Shifting to Project-Based Learning in the Advanced Placement Context

• In Event: 18.024 - Evaluating the Jump on College: Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and College Prep Programs

Abstract

Students must learn deeply to develop and transfer skills, knowledge, and attitudes. Student-centered “project-based learning” (PBL) may be more effective than “transmission” lecture-based instruction at developing deeper learning. In any instructional context, shifting from transmission to PBL is challenging for teachers and students. The Advanced Placement (AP) curriculum framework breadth and examination focus exacerbate the challenge. We harnessed a large-scale randomized controlled trial to investigate if and how experienced AP Environmental Science and U.S. Government treatment teachers could shift their practice towards PBL. Though challenging and under conditions of optimal support, relative to randomly-assigned control teachers treatment teachers shifted in the direction of greater emphasis on deeper learning objectives, more student-centered pedagogy, more authenticity, and less lecture and explicit examination-preparation.

Authors

• Anna Rosefsky Saavedra, University of Southern California

• Amie Rapaport, Gibson Consulting Group

• Elizabeth Marwah, Gibson Consulting Group

• Jill Carle, Gibson Consulting Group

• Ying Liu, University of Southern California

• Sarah Jean Johnson, University of California - Los Angeles

• Janet Li

• Danial Aaron Hoepfner, Gibson Consulting Group

• Marshall Garland, Gibson Consulting Group, Inc.