Introduction
This HOW TO piece focuses on persuading others, such as fellow teachers, senior leaders, governors, parents, students and maybe even yourself, that EPBL might be a good idea. A good place to start is to check understanding of the term as we are conflating enquiry and projects and indeed there is much confusion and overlap in these terms and others such as problem based learning. So our understanding of EPBL is that it is sustained work driven by curiosity and/or a question and wherever possible this driving force question should come from students. We would add that EPBL should normally be deeply collaborative, with all the issues that involves, although there will be occasions when individual projects and enquiries are appropriate.
In addition wherever possible EPBL should:
- Result in a learning product – a report, a presentation, a poster, a guide, an exhibition, a performance, a book, a podcast, a film, a cartoon, a party, a game, a meal, an experiment, a poem, an artefact which is as good as can it possibly can be;
- Have an audience or a client (anyone beyond the class teacher) for the product – other classes, parents, a local organization, a business, the local community, students in another country, university staff or students;
- Go across subject boundaries;
- Use the locality and community as much as is reasonably possible (there is a lot of help and goodwill out there);
- Put maximum responsibility on the students so that they exercise autonomy and agency;
- Be subject to review or ‘critique’ so that the product is the best it can reasonably be.
Professional Learning Task: Characteristics of EPBL
Through discussion put these 8 characteristics (so include driven by student questions and collaborative) in some sort of rank order of educational importance in your school context.
Secondly put them in order of difficulty for your school to achieve fairly consistently – put the least difficult at the top and the most difficult at the bottom of the list
Reflect on why the difficult ones are so challenging.
Why do EPBL?
Maintaining a mix
The main demand on most schools is to hit exam targets and you might see EPBL as a distraction, drawing time and attention away from good interventions and a focus on student progress. So don’t ignore your interventions or very good whole class teaching – maintain a mix. However an equal or greater danger for your students is that they have no intrinsic motivation and they become disengaged, some opting for skipping school and/or poor behavior and some for compliance and dependency. A lack of intrinsic motivation and autonomy can be serious handicap in later life, whether in higher education or work (see Anderson 2014).
So engagement is a primary reason for pursuing EPBL. If you offer students some choice and autonomy, and the chance to work collaboratively the great majority will respond. They like being treated as being capable and competent and they will learn to benefit from mistakes and critical feedback.
EPBL encourages you to use the resources for education in your community and locality. Most of you will be familiar with the African proverb that it takes a village to raise a child, capturing the sense that we have a collective responsibility for the education and care of the next generation. We can adapt this proverb for modern times and appreciate that it takes a community, a village, town or city to raise a child.
Closing the gap
Another vital reason is that EPBL brings a fresh light to ‘closing the gap’ and school improvement. The general picture across the country is that the gap between high and low attainers is stubbornly resistant to gap closing measures. Some schools are more successful than others but it is a tough nut to crack. EPBL brings a fresh angle because it takes students to more places, allows them to meet more people and do more things that being confined to a classroom. This gives them raw material from which to construct more positive identities, overcome stereotypes and prejudices and inform their aspirations. It also helps them connect their learning to real world contexts, which is a part of creating authentic learning.
Lifelong learning
Furthermore there is broad agreement that the new century makes new demands on workers and citizens. There are many lists of skills and competences.
The Royal Society of Arts through its Opening Minds programme https://www.thersa.org/action-and-research/rsa-projects/creative-learning-and-development-folder/opening-minds/ focuses on:
competences for Learning;
- competences for Citizenship;
- competences for Relating to People;
- competences for Managing Situations;
- competences for Managing Information
The European Union itemizes 5 transversal competences (OJEU, 2006), which have broad application:
- digital competence;
- learning to learn (L2L);
- social and civic competence;
- sense of initiative and entrepreneurship; and
- cultural awareness and expression.
The Partnership for C21st Skills http://www.p21.org/ brings together some multinational high tech companies such as Microsoft, Intel and Cisco Systems together with some leading global universities advocating and researching a different set beyond core subjects:
- Learning and Innovation Skills (including creativity, critical thinking and problem solving)
- Information, Media and Technology Skills
- Life and Career Skills (including flexibility, social and cross cultural skills and self-direction)
All these lists stress the need for a greater capacity to learn throughout life, technological skills, critical and/or creative thinking, working with others and self-regulation. Such skills resurface as employability skills in the transition from university to work. It can argued that there are dangers in over-emphasising the need for flexible, resourceful and compliant workers in a globalized world, but equally ignoring employability can leave students short-changed.
The evidence for the effects of EPBL are promising if not overwhelming (Barron & Darling-Hammond, 2012, Boaler, 1997, Trickey & Topping, 2004). One of the conclusions is that EPBL is easily misunderstood and badly implemented so the potential gains in attainment measures may evaporate if key features are absent.
Professor David Leat and Rachel Lofthouse