more subject specialists that you ordinarily find in a UK Primary School. As a consequence, I have around 8 hours prep time a week. Which is amazing, it means most of my work is done during working hours and things like my reading and blogs get to be done at home. An unintended consequence of this is that I don’t have an as much contact time with my class as I would perhaps like or need. So when I read Greg’s article a lightbulb went off in my head.

The last project-based learning we did was based on Water, focussing on issues of water scarcity. It was a paired activity that involved some research, some design and a presentation to their classmates about what they discovered. My students were (mostly) engaged, enjoyed it and learned from it. It was a project that highlighted both the strengths and weaknesses of PBL (not the subject of this blog post) and it took a lot of time.

So reading Greg’s post was an ‘ah-ha’ for me in that the nagging feeling I had was illuminated. Time is a valuable commodity at school, especially here. PBL is great for many things but it is not an efficient vehicle for learning. There is a lot of learning by trial and error, a lot of “have you thought about this or considered that?” Great questions but they take time to pose, clarify and answer.

I’m not suggesting that there is no place for PBL in Primary School or indeed Secondary School, far from it. But I am thinking that my use of it as a catalyst for learning will have to be more judicious going forward. Time is a valuable commodity and if ‘learning-focused education’ is more efficient in helping students develop their thinking and progress their learning, then this will have to be a consideration going forward.