Exploring the Enabling Conditions for High-Quality Project-Based Learning

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

Abstract

Problem and Objectives. Many policies and curricula promote rote and decontextualized instruction for students of color and students impacted by poverty (Au & Gourd, 2013). Alongside legacies of racial oppression, this has meant that white and affluent students often have greater access to authentic, student-centered instruction (Salazar, 2013). Many have called for greater access to progressive educational approaches for poverty-impacted communities (Preus, 2012). However, supporting the spread of progressive instructional approaches, like project-based learning (PBL), requires sustained engagement from school and district-level educational leaders. This study examines how leaders conceptualize their role in supporting and spreading PBL and the levers they use in these efforts.

Theoretical Framework. To conceptualize scale, we draw on Coburn’s (2003) qualitative analysis of scale, which reimagines the concept of scale by examining the elements of Depth, Shift in Ownership, Spread, and Sustainability. To conceptualize the levers leaders employ when attempting to scale innovations, we use Giddens’ (1991) structuration theory, which examines both organizational structure and individual agency as factors that affect the work of actors within a system.

Methods. Using a collective case study design, we followed nine instructional leaders’ across five different educational settings engaged in PBL implementation and asked the following questions:
How do leaders conceptualize their role in supporting meaningful project-based learning?
How do leaders understand the levers at their disposal to facilitate instructional change and improvement?
What theory of change or strategies do leaders employ when pursuing the spread of PBL?

Data Sources
Data sources included twenty seven interviews (three per participant). In addition, each participant submitted a portfolio of plans and reflections. Recordings of group professional development sessions were used to triangulate findings from portfolios and interviews.

Data Analysis
Participants were first considered as individual cases, then grouped by workplace in order to discern findings that are particular to a school or network. As data were analyzed, the enabling conditions that support the spread of PBL were also consolidated into a system map, which was used to highlight differences between sites and also to further explore trends in the data.

Findings. Initial analysis suggests that how leaders conceptualize their role in supporting high-quality PBL depends on many organizational factors: their end goal for PBL implementation, their organization’s commitment, organizational support, the leader’s leverage, and their capacity to do the work. With regards to the strategies leaders employ in order to support the spread of PBL, we have determined five different approaches to supporting organizational change: incorporation into existing frameworks, intense professional development with a select group, incorporating PBL as an elective, supporting individual teachers as PBL incubators, and organizing all teachers to try PBL at once.

Significance. Transforming the kinds of rote and decontextualized instruction that are frequently offered to black and brown students requires leaders at the school and district levels to engage with systems-level change that is atypical in an instructional leadership role. Excellent instruction within a single classroom is notable, but only when excellent instruction is brought to numerous classrooms across different systems will equity be possible.

Authors

• Rachel Kuck, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Sarah Schneider Kavanagh, University of Pennsylvania