Scaling Up Project-Based Learning (PBL) Enactments: A Collaboratory Perspective on Enabling PBL to Support Equity

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

Abstract

Problem and Objectives. Aggregating knowledge from design-based implementation research (DBIR) for large-scale instructional improvement continues to be a challenge to the field (Cobb et al., 2017), just as more stakeholders have embraced this approach to better understand how to initiate and sustain innovations in educational systems . The use of collaborative DBIR holds promise for knowledge building, at the intersection of design, implementation, scale, and equity.

This paper describes a multi-project DBIR effort, a collaboratory (Olson, Zimmerman, & Bos, 2008; St. John, Helms, & Stokes, 2018) focused on implementation of project-based learning (PBL; Baines et al., 2015) . We describe the collaboratory’s structure and methods used to develop shared goals and questions guiding the investigation of variation across projects.

Theoretical Framework. This collaboratory was intentionally established with research projects that shared a goal of understanding PBL implementation (St. John et al., 2018), allowing a common purpose and language to synthesize across individual projects without constraints on established project plans. Building on prior DBIR arguments, this collaboratory explored the assumption that examining interactions between practices of interest and local implementation contexts across settings/stakeholders would provide critical insights about implementation variation and thus provide insights around sustainability and scale. Without this collaborative approach, these insights would require multiple, successive research efforts to develop.

Methods. The focus on enabling conditions of rigorous PBL was facilitated by a common theoretical lens, Coburn’s (2003) framework for reconceptualizing “scale”. Using this framework, teams examined commonalities and variations across their implementation contexts. We sought to identify core variables that support scaling (i.e., depth, sustainability, spread, and shift in ownership of PBL implementation efforts). Teams investigated how scaling PBL can support equitable opportunities and outcomes for learners, including identifying critical enabling conditions or practices across settings, extending frameworks describing PBL.

Using a systems perspective (Lemke & Sabelli, 2008), the group identified conditions that supported adoption of PBL in each project and then developed a common ‘map’. This map represented project insights around enabling conditions of PBL implementation, with a specific focus on practices, aligned with each group’s attention to equity. Case studies of teachers and school leaders provided evidence of how these common conditions emerged in each site.

Findings. Figure 1 illustrates common enabling conditions that emerged across the projects that were critical to initiating and sustaining PBL, including the importance of connection to community, teacher agency in adopting practices, and asset views of student learning and engagement. Teams also identified enabling conditions specific to their individual contexts and components related to the emergence of common enabling conditions in their contexts, surfacing variation of enablers critical to supporting PBL at scale (i.e., across many sites).

Significance. A collaboratory has the potential to accelerate researcher and practitioners’ understanding of implementation of instructional innovations across a variety of settings, resulting in greater potential to initiate, sustain, adapt, and scale practices that support more equitable student learning. This paper offers a discussion of some challenges and approaches to establishing and supporting collaboratories to harness their potential for research, practice, and policy.

Authors

• Britte Haugan Cheng, Menlo Education Research

• Tiffany L Clark, Menlo Education Research