Sustaining Project-Based Learning Over Time: What Makes a New Practice Stick?

• In Event: Expanding Opportunities for Equity-Based Practice: A Collaborative Study of Implementation

Abstract

Problem and Objectives. Project-based learning is a vehicle for equitable education experiences for students with growing evidence for the effectiveness of PBL approaches suggesting that PBL is worth sustaining and scaling in schools (Condliffe et al., 2017; Geier et al., 2008; Parker et al., 2013). History and our own experiences supporting teachers underscores challenges to scaling PBL. Enacting PBL curriculum is a complex process and often involves new pedagogies and ways of organizing the learning environment (Polman, 2000) and innovations, such as PBL, are sustained less frequently in schools with fewer resources and more students of color (e.g., Fishman et al., 2011). By exploring what it looks like for teachers to sustain PBL in Language Arts across multiple years, we contribute new insights on the enabling conditions for PBL that disrupt the reproduction of inequitable access to PBL. Understanding how and why teachers sustained the innovation can inform future scaling efforts in under-resourced schools.

Theoretical Framework. While traditional definitions of scale rely upon fidelity of implementation as the innovation is spread, we embrace Morel and colleagues’ (2019) expansion of scale to include adaptation and reinvention. We draw upon the Coburn’s (2003) four dimensions of scale - sustainability, depth, shift in ownership, and spread - as analytic tools to investigate the ways consequential change in classrooms occurred, the extent to which the changes endured across time, and how teachers demonstrated ownership for PBL.

Methods. We examine data from 7 teachers at 4 schools engaged in a larger multi-year 9th grade ELA-PBL project, including: classroom observation and coaching fieldnotes, teacher interviews and surveys, written reflections, and instructional logs. We used thematic coding (Gibbs, 2012) to analyze data chronologically for each teacher, organizing themes around initial drivers, instructional shifts, shift in ownership, and sustainability.

Findings. Findings illustrate common themes for enabling conditions identified across the Collaboratory. All teachers in the study reported continued use of the PBL curriculum and they identified authenticity as the PBL design principle (Table 1) they continued to apply to their instruction. Sustainability appeared dependent on the connection for teachers between their initial drivers (to engage in PBL) and their instructional shifts. Teachers who shifted their instruction, related to drivers, were more likely to sustain elements of PBL. Teachers shifted their practice to align more closely with the PBL design principles to improve their teaching, and these small shifts supported teachers in sustaining PBL. Results also indicate that recognizing students’ assets is an important enabling condition for sustaining PBL.

Significance. Teachers must find aspects of PBL that resonate and excite them to sustain and deepen PBL instruction, and it is important that they feel agency in the process. Findings build on expanded notions of scale, in that teachers adapted and reinvented PBL design principles. Supports need to be in place for teachers and schools to implement and sustain PBL, and this is important to ensure equitable access to PBL across various contexts. Lessons learned can inform policies related to scaling equity-based instruction and professional development for teachers.

Authors

• Ashley Seidel Potvin, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Alison Gould Boardman, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Kristina M Stamatis, University of Nebraska - Omaha