Much of the optimistic messaging I have seen since the pandemic began has been about the promise of project-based learning, which has kind of laid exclusive claim to the moniker “PBL”. But some of us have been talking for a while about two other kinds of PBL, and it’s time we find some new nomenclature that differentiates and enshrines these powerful approaches that experience tells us can engage students deeply and make learning, immediate, relevant, and experiential.
I think the “PBL” structure is worth keeping around, because it’s familiar and rolls off the tongue. It also, cunningly and punningly, contains the idea of PossiBiLity, poking us to keep growth mindset in mind while at the same time turning our attention to the notion that there might be more than one right answer—that there are many routes to understanding.
Okay, what am I talking about?
Let’s start with PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING, PbBL in my personal pedagogical taxonomy. Problem-based learning comes in a number of forms, but it begins with the idea of inquiry, often framed in a particular kind of text or phenomenon that must be parsed and analyzed. A classic kind of PbBL is the case-based methodology used in many medical schools and painstakingly illustrated in episodes of old television drama House: a mystery presents itself that requires iterative description and hypothesizing, informed by research, as the practitioners work toward diagnosis and effective response. I’ve used this approach to teach both history (here’s a phenomenon and some data; what do we think really happened and why?) and literature (think of each chapter of a novel as an unfolding mystery: What do we know? What is going on? Why do we think so? Where do you think the story is going? I also devised a PbBL protocol for teaching poems.) PbBL may on its face seem especially well suited to scientific inquiry, but the good folks at the University of Delaware’s Problem-Based Learning Clearinghouse maintain a spectacular archive of PbBL materials in all disciplines.
(Truth: I also like that PbBL evokes “probable,” as the process relies on developing hypotheses that seem plausible and then testing these, all the while moving toward solutions built around what is both probable and provable.)
From there let’s move to PLACE-BASED LEARNING, which lives as PlaBL in my idiosyncratic world. A practice that goes light years beyond one-off field trips or the walk to the stream behind the campus to count frogs’ eggs, PlaBL intersects mightily with all the humanities, the sciences, the arts, language study, and social justice-focused learning, with myriad opportunities for quantitative research and analysis at every turn. Imagine learning that connects students intellectually as well as emotionally to their communities and their natural environments, opening windows into history, culture, geography, politics and current issues of equity and justice, and the ways that “place” can inspire art and beauty or serve as a kind of trap for humans and our fellow creatures. If we are seeking learning that is “relevant”—that acknowledges that students’ lives are actually being lived somewhere and that deeper understanding and responsible and equitable stewardship of these somewheres is a human imperative—you cannot do much better than embracing PlaBL in its full expression. Of late a group of educators, catalyzed by powerful place-based programs at University Liggett School in Michigan, has begun to gather a nascent organization of Place-Based Learning educators.
Enough has been written around PROJECT-BASED LEARNING, which I personally differentiate as PjBL, that it needs no exegesis here. The merest dip of a teacherly toe into the PjBL waters stirs up spectacular resources like those of the worlds of the George Lucas Educational Foundation (think Edutopia) and of the Buck Institute for Education. I want desperately to believe that shoddy “projects” like the sugar-cube pyramid I glued together as an elementary schooler “studying” ancient Egypt are things of the past; such half-baked enterprises played no small role in discrediting PjBL until fairly recently. Happily, the need to defend and redeem this potent methodology in all its many forms has required that educators not just create “cool projects” but also to link them explicitly to meaningful learning goals. Add to the PjBL hopper “design thinking,” with its own emphasis on research, iteration, and human relevance, and you have not just a classroom practice but a whole kind of mindset (as IDEO reminds us) that suggests that all of human experience in every discipline is about “how might we,” almost always informed by real constraints that must be identified and addressed—the real-world challenges that define design thinking and project-based learning.
PbBL, PlaBL, and PjBL. This triad, euphonious or not as you may hear it in your mind’s ear, can free and inspire teachers and students alike to begin seeing classrooms as laboratories of the human experience that begin with important questions and proceed toward answers whose complexity and significance in our lives transcends textbook algorithms and received truths, where “content” is the stuff of deep inquiry that goes far beyond what may appear on some test. Let us also be clear that these are not all “standalone” methodologies—they can be used in combination with one another and with any other great technique you like.
Let’s embrace the three Ps of Problem-, Place-, and Project-Based Learning as methods into which our efforts in professional learning and curriculum and assessment development must take us ever more deeply and in a growing spirit of excitement! Yes, these things have all been demonstrated to be effective as learning tools, but they’re also fun and, yes, they can be kind of cool, in ways for which no apologies are necessary.