The Mindset of Project-Based Learning

I've realized something.

Project-based learning is the easiest thing in the world to talk about because it's almost a guarentee that no one will disagree with you. Everyone will nod their head and agree that it's a good thing... but -- and Wiggins and McTigue write about this as well, by the way -- true project-based learning is an inversion of our traditional classrooms in powerful ways.

Here's why:

Project-based learning is not what you do after you've given the test, as supplimental to the test, as anything other than the primary method of assessment of student learning.

In a true project-based learning classroom or school, you may give quizzes to check-in or dipstick for comprehension, but when it comes time to assess what students really, deeply understand about a unit, they do an authentic, student-centered assessment -- a project.

If authentic student work is not the highest-order assessment in a classroom, that classroom is not project-based. It is still relying on a teacher's sense of what students must know for its highest moment of learning. A project puts it into the kids' hands to demonstrate and apply knowledge, skills, content and (if there's a reflective piece) meta-cognition.

Ask yourself, challenge yourself -- if you really want to know what kids know and can do, how do you assess that? When do you really feel like you know what kids can do?

And ask yourself this, how much control do you give over to the kids every day to really own their learning? Have you ever been surprised by that moment when a student took a piece of schoolwork in a direction completely unexpected? And what did you do in that moment?